SSC 2.22 Resource Management including natural resource as well as renewable economic resources such as agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. SSC 2.23 Community Development focusing on land use, transportation, infrastructure, cultural and recreational resources, and issues of quality of life in our communities. SSC 2.24 Disaster Management which encompasses natural disasters, such as volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, sever weather and floods, as well as ecological issues related to the health of human, plant and animal communities. By combining remotely sensed and ancillary information into a data base, accurate predictive models can be developed to isolate potential locations of prehistoric activity. Contributions to the development and testing of paleoecological models of climate change are emphasized, utilizing data and methods from multidisciplinary approaches.
Research focuses on coastal and estuarine regions.
The general goals of this research are to develop remote-sensing techniques, to evaluate their utility in order to improve our understanding of the behavior of oceans, and to assist users with the implementation of operational systems. Specific goals include improving our capability to measure the primary productivity of oceans, their variability, and how they influence the marine food chain and global CO2 and biogeochemical cycles. We are also interested in improving our capability to determine phytoplankton abundance and primary productivity based on remotely sensed data acquired by spacecraft and aircraft. Algorithm development to model marine productivity on global scales through remote sensing will be necessary. A major goal of this research is to use remote sensing to monitor and model plant stress and carbon assimilation in terrestrial ecosystems.