Welcome! 

I am a 3rd-year professor at UNC Charlotte.  My research interests include solving geologic and environmental problems using remote sensing (digital images acquired from satellites and airplanes), GIS and precision GPS.  I also have research interests in geochemistry and planetary science.

My current research projects have taken me to several places around the country and around the world.  I am using high-resolution lidar and multispectral satellite imagery to study mangroves in the Everglades and Florida Keys.  I am also studying endangered red wolf habitat in eastern North Carolina using high- and moderate-resolution multispectral satellite imagery and data from GPS collars on the wolves, and my graduate students Zack Peterson and Melissa Karlin are working on this project with me. 

I am also using airborne hyperspectral AVIRIS data to study the lava flows, sediments, and vegetation in Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, which my graduate student Karina Solis is working on.  Finally, Melissa Karlin and I are working on a study of predator habitat in the area surrounding Yellowstone National Park.

I also do research using high-temperature geochemistry as a tool to study magmatic processes. My Ph.D. dissertation involved the study of magma mixing between the Cobb hotspot and Juan de Fuca mid-ocean ridge in the northeast Pacific Ocean.  I am currently finishing a study of the lavas generated at the intersection of the woodlark mid-ocean ridge and a subduction zone near the Solomon Islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean.

I teach three remote sensing classes (Fundamentals of Remote Sensing, Advanced Remote Sensing, and Remote Sensing of Environment), a national parks class ('National Parks: Science behind the Scenery'), a planetary science class ('The Planets'), and a high-altitude balloon launching class ('Near-Space Balloons') in which students build and fly a small 'near-spacecraft' with a camera and temperature probe on a weather balloon up to 100,000 feet.  Far out!