Yi Qi
Founder and DirectorI am an Assistant Professor in the School of Natural Resources at University of Nebraska Lincoln. I am also a Faculty Fellow in the Robert B. Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, and a faculty member in the Center for Advanced Land Management and Information Technologies. I am a spatial scientist with broad interests in advancing remote sensing and spatial data science in support of ecological monitoring, natural resource management, conservation, and digital agriculture. My current research is particularly focused on the cross-scale (from the field works to airborne and the satellite remote sensing) characterizing and modeling vegetation stress and diversity, land productivity, and ecological processes in agroecosystems and grassland landscape in Great Plains. My work emphasizes on multidisciplinary approaches with collaborators in Ecology, Agronomy, Computer Science, Statistics, Wildlife Biology among others.
|
Megan Baldissara
PhD Candidate
Megan Baldissara research will help understanding farmland species’, such as pheasants, habitat needs in agriculturally dominated landscapes so that they can be protected and conserved. Wildlife has little natural wild space to survive on, and with agriculture expanding, it is fundamental that they can thrive in human modified environments. It is essential to conserve biodiversity, as it gives ecosystem services important to human survival. She holds a MS in in Conservation and Biodiversity from the University of Exeter (U.K.) and BS in Biological Sciences from the University of Plymouth (U.K.).
|
Noah BerkowitzPhD Candidate
Noah Joined the EAST Lab in January 2021 as Ph.D. candidate, he currently works on applied Production efficiency modelling bridging yield modelling knowledge gaps. He has various interests in Remote Sensing, Machine Learning, and spatial modeling. Noah holds a double B.S in Applied Urban Planning and Geospatial Sciences and a M.S. in Geospatial Sciences with specialty in International Development and Remote Sensing from Clark University. His Masters topic was the application neural networks in Mangrove and Aquaculture classification methodologies.
|
Catherine ChanPhD CandidateCatherine Chan tentative research aims to detect regime shifts through measures in biodiversity using remote sensing data. She is a student within NSF's National Research Traineeship (NRT) program. Her master’s work focused on detecting water stress in wild blueberry fields and emerald ash borer conditions in ash trees using airborne hyperspectral imaging spectroscopy. She holds an MS in Forest Resources from the University of Maine, and a BS in Marketing and minor in Environmental Studies from Boston College.
Research interests: imaging spectroscopy, change detection |
Hugh Ellerman
PhD Candidate
Hugh Ellerman first joined the EAST lab in the fall of 2020 as a teaching assistant for the course GIS for Agriculture and Natural Resources. He has since become a PhD student in the School of Natural Resources. His research interests include spatial ecology, woody plant invasions, and understanding urban forest dynamics using classification of remotely sensed imagery. He is also interested in developing urban landcover maps to better understand the distribution of ecosystem services within the urban environment. Hugh has a B.A. in biology from St. Olaf College and a M. Sci. in natural resource sciences from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln.
|
Andrew Laws
MS Candidate
I enjoy spending my free time in the outdoors hiking, biking, or camping or curled up with a good book and some coffee next to my two cats, Merwin and Yzma. As a lover of learning, I always seem to have some new hobby on my radar and new skills appearing on my professional toolbelt. As a member of the geospatial community, I find the broad range of applications for geospatial technologies and practices to be incredible. Of particular interest is helping non-profits with limited budgets understand and learn the application of geospatial technology to help solve problems they may have. I hope to see you either on the trail or in the woodshop (one of my newer hobbies)!
Recognition GIS/LIS Scholarship from the Nebraska GIS/LIS Association |
Wenqi Ou
PhD CandidateWenqi Ou is a graduate student in the School of Natural Resources at UNL who joined the EAST lab in fall 2019. Her research focused on monitoring crop water stress with remote sensing over Corn Belt, USA. Her interest is also using hyperspectral images to monitor canopy water content and applying in detecting water stress of crop.
|
Ashley Jonas
BA Candidate
Ashley is completing her Bachelor of Arts degree in Environmental Studies and Global Studies at UNL. In addition to her double majors, she has added three minors to this degree in Anthropology, Spanish, and Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs. She studied abroad in the fall of 2019 at the University of Granada in Spain. During her time there, she enhanced her proficiency in Spanish language skills. Ashley was introduced to the field of geospatial science in the spring of 2021 where she worked on a project for the Honors Program. It consisted of Arctic wildlife conservation research. The outcome of her work was a creative ArcGIS StoryMap featuring four arctic species that are threatened or in danger of extinction. She is continuing to explore geospatial science and remote sensing in a research project assessing the effectiveness of conservation practices on Nebraska land. As an undergraduate research assistant, she is collaborating with others to produce a geodatabase that will reflect the progress of conservation practices. Ashley is also working on a comprehensive thesis project for her graduation in May 2022 that examines the international status of climate-induced migration. Her interests lie in climate change research, international relations, and teaching youth.
|