Center for Ecosystem Measurement, Monitoring and Modeling

EM³: The Center for Ecosystem Measurement, Monitoring and Modeling

The Center for Ecosystem Measurement, Monitoring and Modeling (EM³) is a collaboration of principle investigators, post-docs and graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The mission of EM³ is to understand the dynamics of society, nature and the environment by quantifying and predicting temporal and spatial trends. Research is conducted in three primary areas: effects of climate change on ecosystem, effects of society on ecosystem and ecosystem value.

Projects span a variety of research topics, including habitat suitability, resource planning, agriculture, carbon flux, forest valuation and land use change. EM³ uses remote sensing, like satellite imagery and aerial photography, to efficiently and effectively achieve research objectives. Additionally, EM³ employs state-of-the-art computer technology to extract maximum information for measurement and modeling of ecosystem functions.

Please contact us for more information about existing projects or possible new partnerships.

EM³ Partnerships (Opens in a New Window)

Many organizations have partnered with EM³ to support ecosystem measurement, monitoring and modeling. Partnerships originate from specific research projects, investigations, collaborations and philanthropy. Please contact us if you are interested in forming a partnership with EM³ in an of these respects. Our partners include:

California Air Resources Board
California Department of Water Resources
National Air and Space Administration
Google
NVIDIA
National Institutes of Health
National Park Service
National Sciences and Engineering Research Council
National Science Foundation
Berkeley Image Seg
United States Department of Agriculture
Forest Service
United States Geological Survey
The University of Michigan
United States Postal Service
Yellowstone Ecological Research Center
The Mickey Leland National Urban Air Toxics Research Center
East Bay Regional Parks
International Crane Foundation
The Nature Conservancy

Selected Papers (Opens in a New Window)

Whenever possible, EM³ shares its knowledge on theoretical and applied topics through publication in scholarly journals. EM³ regularly publishes in several journals, including the International Journal of Remote Sensing, Journal of Ecology, Journal of Forestry, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing and Remote Sensing of the Environment. A minor selection of articles are available via this Web site:

A Comparison of Distance-Dependent Competition Measures for Height and Basal Area Growth of Individual Conifer Trees

Evaluation of Competition Indices in Individual Tree Growth Models

Comparison of IKONOS and QuickBird images for mapping mangrove species on the Caribbean coast of Panama

Modeling conifer tree crown radius and estimating canopy cover

3D Model-Based Tree Measurement from High-Resolution Aerial Imagery

Relevance and Redundacy in Fuzzy Classification Systems

Extraction of Red Edge Optical Parameters From Hyperion Data for Estimation of Forest Leaf Area Index

Individual tree-crown delineation and treetop detection in high-spatial-resolution aerial imagery

Object-based detailed vegetation classification with airborne high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery

Effects of wind velocity and slope on flame properties

A comparison of spatial feature extraction algorithms for land-use classification with SPOT HRV data

Site Map

About EM³	Some information about EM³.
People Peng Gong Greg Biging Kyle Holland Ashley Holt Iryna Dronova Yanlei Chen Yu-Ting Huang Liheng Zhong Josh Harmsen Jun Hak Lee Luis Maria Ibanez de Garayo John Dingman	The professors, post-docs and graduate students of EM³.
Projects No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available No projects are currently available	A selection of current and past research projects being conducted at EM³.
Partners California Air Resources Board California Department of Water Resources National Air and Space Administration Google NVIDIA National Institutes of Health National Park Service National Sciences and Engineering Research Council National Science Foundation Berkeley Image Seg United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service United States Geological Survey The University of Michigan United States Postal Service Yellowstone Ecological Research Center The Mickey Leland National Urban Air Toxics Research Center East Bay Regional Parks International Crane Foundation The Nature Conservancy	The organizations that have partnered with EM³ (links open new in windows).
Papers A Comparison of Distance-Dependent Competition Measures for Height and Basal Area Growth of Individual Conifer Trees Evaluation of Competition Indices in Individual Tree Growth Models Comparison of IKONOS and QuickBird images for mapping mangrove species on the Caribbean coast of Panama Modeling conifer tree crown radius and estimating canopy cover 3D Model-Based Tree Measurement from High-Resolution Aerial Imagery Relevance and Redundacy in Fuzzy Classification Systems Extraction of Red Edge Optical Parameters From Hyperion Data for Estimation of Forest Leaf Area Index Individual tree-crown delineation and treetop detection in high-spatial-resolution aerial imagery Object-based detailed vegetation classification with airborne high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery Effects of wind velocity and slope on flame properties A comparison of spatial feature extraction algorithms for land-use classification with SPOT HRV data	A sample of papers published by EM³ (links open new in windows).
Updates	Updates on what EM³ is doing.
Terms of use	The terms of using the EM³ web site.

