Sarah E. Gergel, Professor
Under a patch of Cardamom in Kerala, India
Current Interests
Our team works to understand the impact of landscape pattern and land cover change on ecosystem services using remote sensing, aerial photography, GIS, as well as participatory mapping and household surveys. Our study landscapes span a diverse range of ecosystem types, from forests to rivers to grasslands and even coral reefs. My students have worked (or are currently working) in Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Panama, Philippines, Tajikistan, as well as more regionally in landscapes throughout British Columbia and Washington.
Some of our current projects include:
Working with the Wildlife Institute of India to examine how ecosystem services, poverty, and livelihoods and are impacted by the configuration of forests within agricultural mosaics.
In collaboration with CIFOR and CIMMYT supported by SESYNC, exploring the role of forests in supporting human nutrition in a comparative project spanning eight countries throughout SE Asia and Africa combining remote sensing and household surveys.
In collaboration with Penn State and Massai Mara University, we are examining how remote sensing can be used to track clean water supplies along with detect forest contributions to nutrition in Kenya as part of an NSF-HEGS project.
A longstanding research emphasis of mine is examining land cover impacts on water quality (spanning streams, rivers, and riparian zones), and we have recently expanded into urban streams and groundwater contamination. My current NSERC Discovery Grant research examines interactions between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystem services in Vancouver, Canada.
These diverse projects on several continents yield exciting new insights on the value of using complementary approaches to science.
