Three Department of Geography Graduate Students win highly competitive three-year NASA Fellowships

Congratulations to the following students:

Evan Ellicott:“Estimating global biomass burning emission estimates using the fire radiative power.” The goal of this research is to develop a method of estimating biomass burning emissions using satellite retrieved fire intensity and to reduce the uncertainty surrounding current emission estimates.

Virginia Gorsevski: “Impacts of conflict on land cover, fire dynamics and biodiversity potential in the Imatong Mountains of Southern Sudan.” The overarching goal of this project is to better understand the main drivers of land cover land use change in a pre- and post-conflict environment and use this knowledge to predict future impacts on biodiversity.

Jyoteshwar Nagol: “Quantification of error in global long-term vegetation index records.” The goal of this research is to investigate spatiotemporal distribution of uncertainty in extant long-term vegetation index datasets and develop methodologies for quantifying and expressing them spatio-temporally. It will provide a firmer foundation for conclusions based on AVHRR data. 280 proposals were submitted to NASA for consideration this year. Of those only 58 were funded and Geography received 5% of those projects that were funded. The Department continues it’s excellent record in obtaining the fellowships. Congratulations to the advisors well, Christopher Justice, Eric Kasischke, and Stephen Prince.