Team Members
Faculty
Dr. Dar Roberts
PH: 805.455.8286: EMAIL: dar@geog.ucsb.edu CV: Roberts_vita_2021.pdf
Dr. Dar Roberts is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he started in January 1994. He is the author of over 227 refereed publications, over 24 books/book chapters and over 100 abstracts and non-refereed articles. Research interests include imaging spectrometry, remote sensing of vegetation, spectroscopy (urban and natural cover), land-use/land-cover change mapping with satellite time series, height mapping with lidar, fire danger assessment and, recently remote sensing of methane. He has worked with hyperspectral data since 1984 and broad band sensors such as MSS and TM over the same period, active sensors such as Synthetic Aperture Radar and LiDAR as well as thermal data. He is the UCSB Principal Investigator of the Southern California Wildfire Hazard Center and leads the group in developing wildfire fuels maps and mapping fuel moisture using remote sensing. Courses he teaches include Land Surface Processes, Historical Geography, Spatial Environmental Modeling, Measuring our Environment, Environmental Optics, and Advanced Remote Sensing in passive (214a) and active (214b).
Researchers
Seth Peterson
EMAIL: seth@geog.ucsb.edu
Dr. Seth Peterson has a PhD and a BS in physical geography from UCSB and a MA in geography from SDSU. His academic interests are centered around wildfire and using remote sensing to study biophysical properties of vegetation, specifically what aspects of the vegetation have the largest affect on fire risk in a particular ecosystem, e.g., the fuel moisture content of chaparral vegetation, and the biomass of conifers. He has also dabbled with fire spread modeling (FARSITE, HFire), studying the post-fire recovery of chaparral, and predicting fire risk at large spatial scales (for all of Central America). Other interests include cooking, bodyboarding, collecting art, growing food, and biking.
Graduate Students
Christopher Kibler
EMAIL: kibler@ucsb.edu
Christopher Kibler is a PhD candidate from Maine. He received his Bachelor’s degree from the George Washington University and his Master's degree from UCSB. Before attending UCSB, he worked for the city government in Washington, DC, where he developed and enforced water pollution regulations. In his free time, Chris enjoys birding, gardening, and cooking.
Rachel Green
EMAIL: rachel.green@geog.ucsb.edu
Rachel Green is a PhD student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow from Maryland. She received her Bachelor's degree in Natural Resources Conservation from the University of British Columbia. Her research will focus on using remote sensing to understand drought induced human displacement. In her free time, Rachel enjoys cooking, hiking, swimming, listening to music, and biking.
Germán Silva
EMAIL: german.silva@geog.ucsb.edu
WEBSITE: https://german-sil.github.io/gds/
Germán Silva is a Ph.D. student and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. They received their Bachelor's degree in Geography from CSU Stanislaus and MA from UCSB. They study coastal wetland ecosystems from a spatial and temporal lens, with a current research focus on wetland soil salinity and the potential links to salt marsh plant phenology and carbon sequestration. They are particularly interested in the application and use of these data in managed and restored systems. Additionally, they have a strong interest in developing better data literacy, data systems, and data science for the betterment of the environment.
Conor McMahon
EMAIL: conor.mcmahon@geog.ucsb.edu
Conor is a PhD student from Houston, Texas. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and Biology and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, focusing on robotic LiDAR survey. His recent work has focused on developing tools for automatically classifying vegetation types in the US Southwest and for tracking vegetation health changes in response to climatic drivers. Conor is particularly interested in evaluating the differences in local drought response between riparian and upland vegetation in dryland systems, between different species of woody riparian plants, and between several sites across Southern California and Southern Arizona. Conor spends essentially all of his spare time gardening, reading, and obsessively running around outdoors looking at all manner of wild critters, but in particular birds and plants.
Clare Saiki
EMAIL: clare.saiki@geog.ucsb.edu
Yanni Zhan
EMAIL: yanni.zhan@geog.ucsb.edu
Alumni
Margaret Gardner, Masters student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1995 to Spring 1997
Charles Kiedman, Masters student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1994 to Winter 1999
Keir Keightley, Masters student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1996 to Winter 1999
Paul Sutton, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1995 to Summer 1999
Eric Waller, Masters/PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1994 to Fall 1999
Marco Morais, Masters student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1998 to Spring 2001
Philip Dennison, Masters/PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1997 to Spring 2003
Nicholas Matze, Masters student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1999 to Fall 2003
Edward Collins, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1998 to present
Carl Legleiter, Co-Chair w T. Dunne MA at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2002 to Spring 2004
Carlos Souza Jr., PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2001 to Summer 2005
Matt Clark, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2001 to Summer 2005
Rebecca Powell, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1997 to Winter 2006
Izaya Numata, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2000 to Spring 2006
Kerry Halligan, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2003 to Summer 2007
Stefan Gaston, MA student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2005 to Fall 2007
Philipp Schneider, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2003 to Summer 2008
Ryan Perroy, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2002 to Summer 2009
Ted Eckmann, Co-Chair w C. Still, PhD at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2005 to Summer 2009
Michael Toomey, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2007 to Summer 2011
Ernest Reith, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 1997 to Winter 2012
Bree Belyea, MA student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2008 to Summer 2012
Eliza Bradley, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2006 to Fall 2013
Keely Roth, Masters/PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2006 to Spring 2014
Shane Grigsby, MA student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2011 to Summer 2014
Andrew Thorpe, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2009 to Spring 2015
Mike Alonzo, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2008 to Spring 2015
Mingquan Chen, MA student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2012 to Spring 2017
Zachary Tane, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2013 to Spring 2018
Erin Wetherley, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2012 to Fall 2018
Susan Meerdink, Masters/PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2012 to Fall 2018
Sarah Shivers, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2013 to Winter 2019
Gabriel Antunes Daldegan, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2014 to Summer 2019
Fernanda Ribeiro, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2014 to Summer 2020
David Miller, Masters/PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2014 to Fall 2020
Alana Ayasse, PhD student at UC Santa Barbara, Fall 2014 to Winter 2021