My research is cross-disciplinary with the ultimate goal of scaling plot-based forest health relationships to a landscape-scale using remote sensing and GIS modeling. To date, this work has focused on the detection and mapping of pre-visual forest decline symptoms resulting from invasive species, global climate change and acid deposition/nutrient depletion. These techniques provide a much-needed tool for the early detection of new and existing stressors and will allow forest management agencies to focus management efforts before stands are severely impacted.

Jim Duncan serves as the director of the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative, where he strives to improve access to information and monitoring of forested ecosystems in the northeast. He supports Cooperators by making long-term monitoring data on the region’s forested ecosystems more accessible, providing needed aggregation and syntheses of disparate data into products that are more useful for seeing and responding to change, and building new regional networks for greater collaboration in monitoring. He also supports interdisciplinary teams in UVM's Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources with spatiotemporal analysis and integration of social and ecological data, and serves on his towns tree board. He previously worked to increase transparency in the oil, gas and mining sectors by giving decision makers and citizens tools to map and interact with data, including in Mongolia and Ghana.

Ali is a forest ecologist and dendrochronologist (tree rings) who specializes in understanding tree response to environmental change. She has worked with FEMC over the years, first as a graduate student studying tree growth in the FEMCs long-term study site at Mt. Mansfield and as a part-time staff member to author the annual reports. Now at the FEMC, she coordinates and oversees regional and state scientific projects.

John started his work with FEMC as a summer field intern in 2016 after graduating from the University of Vermont. Following the field season, he transitioned from an intern to the Project and Field Coordinator. When he’s not working on field projects John can be found at our Spear St. office crunching data, working on outreach, and other miscellaneous tasks. Outside of work John enjoys volleyball, photography, fishing on his kayak, and drumming.

Matthias is working to collect and archive overlooked datasets throughout New England and New York. He has monitored forests as they relate to declining bird species across the United States and has pursued his interest in geospatial techniques between field seasons through the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab.

Emma is a social and digital geographer with a love of maps and computer programming. She began working with FEMC in January 2016 while an undergrad at UVM. After graduating in 2017 she began working full time as a GIS technician working with regional partners standardizing and aggregating Forest Health data. After a year’s hiatus to get a masters she’s back at FEMC as a spatial analyst, writing programs for large scale spatial data analysis and developing web tools for interactive mapping and spatial modeling.

Matthias is currently pursuing a master’s degree in forestry at UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. His research is focused on modeling the effects of climate change, forest management, and disturbance on forest ecosystems in Vermont. Matthias began working as a research specialist for FEMC in the fall of 2018.

Jake began his service with FEMC in the fall of 2019 as a member of ECO AmeriCorps. He graduated from St. Lawrence University in the spring of 2019 with a BA degree in Environmental Studies and Economics. Jake will be assisting with the collection and archive of high quality data from Vermont’s health monitoring network. He also focuses on developing routes of outreach and engagement to maximize the potential for utilization of FEMC archives and products.