Conservation Science

National airborne LiDAR and RGB orthoimagery campaign covering ~16,000 km² of Guyana, producing DTM/DSM, orthoimagery mosaics, and updated national base-map layers for the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission.

Analysis of 15 years of MAPS bird-banding data from eight Utah riparian sites showing that hotter, drier years concentrate greater bird diversity in riparian corridors while simultaneously depressing population growth rates in the breeding species most dependent on them.

Multi-source remote sensing analysis for the Audubon Society’s Saline Lakes Program to determine whether artificial wildlife habitat required by a 1991 Oregon water use permit was ever constructed at River’s End Reservoir on the lower Chewaucan River.

LiDAR and field-based study of riparian forest structure along Red Butte Creek, Utah, finding that land use transitions — especially individual landowner decisions — decouple urban riparian vegetation from stream hydrology, producing exceptionally tall canopies in older residential reaches while native species dominate the protected canyon upstream.

Collaboration with Ocean Alliance’s Right Whale Program to digitize eight years of analog aerial survey sightings of Eubalaena australis into GIS, including a mileposted bathymetric centerline representing the whales’ preferred coastal corridor around Golfo Nuevo, Península Valdés, and Golfo San José.

Parcel-level conservation prioritization and gap analysis for the Jordan River Commission, producing a geodatabase of all Salt Lake County parcels within a 1-mile corridor coded by open-space zoning, conservation easement, and public ownership status — subsequently adopted by three stakeholder organizations for land acquisition planning and regulatory decision-making.

Proof-of-concept habitat connectivity analysis for the Mid-America Regional Council using the Kansas City NRI II land cover product, modeling functional patch networks and importance rankings for Western painted turtle and Eastern meadowlark — finding that highway infrastructure has fragmented turtle connectivity in the urbanizing suburban fringe, while meadowlark habitat forms a distinctive ring around the conurbation where total area, not connectivity, is the binding constraint.