Dr. Qinghua Guo promoted to Associate Professor at UC Merced

Our former labmate Qinghua has been promoted to Associate Professor at UC Merced. Congrats to Qinghua! 

Qinghua's research includes the methodological and applied aspects of geographical information science. On methodological front, he focuses on geocomputation, remote sensing techniques, and spatial analysis. On the applied front, Professor Guo is interested in the application of geospatial techniques in solving large-scale ecological and geographical problems, with emphasis on the effects of invasive species, climate change, and human disturbance on terrestrial ecosystems. He has published over 30 papers in GIScience in great journals.

Here is his website.

New visitor: Jose Peña Barragán

We have a new visiting researcher in the Kellylab! Jose comes from the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture (IAS-CSIC, Cordoba, Spain). He works on remote sensing applications for developing site-specific weed management strategies in the context of precision agriculture. His current project focuses on the testing of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for collecting remote images in crop-weed systems and the evaluation of object-based image analysis techniques for weed seedling discrimination.

He is an eCognition wiz, and will be working in the GIF. Stop by and say hi.

News from Celia: new postdoc position in Italy

Celia Garcia-Feced, our visitor from Madrid in 2009 & 2010 has graduated, and she is now working for the European Commission. She has a 3 year post-doc at the Joint Research Centre of Ispra (Italy). She will be working on mapping Europe's green infrastructures, taking into account ecological networks, ecosystem services and biodiversity. Ispra is located in the North of Italy, near the Maggiore Lake, surrounded by the Alps. Sounds like a rough job! Congrats to Celia!

News from Esther: AAAS Science and Technology Fellowship

Former lab member Esther Zeledon has accepted the AAAS Science & Technology fellowship in DC. She will either be working with the USAID or the Dept. of State. Before she starts in September, she'll be teaching two courses in Environmental Engineering at the Polytechnical Univerisity in Quito, Ecuador. She is LEED certified!

Congrats to Esther!

new image gallery: fieldwork at Twitchell

I've posted some shots from a recent foray to Twitchell Island to gather soil cores, water samples, and do some recon for our new carbon capture project. Twitchell Island is in the Delta; it is a ~1,000-ha property, 2 metres below sea level, bounded on the north by Seven Mile Slough, on the east and south by the San Joaquin River, and on the west by Three Mile Slough. It is the site of an experiment being conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey to study whether growing tules and cattails on the sinking islands of the Sacramento Delta can reverse the soil loss caused by wind, rain and farming. The soil under the 15-acre site has risen 1 to 2 feet since the project started in 1996.