Ph.D. students Allison Welch and Shawn Pedron study how the expansion of woody plants into graminoid tundra communities (shrubification) are impacting the cycling of carbon and nutrients in soils and the rates of permafrost thaw.
As part of this project, Allison uses geospatial software (ArcGIS, Google Earth Engine) to extract and analyze remotely sensed data that can serve as a proxy for vegetation change. She uses satellite products that contain vegetation indices like Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as well as land cover data to estimate these changes, which can be verified with field measurements such as shrub biomass allometry and soil composition.
This is a joint project with Prof. Mike Goulden (UC Irvine) and collaborators from the University of Alaska, Anchorage and relies heavily on the support of undergraduate researchers (Y. Khazindar, B. Martinez, and M. Tayo).