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Cuba was introduced to me by Dr. Michael McClain in 2001. He invited me to a hydrology conference in Havana in 2002 and from that point I began a collaboration first with Michael and then expanded to other scientists in Cuba and others in the U.S. and abroad. My interest has always been land cover and land use change over time, especially with regard to anthropogenic impacts. Since that time I have worked and collaborated with a number of key people and organizations including the Ocean Foundation, the Harte Research Institute, the Cuban Research Institute, the University of Havana's Geography Department and many others. In both 2004 and 2006 I acquired permits to travel to Cuba to gather field data and information pertaining to ground truth menasurements for remote sensing classifications I had completed shortly before traveling to Cuba. For this classification (and others subsequently) I used mostly Landsat 5 and 7 data.
Reindeer herders in Norway, Finland and Russia are being directly impacted by climate change. For the past four years I have been working with an informal consortium of researchers including scientists from NASA, Sami University, and Ealát. Reindeer husbandry is conducted in Norway, Finland, and Sweden (among other nations). Climate changes are now observed that directly influence reindeer herders' livelihood. Using GIS, remote sensing and other tools, it is possible to generate a clearer picture of climate change in these regions. I am a small part of the research effort described by EALÁT. EALÁT is a Reindeer Herders Vulnerability Network Study and is a project that examines reindeer pastoralism in the light of climate change. For more information on this project, please click here.
Citizen science projects involve volunteers of all ages and education levels who partner with scientists to answer real-world questions. There are several projects going on now that are very exciting in the Florida Keys and Miami Dade County. I am working with Dr. Heihaus on outreach projects to get gradeschoolers, high school, college and graduate students, as well as concerned citizens involved in monitoring the land, coastal and marine areas in Miami Dade county and the Florida Keys. There may be opportunities for students to work on this project and several grant proposals have been written for this effort. Stay tuned for more updates on this exciting effort!
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