A Bit About Me:
I work as the Lead Scientist for the Cities program with The Nature Conservancy in New York. In this role I use GIS, Remote Sensing, and statistical tools to characterize dynamics of open space, primarily in New York City. In this work, I look to understand where green space and open space are in various forms (e.g., the urban forest, green roofs), how it is changing through time, who benefits and does not benefit from these resources, and how to maintain and increase them. This work is all done through multiple lenses including equity, climate resiliency, and biodiversity conservation. I grew up in Staten Island, NY, and have been working for The Nature Conservancy in NY since 2015. It is a delight and a privilege to be working on these issues in my home city.
Prior to my current position I workd as a Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of Tulsa, with Dr. Ron Bonett as part of the NSF-Funded Oklahoma EPSCoR program. There I taught courses on spatial analysis, conducted research on environmental drivers of alternative life histories in salamanders, and worked on preparing Oklahoma LiDAR data for use by other researchers in the state.
I completed my PhD at Texas A&M University in the Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences. My general research interests are in the fields of landscape ecology and conservation biology, with an emphasis on amphibians and reptiles. My dissertation research focused on understanding how anthropogenic landscape alterations impact amphibians indirectly, through large-scale processes. I conducted this work as part of the Applied Biodiversity Sciences IGERT program (NSF-Funded) at Texas A&M.
About this Site
I set up a website to share my research, coding projects, teaching materials, with the hope that others are more likely to stumble upon and make use of them. I have disabled commenting from the website, but please reach out with any questions.
Education:
Doctor of Philosophy (2014) Texas A&M University, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Advised by Dr. Lee Fitzgerald. Dissertation Title: Multi-Scale Conservation in an Altered Landscape: The Case of the Endangered Arroyo Toad in Southern California (Click Here to view as a PDF)
Masters of Science (2010) Texas A&M University, Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Advised by Dr. Lee Fitzgerald. Thesis Title: A Translocated Population of the St. Croix Ground Lizard: Analyzing its Detection Probability and Investigating Its Impacts on the Local Prey Base (Click Here to view as a PDF)
Bachelors of Science (2007) Cornell University, Department of Natural Resources.