Eugenio Arima
Dr. Arima is a human-environmental geographer interested in understanding the motivations that drive humans to act upon and transform tropical landscapes and how that manifests spatially in terms of patterns. His work typically employs mixed-methods such as interview-based fieldwork, computer simulation, econometrics and spatial statistics, geographic information systems, and remote sensing. He is associate professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment and teaches undergraduate GIS, graduate level seminars in Land Change Science, Regression Analysis, and Modeling.
Elías Cisneros
Dr. Elías Cisneros is an environmental economist interested in the political economy of environmental degradation and human health. He combines spatial data on biophysical conditions with exogenous market and political shocks to investigate human behavior and the transformation of landscapes. Remotely sensed high-resolution and high-frequency data on forest losses, fires, as well as geo-coded policies and social media data allow him to explore the dynamic processes of the economy and policy. He is a visiting researcher and a EU Marie-Sklodowska Curie fellow at the Department of Geography and the Environment working on the project PlanetHealth.
Audrey Denvir
Audrey Denvir is a PhD candidate at UT Austin’s Department of Geography and the Environment. Her research interests include how global markets affect land use and the impact of land use change and deforestation on ecosystem services in forested landscapes. Currently, her doctoral research focuses on how the expansion of avocado production in Mexico impacts the forests and communities in Michoacán.
Sisimac Duchicela
Sisimac Duchicela is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. During the past ten years, her work has focused on the ecology, plant taxonomy and conservation of high mountain ecosystems, specifically of Andean forests, páramos, and punas (tropical alpine ecosystems). Throughout this time, she has worked on understanding the potential effects of climate change on high-elevation vegetation and the implications this will have on the ecosystem as a whole. Currently, her research focuses on viewing changes on the Andean landscape holistically where social, economic, and environmental factors are taken into account, viewing these factors through the lens of ecological restoration.
Sara Eshleman
Sara Eshleman is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and the Environment. Her research focuses on the long-lasting impacts of humans on environments; currently, she’s examining the lasting impact of the ancient Maya in Belize. She is particularly interested in how forest composition and structure vary with past human presence and activities. Towards these ends, she uses airborne lidar imagery and directed fieldwork that assesses trees, soils, water, and microclimates. She conducts research in the Soils and Geoarchaeology Lab in the Department of Geography.
Siri Knudsen
Siri Knudsen is a Master’s student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at UT Austin. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and International Affairs from The George Washington University. Her research interests include human-environment interactions and sustainable development in the Central America and Southern Mexico region. She is particularly interested in focusing on alternative methods of development and looking into the roles of grassroots initiatives and NGO projects within this context.
Alex Marden
Alex Marden is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. His research focuses on the interactions among fire, ecosystems, and humans and how field data paired with remote sensing can help understand these interactions. Currently, his research focuses on contemporary pyrogeography in Botswana.
Sewon Ohr
Sewon Ohr is a PhD student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. He has focused on community ecology in terms of understanding the structure of vegetation communities and the relationship with environmental factors. Currently, his research interest is linking the reciprocal relationship between vegetation communities and the environment with the impact of disturbances. Currently, he focuses on the impact of hurricanes and the following landslide on the ecosystem in the Caribbean regions.
Bailey Ohlson
Bailey Ohlson is a Master’s student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Geology and Minor in Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) from Texas A&M University in College Station, TX in 2021. She has experience in geochronology, structural geology, geospatial analysis, and remote sensing. She is interested in fluvial geomorphology, particularly sedimentation rates and watershed analysis, to understand how changes in sediment yield impact water resources.
Molly H. Polk
Molly H. Polk, PhD is the Associate Director of Sustainability Studies and a Lecturer in the Department of Geography and The Environment at the University of Texas at Austin. Molly specializes in land change science in the tropical mountains of Latin America. Related themes of research and teaching include climate change, social-ecological system theory, landscape ecology, land change science, and sustainability.
Carlos Ramos-Scharrón
Carlos Ramos-Scharrón joined the faculty of LLILAS and the Department of Geography and the Environment in 2013. His areas of research include watershed sciences and applied hydrology and geomorphology, with an emphasis on the Insular Caribbean and Latin America. His work has a strong environmental component, addressing how human modification of landscapes for the purposes of urbanization, agricultural production, or recreation affects their hydrology, resulting in accelerated soil erosion, degraded water quality, and impoverished habitats such as coral reefs.
Francis Russell
Francis Russell is a Master’s student in the Department of Geography and the Environment at UT Austin. They have a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Science from Colorado College in Colorado Springs and experience with remote sensing and geospatial analysis. They are particularly interested in human-environment relationships and political ecology in Latin America, particularly focused on ecological resistance to climate change and methods of empowering rural and marginalized communities.
Pedro Vasconcelos
Pedro Vasconcelos is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography and Environment at UT Austin. He has a master’s degree in Forestry Sciences from the University of Brasilia. He is interested in examining and evaluating the intricate links between human activities and biodiverse landscapes, specifically addressing land use change, agricultural frontier expansion, and deforestation. Pedro employs remote sensing, GIS, and statistical techniques to analyze the dynamic processes of land transformation, with a specific emphasis on Brazil’s Amazon and Cerrado biomes.
Kenneth Young
Kenneth Young does policy-relevant research that informs biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. He does this by linking biogeography and landscape ecology to questions of ecosystem dynamics and aspects of global environmental and socioeconomic change. He has worked in natural and utilized landscapes in tropical areas and aspires to understand the global tropics, especially as affected by humans. He studies protected areas in relation to conservation biology, to climate change, and to land use. Most recently he has been splitting his research efforts between Andean landscapes and the tropical forests and floodplains of the western Amazon. He is professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment; he teaches classes such as Anthropocene, Biogeography, Climate Change, Landscape Ecology, and Seminar in Biodiversity Conservation.
Anaïs Zimmer
Anaïs Zimmer is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Geography and the Environment. Her research interests lie in the processes and implications of global change within mountain environments, with a specific focus on proglacial landscapes. Her dissertation project studies how physical, ecological, and social processes interact to drive ecosystem changes in alpine proglacial landscapes and how these inform the best adaptation strategies. She works in the High Peruvian Andes and Swiss and French Alps.