GEP Professor Receives Two Grants

Dr. Matthew Clark in the Center for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Analysis (CIGA) was awarded two grants this year. Congrats Dr. Clark! Check out the projects below:

Awarded a $493,000 CAL FIRE Forest Health Research Program grant, titled ““Timely prediction of wildfire burn severity in California forests with spaceborne observations of 3D vegetation structure”, this research will use satellite and other spatial data, such as winds, to model where future high severity wildfires may occur in California. A core component of this research is data from the NASA Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) sensor on the International Space Station, which uses a scanning laser to measure the height profile of vegetation at global scales. These data will help predict vegetation fuels that can influence wildfire behavior. This research will involve undergraduate students to collect ground data from plots in forests around California that will help calibrate and validate models. 

The second is a new $596,000 NASA Biodiversity grant, “BioSoundSCape: Connecting acoustics and remote sensing to study habitat-animal diversity across environmental gradients". This research is based in the Cape region of South Africa, and is sequel to Dr. Clark’s bioacoustics and citizen science project Soundscapes to Landscapes in Sonoma County. The BioSoundSCape project will involve citizen scientists in South Africa, coordinated by Birdlife South Africa, to deploy low-cost acoustic recorders to monitor animal diversity. As part of a larger campaign in South Africa, called BioSCape, NASA will fly advanced lidar and hyperspectral (imaging spectrometer) sensors that detect structural and chemical variation in vegetation. Dr. Clark and colleagues at Point Blue Conservation Science and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory will use these data to explore the relationships between chemical, structural, acoustic, and animal diversity in the Cape region. Dr. Clark will travel to South Africa in 2023 to participate in a multi-team field campaign that coincides with NASA’s flights. Students in CIGA will help with remote sensing analysis, sound data processing, and making graphs and figures.