Meet the PI
Dr. Jody Vogeler, Lab Lead
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Dr. Jody Vogeler is a Research Scientist with the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory and advising faculty with the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University. Dr. Vogeler's research is driven by the goal of gaining a better understanding of changing patterns within forest and woodland ecosystems due to climate change, management activities, and urbanization to inform sustainable management. With a strong background in field-based research, Dr. Vogeler has built her career integrating remote sensing data sets with field surveys to advance ecosystem science by characterizing, analyzing, and forecasting ecosystem dynamics over space and time. She strives to keep her lab at the forefront of remote sensing technology, geospatial methodologies, and quantitative approaches, leveraging cloud computing resources and machine learning for projects across local to national extents. Dr. Vogeler is passionate about providing opportunities for graduate students and early career as well as experienced researchers within her research lab to improve their applied remote sensing skills on her various grant-funded research projects and gain experience working on collaborative interdisciplinary research teams.
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Current Lab Members
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Patrick Fekety, Research AssociatePatrick works remotely from western Oregon. His research interests include using remote sensing to aid natural resource management. Patrick’s work is currently focused on mapping forest biomass and identifying & characterizing forest disturbances. He is a team member on a NASA Carbon Monitoring Systems project, which uses coincident field measurements, lidar, and Landsat time series data to predict aboveground forest attributes (e.g., basal area, biomass, volume) across the western US. Additionally, he has been investigating the spectral characteristics of forest disturbances across the Great Lakes region of the US. His expertise includes lidar processing and imputation-based modeling of forest attributes. Patrick received his Masters of Forestry from Oregon State University. He has worked as a forestry technician with USFS and BLM and as a researcher with Michigan Technological University and University of Minnesota.
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Steven Filippelli, Research Associate & PhD StudentSteve measures trees from space! His research has involved combining lidar, high-resolution aerial imagery, satellite image time series, and other remotely sensed data to track changes in forest structure. Steve’s recent work has primarily focused on quantifying woody encroachment and disturbance in the western United States and examining the implications of those dynamics for wildlife and carbon storage. This has involved applying a multitude of image processing and machine learning techniques to remotely sensed imagery, such as object-oriented analysis of aerial photos and Random Forest modeling with Landsat series. Steve obtained his master’s degree in Ecology from CSU where his thesis involved measuring the effects of wildfire on forest structure and biomass by fusing point clouds derived from aerial imagery and lidar. He is now working on a PhD in Ecology with a dissertation on remote sensing of vegetation and land cover change in the Greater Kruger area of South Africa. When Steve isn’t staring at trees on a computer screen he likes to visit them in real life by hiking and climbing in the Rocky Mountains.
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Matt Shawcroft, Research AssociateMatt is a geographic data scientist passionate about solving real-world problems using creative geospatial solutions. He received his M.S in Geography from the University of Utah, where he studied the effects of environmental stress on agricultural economies. He is interested in exploring localized impacts of climate change on human lives through the use of environmental remote sensing. Matt is involved with a variety of projects in the lab, including working to better understand changes in dry forest land cover in the western United States using historical aerial imagery and using space-born LiDAR data to better quantify forest structures. He prefers to spend his spare time outdoors, camping, and hiking with his family and friends.
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Peder Engelstad, Research Associate & PhD StudentPeder is a spatial ecologist with skills in R and python programming, high-performance computing, and machine learning. The bulk of his current work is alongside researchers at USGS FORT, where they build, optimize, and distribute species distribution models of invasive plant species under current and future climate scenarios. This longstanding collaboration has recently given Peder the opportunity to pursue a PhD program at CSU. In January 2023, he will start this journey with his nerd flag waving proudly. When not optimizing code, you will likely find Peder baking bread, canoeing, climbing, dungeon mastering, trying to remember German words, playing tennis, drinking an IPA, or starting a tinkering project that he will never finish.
