Pacific Northwest Research Station

Dr. Dale Blahna
Research Social Scientist, Team Leader
USDA Forest Service

Dr. Blahna is a research social scientist and team leader with the Forest Service, Pacific Northwest (PNW)Research Station, based in Seattle. He has been with the agency since 2007, and prior to that was at Utah State University for 16 years, working on human dimensions projects related to outdoor recreation, public involvement, and community social impact assessment. While Blahna's work has mostly been in wildland settings, he now heads up a team to bring the Pacific Northwest Research Station's research into urban and urbanizing areas. He is co-leading the Green Cities Research Alliance; his work will focus on studies of environmental stewardship organizations, their goals and objectives, locations and activities of stewardship, motivations of participants, and implications for environmental sustainability and social well-being. He also oversees studies on the economics of urban forestry, and the role of partnerships in Forest Service management.

Dr. Kathleen Wolf
Research Social Scientist, Program Director
USDA Forest Service, University of Washington

Dr. Wolf is a Research Social Scientist at the College of the Environment, University of Washington, and does research in environmental psychology. She has a joint appointment with the U.S. Forest Service PNW Research Station to help develop a program on Urban Natural Resources Stewardship. She has worked professionally as both a landscape architect and as an environmental planner. Since receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Dr. Wolf has done research to better understand the human dimensions of urban forestry and urban ecosystems. Wolf's professional mission is to discover, understand, and communicate human behavior and benefits, as people experience nature in urban settings. Moreover, she is interested in how scientific information can be integrated into local government policy and planning. She is a member of the Environmental Design Research Association, the International Society of Arboriculture, a technical advisor on human well-being to the Sustainable Sites Initiative, a member of the Transportation Research Board national committee on Landscape and Environment, and the Washington State Community Forestry Council. Dr. Wolf has presented her research throughout the United States, in Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan. research web site

Weston Brinkley
Research and Developmnet Program Manager
Forterra

Weston Brinkley manages research and development with Forterra's Stewardship Department. Brinkley's research is centered on civic environmental stewardship and the exploration of its structure, benefits, and catalysts in urban areas, with a focus on understanding the volunteer steward experience. Goals include developing a stronger perception of the role of citizens and volunteers in environmental restoration and the importance of natural environment interaction in community building. Brinkley's other research efforts include the economics of citizen-based environmental restoration, the role of citizen participation in urban environmental stewardship and community planning, deriving a practitioner-based definition of urban environmental stewardship, and conducting a census of stewardship organizations in the Seattle area. Weston holds a Master's in Urban Planning with the University of Washington and his experience includes positions with the U.S. Forest Service, PNW Research Station, the city of Seattle, King County, and the state of Oregon.

Dr. Monika Moskal
Associate Professor, University of Washington
Director, Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Laboratory

Dr. L. Monika Moskal is an Assistant Professor of Remote Sensing at the University of Washington (UW), College of the Environment, School of Forest Resources (SFR), where she directs the Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Laboratory (RSGAL) founded by her in 2003. She is one of the core faculty in the UW Precision Forestry Cooperative and is affiliated with the UW BioEnergy IGERT. She is also the Faculty Advisor for the UW-Geospatial Technology Club and Puget Sound American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) Student Chapter, the President of the ASPRS Puget Sound Region and past President (2005 and 2006) of ASPRS - Central Region (Vice-President 2004). Dr. Moskal’s and her RSGAL’s research goal is to understand multiscale and multidimensional dynamics of landscape change through the application of remote sensing, Geographic Information System and geospatial tools. The lab develops tools necessary to analyze hyper-resolution remotely sensed data by exploiting spatial, temporal, and spectral capabilities of the data. RSGAL work focuses on the application of high spatial resolution remote sensing (LiDAR, imagery) to investigate vegetation structure, specifically the utilization of leaf area index in heterogeneous canopies. Other RSGAL research themes involve multiresolution and multisensor data fusion, spatiotemporal object-based image analysis and geovisualization techniques to communicate research results. Our research has been applied to the following themes: ecosystem services and function, bioenergy/biomass, forest inventories, forest health, change analysis, biodiversity, habitat mapping, spatiotemporal wetland assessment, geostatistical analysis of prairie vegetation communities, urban growth, and forest fragmentation. more info

Dr. Lee Cerveny
Research Social Scientist
USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station

Lee Cerveny is an anthorpologist who has conducted ethnographic research throughout the United States, particularly Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and the Southwest. Her early research explored tourism and its effects on human-resource interactions in coastal communities. More recently, her work focuses on: (a) partnerships, planning, and decisionmaking in federal land management agencies; (b) developing a human ecology mapping approach to understand people's connections with public lands and natural resources; (c) understanding values, attitudes, and practices of residents in exurban (peri-urban) communities. Dr. Cerveny’s latest work explores the role of natural amenities and public lands in resident decisions to move to exurban communities of the Puget Sound.

Meghan Halabisky
GIS Research Technician
University of Washington

Meghan Halabisky is a Ph.D. student in the Remote Sensing and Geospatial Analysis Lab at the School of Forest Resources at the University of Washington where she is advised by Dr. L. Monika Moskal. She is focused on bridging the gap between policy, management, and science through the development of affordable environmental monitoring tools for natural resource managers and policymakers. Her research interests include development of remote sensing techniques for spatiotemporal analysis of ecosystem dynamics, landscape change, and climate change impacts. She recently received concurrent degrees (Master of Science/Master of Public Affairs) from the School of Forest Resources and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs. She has experience using geospatial technologies since 2000 in both the private and public sectors.

Lisa Ciecko
Green Cities Project Manager
Forterra

Lisa Ciecko is the Forest Assessment Project Manager at Forterra. Her work includes quantifying urban forest structure and associated ecosystem service values, as well as developing and improving restoration and stewardship tools. She received her Master’s of Science from the University of Washington’s Center for Urban Horticulture, where she worked closely with the Green Seattle Partnership to research methods to improve conifer seedling survival at restoration sites. Prior to graduate school, Ciecko worked on native plant conservation efforts nationally as a program manager and a crew leader with the Student Conservation Association.

Dr. Melissa R. Poe
Senior Research Associate, Environmental Anthropologist
Institute for Culture and Ecology

Dr. Poe is a Seattle-based senior research associate with the Institute for Culture and Ecology, an interdisciplinary nonprofit applied research organization that seeks sustainable solutions to environmental problems based on an understanding of the surrounding social complexities. Poe received her Ph.D. in environmental anthropology from the University of Washington and conducts community-based research on the sociocultural and institutional aspects of natural resources and environmental governance in the Pacific Northwest and Mexico. She is passionate about the importance of plants and mushrooms for people’s livelihoods and cultural practices.

David Kimmett
Program/Project Manager
Natural Resource Lands, King County Parks

David has worked for King County Parks for over 25 years.  For the past 5 years he has been a natural resources program manager focusing on forest stewardship and trails planning.  He spent 10 years in the Snoqualmie Valley managing natural areas and parks open space lands, and implementing habitat restoration and trail construction projects.  Born and raised in New Jersey, David has a Bachelor’s of Science degree in forest management from the University of Vermont.  He spent many years as a forestry technician with the U.S. Forest Service and was a self-employed forester as well.  David is a bit of a soccer fan and every four years he makes the pilgrimage to the world cup.