I'm an environmental geo and web technology consultant living in Vancouver and Victoria. I recently graduated from the University of Michigan, where my Masters research was on the self-organization of vegetation in the American drylands. I collaborate with Geomemes Research and Pink Sheep Media, and I'm interested in working with your gung-ho conservation organization.

This winter I'm filling the Landscape Analysis desk at the Canadian Wildlife Service PWRC, where I'm part of a team assessing the impacts of salmon gillnet bycatch on Pacific seabirds.

I have previously worked at the University of California at Davis and the Smithsonian Institution, where we used sensors on satellites and planes to investigate the environmental status of landscapes. In my other life in the service of the logging industry, I have planted more than a million trees in the majestic clearcuts of the Canadian interior.

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

MSc. in Natural Resources and Environment 2008
Environmental Informatics specialization

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.

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. The product site successfully facilitated the organization's basic tasks, and the site and CMS were in steady use for 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.

Treeplanter
1999-2001, 2003-2006, 2008

Worked for contractors in Alberta and BC including Coast Range Contracting, ELF Silviculture, Nechako Reforestation, and 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).

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.