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Shahriar Shah Heydari, PostdocShahriar has started from a pure engineering background in his home country of Iran but switched to environmental engineering due to his concerns on humans impact on our greater home. He carries a high level of experience in engineering project work from his past career, and traveled to Europe and USA to get another masters degree and finally a Ph.D. degree from State University of New York – Environmental Sciences and Forestry college, making him knowledgeable and skilled in geospatial analysis and mining of the remote sensing data. His research focus is land cover mapping, particularly by coding advanced artificial intelligence and deep learning methodologies and time series analysis and fusion of globally available big datasets. His work is also extending to change analysis and fine-tuning of developed powerful models for better local performance. He has also worked with state and local companies on surveying and generating prediction maps for forest health monitoring. On the ground and out of office, he is a true nature lover and spends his spare time mostly in the outdoors by hiking and biking, not only for peace but also for learning new things, which never stops.
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Derek Fedak, PhD StudentDerek is from St. Louis, MO and pursuing his Ph.D in Ecology. His research focuses on wildlife conservation, human-wildlife conflict mitigation, and habitat connectivity using a combination of fieldwork, remote sensing, GIS, and camera trap analyses. He is currently assessing how long-term land use/land cover changes and rewilding efforts are impacting the Greater Kruger National Park landscape to forecast potential scenarios to aid with management decisions. He received his B.S. in Biology from Boston College and M.S. from Duke University, where he studied tropical mangrove forests. Derek has conducted international fieldwork in Costa Rica, Mozambique, and South Africa and spent several years leading fieldwork throughout the northern range of Yellowstone, where he researched the impact that wolf reintroduction is having on riparian systems. He also researched stream restoration and willow survival in Rocky Mountain National Park. Derek spent several years in education teaching Biology, Geography, and Environmental Sciences in CO and WY before returning for his Ph.D. When not in the office, Derek likes to spend time hiking, biking, and SUP/kayaking with his daughter. He is also an avid trail runner that races over any mountain he can find.
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Orion Cardenas-Ritzert, MS StudentOrion is from Homedale, ID, and is pursuing a Masters in Ecosystem Sustainability at Colorado State University. His research interests lie in addressing human-driven environmental and sustainability issues in urban environments and understanding the implications they have on the well-being of humans, peri-urban and urban ecosystems. He is also passionate about advocating for environmental justice and incorporates it into his work whenever possible. His favored approach for addressing these issues is through the utilization of remote sensing and spatial analysis techniques. Orion received his B.S. in Ecology and Conservation Biology, as well as certificates in GIS and Remote Sensing from the University of Idaho. His senior thesis examined the relationship between urbanization and land surface temperatures in Ada County, Idaho, as well as the potential impacts of increased land surface temperatures on socially vulnerable populations using a remote sensing-based approach. Orion’s master’s thesis work will contribute to a NASA project assessing urbanization patterns and the tradeoffs among social and ecosystem services associated with urbanization-driven Land Cover and Land Use Change in Africa.
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Daniel Rode, Geospatial TechnicianB.S. - Ecosystem Science and Sustainability graduate, Spring 2023
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Past Lab Members
Ashley Martinovich, Lab Technician 2022-2023
Hannah Liebman, Lab Technician 2022-2023
Sarah Sathe, Lab Technician 2022-2023
Morgan Guttman, Lab Technician - 2022
Neal Swayze, Research Associate – 2021-2022
Cody Bingham, Lab Technician - 2021
Keana Shadwell, Lab Technician - 2021
Eric Jensen, MS Student – Graduated Fall 2020
Thesis Title: Leveraging the Landsat archive to characterize plant species diversity and post-fire recovery in Great Basin shrublands.
Jillian LaRoe, MS Student – Graduated Summer 2020
Thesis Title: Characterizing distributions and drivers of emergent aquatic vegetation in Minnesota.
Hannah Liebman, Lab Technician 2022-2023
Sarah Sathe, Lab Technician 2022-2023
Morgan Guttman, Lab Technician - 2022
Neal Swayze, Research Associate – 2021-2022
Cody Bingham, Lab Technician - 2021
Keana Shadwell, Lab Technician - 2021
Eric Jensen, MS Student – Graduated Fall 2020
Thesis Title: Leveraging the Landsat archive to characterize plant species diversity and post-fire recovery in Great Basin shrublands.
Jillian LaRoe, MS Student – Graduated Summer 2020
Thesis Title: Characterizing distributions and drivers of emergent aquatic vegetation in Minnesota.
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