I'm a masters student at the University of Michigan, studying how patterns emerge from the individual-scale mechanisms of organisms in ecosystems. I'm particularly interested in the ecohydrology of the dry landscapes of the American southwest, and how their vegetative response to climate change may be mediated by their reliance on water-efficent spatial structure.

I'm a former employee of the University of California at Davis and the Smithsonian Institution, where I worked using satellite and plane and handheld sensors to map and monitor environmental landscape stuff. In the service of the logging industry I have planted, by hand, more than a million tree seedlings in the majestic clearcuts of the Canadian interior.

I like playing ukulele and DJing at the radio and taking pictures and do those things with mixed results. I used to like wilderness travel and binge reading but don't seem to have the time anymore. I am proud to have ridden my hardworn motorcycle back and forth and across the continent and to have claimed "home" in a couple places on the pacific coast of British Columbia.

I grew up on the shores of Georgian Bay in the crook of the Niagara Peninsula, in a former shipyard town. Most of my family still live in that region. I like coffee and rock and sunsets and the various colours blue.

MSc. in Environmental Informatics
and Graduate Certificate in Complex Systems

University of Michigan, School of Natural Resources and Environment.

Supervisor: Dan Brown

Affiliations:
Environmental Spatial Analysis Lab and the
Center for the Study of Complex Systems

Graduate Student Research Assistant, working on a collaboration between the Michigan Tech Research Institute and Dan Brown developing empirical methods to validate the outcomes of the USDA's Natural Resource Conservation Service programs.

Graduate Student Instructor, assisting Dan Brown teaching the winter-term NRE 531 Principles of GIS graduate-level course in spatial analysis.

Treeplanter
1999-2001, 2003-2006

Worked for contractors in Alberta and BC including Coast Range Contracting, ELF Silviculture, Nechako Reforestation, Little Smokey Forestry Services. I spent 7 summers dogging it out in the bush, and eventually earned a spot on one of the highest producing, most effective crews in the industry (by our own, highly qualified assessment).

Daffodil Picker, Vantreight Farms
2006, Victoria BC

Worked in the fields of the second largest daffodil farm in the world, where I applied sufficient discpline to meet and exceed the rather lax production and quality standards, and make a decent daily income doing piece work.

Intern, Conservation GIS Lab
Center for Conservation Research, Smithsonian Institution
2004-2005, Front Royal VA

Primary focus was on developing a novel approach to detecting elusive dry dipterocarp forest in South Asia using multi-season, multi-sensor imagery. Also helped administer and instruct courses in conservation spatial analysis and remote sensing, and took on various remote sensing, spatial analysis, cartography, deer wrestling and tour-guiding tasks as they came up.

Web Developer, Sea-to-Sky Freenet
2003, Squamish BC

Worked with a community NGO to design and implement a content management system-based website. Trained staff and volunteers in it's use and coordinated generation of initial content for the site. Results were mixed, but the results successfully facilitated the organization's basic tasks, and the site and CMS were in steady use for nearly four years.

Post Graduate Researcher, Center for Spatial Technology and Remote Sensing
University of California at Davis
2001-2003, Davis CA

Responsible for spectral analysis and imagery workflow and analysis, field work, equipment management and training. Collaborated with leading researchers in integrative enviromental remote sensing studies, in some cases from initial planning stages through field campaigns to final publication. Worked primarily with hand-held and airborne hyperspectral imagery, but also multispectral satellite, airborne LIDAR and aerial photographic data. Projects focused on vegetative water stress, invasive species and pollution effects.

BSc. (Hons.) in Pure and Applied Ecology, University of Guelph
Experimental Ecology Specialization
Graduated 2001, Guelph ON

Earned an honest-to-goodness ecology degree. Learned from and was inspired by the faculty of a university which, despite routinely being ranked as one of the top in the country, actually is a very good place to go to school.