My work investigates the relationship between rangeland management and climate change. I am currently improving a model that aims to accurately quantify the carbon budget and ecosystem productivity for ranches and rangelands across the United States.
My expertise is in remote sensing and biogeochemical physical modeling, with a focus on cloud and aerosol dynamics and interactions between the land and the atmosphere. I took a holistic “earth system” approach to my graduate studies at University of California Irvine, which I further developed during a postdoctoral program with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and as a professor at an art school. This training, which provided me with a breadth of learning and experiences, has allowed me to explore a wide variety of questions that relate to the climate system.
Over the last ten years, I have expanded the scope of my work to include artists and designers in the scientific process. I believe that scientific knowledge and climate solutions should be accessible to everyone, which means that scientists need to improve how we both conduct and communicate our research.
Outside of work, I am an avid marathoner, a “weather nerd,” and a big fan of science fiction—especially work by Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler.