I’m a Ph.D. Candidate in the Environmental Systems Graduate Group at the University of California, Merced. I conduct research in the Earth Observation and Remote Sensing (EORS) Lab (PI: Dr. Erin Hestir). My work sits at the intersection of remote sensing, ecology, and open data science.

My dissertation research leverages multi-scale remote sensing — from satellites, drones, and aircraft — combined with in-situ biodiversity surveys and environmental DNA (eDNA) from soils, sediments, and water. Together, these datasets help me assess, monitor, and model biodiversity across dynamic terrestrial–aquatic interfaces. I am especially interested in how hydrology and geomorphology shape biodiversity and ecosystem services, focusing on floodplains, river corridors, and ephemeral wetlands — the transitional zones where life and water converge.

A growing area of my research involves spatiotemporal data fusion, particularly for combining satellite and UAV imagery to generate synthetic fine-resolution time series. These approaches have applications in precision agriculture, environmental monitoring, and other domains where high spatial and temporal resolution are essential.

I’m a strong advocate for open-source geospatial science, reproducible workflows, and transparent methods. Much of my work centers on building modular tools for QGIS, Python, and R — including OpenRES, an open-source QGIS plugin for automated hydrogeomorphic feature extraction.