Data science for forest ecology and management
The Forest Change Analysis Lab (FOCAL) (website coming soon!) is led by Derek Young, a faculty member of the Graduate Group in Ecology and a Research Ecologist in the Department of Plant Sciences at UC Davis.
We work at the intersection of forest disturbance ecology and data science. We collect and analyze data to inform forest management in an era of climate change, drought, and large high-severity wildfires. We rely as much on large geospatial datasets as on field-based measurements of forests. We work closely with forest managers in an effort to address pressing forest management needs.
Questions that drive our work include:
For mapping forest trees
I am developing an automated workflow to map forest trees over large (> 100 ha) areas using drone imagery. The workflow incorporates:
Following high-severity wildfire
I am building a non-linear spatially-explicit Bayesian model for predicting seed rain (and, subsequently, regeneration) of conifers following high-severity wildfire given a known spatial arrangement of surviving reproductive trees. Data on surviving tree spatial arrangement will be derived from drone imagery. To otbain dispersal data to train the model, I am coordinating intensive field surveys that involve documenting the density of regenerating conifers in a dense grid of plots across several recent severely burned areas.
Following high-severity wildfire
When replanting trees after high-severity wildfire, managers need to decide what trees to plant and where to plant them. These decisions can be difficult given anticipated climate change and limited resources. I am working on several projects to guide reforestation efforts:
The extreme California drought of 2012-2015 triggered extensive tree mortality across large areas of the state. I am analyzing large geospatial and plot-based datasets to understand:
Recent results:
Other current research projects include:
Find my publications on Google Scholar.
Google Scholar links to free PDFs for most of my publications, but if you need a PDF, contact me and I’ll happily send one!