Disclaimer

Welcome to The Center for Ecosystem Measurement, Monitoring and Modeling web site. The information available through this web site is provided as a public service and for educational purposes only. Resources provided are not meant to be exhaustive. The Center for Ecosystem Measurement, Monitoring and Modeling (EM3) cannot be held responsible for any circumstances resulting from its use, unavailability, or possible inaccuracy. References or links to any specific commercial product, process, service, manufacturer, company, organization or web site do not constitute endorsement or recommendation by EM3, and the points of view or opinions expressed by listed organizations or web sites do not necessarily represent the official position, policies, or views of EM3.

University of California, Berkeley

The documents created by EM3 and located on this web site may be reproduced and distributed for non-commercial use only, excepting published work, unless otherwise indicated. Copies must retain this copyright and all proprietary notices contained herein. Adaptations must acknowledge the source. This copyright does not apply to documents on this site created by other entities. Such documents may be subject to other copyright restrictions; in such case it is the responsibility of the user to obtain any required permission for use. For more information, please contact the Center by phone at (510) 642-3725.

Peng Gong

Research Interests: Remote sensing, spatial-temporal modeling, environment and health, global environmental change.

BS (1984) and MS (1986) from Nanjing University, China; PhD (1990) from University of Waterloo, Canada. Have worked at York University and taught at University of Calgary. Joined Berkeley since 1994. In the 1990s, he developed urban land use classification algorithms in the 1990s and remote sensing measurement techniques for forest inventory purposes and proposed the field of photo-ecometrics. In 2000s, he developed invasive weed mapping techniques. Since 1995, he has been working on the spatial-temporal modeling of schistosomiasis transmission in western China and that interest has been expanded into malaria, avian influenza and plague in recent years.

www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~gong/

Greg Biging

My interests are in forest growth simulation and using remote sensing technology to monitor forests and trees.

My PhD. Is from the University of Wisconsin in forest biometrics with a minor in statistics; my bachelor’s degree is in mathematics. I teach an undergraduate course in natural resource sampling and a graduate class in spatial data analysis. From 2002-2005 I was the Vice Chair for Teaching for the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management and from 2005-2009 I was the Associate Dean for Forestry for the College of Natural Resources. I am currently on sabbatical and will return to teaching in August 2009.

http://ecnr.berkeley.edu/facPage/dispFP.php?I=565

Kyle Holland

I research how to extract and model forest information from remotely-sensed data to reduce cost and time, specifically at the individual tree level. I primarily work with high-resolution lidar and multi-spectral imagery, typically from aircraft platforms. Corollary to my research are applied methods for generalized statistical object recognition and classification.

http://nature.berkeley.edu/~kholland/

Ashley Holt

Research Interests: Applications of GIS and remote sensing in public health; information extraction; segmentation and object-based image analysis.

Ashley graduated from Stanford University in 2000 with a BS in Symbolic Systems, and a concentration in Medical Informatics. Before returning to graduate school in 2003, Ashley worked for two years as a software engineer and spent a year working with NOAA's Remote Sensing group on harmful algal bloom (HAB) detection and coral reef mapping projects. During graduate school, Ashley has contributed to health studies of noise and air pollution in San Francisco, and of the impact of the Three Gorges Dam on snail populations and schistosomiasis transmission. Her dissertation research, which involves multi-scale analysis of sylvatic plague in the western United States, is a collaborative project with the California Department of Public Health.

http://nature.berkeley.edu/~ashleyh
http://www.localfoodweb.org

Iryna Dronova

My research integrates ecological analysis with remote sensing and geospatial approaches to address the questions of ecosystem and landscape dynamics, response to climate change and address habitat dynamics and conservation of species and ecosystems. Specifically, I am interested in how functional properties of vegetation and canopy structure affect distribution of plant function such as carbon sequestration across landscapes and how this may impact habitat conditions and survival of avian species.

Iryna completed BS in General Ecology in the National University Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Ukraine in 2001. Her BS thesis addressed the drivers of diversity of vegetation communities in one of the steppe regions in Ukraine. She further completed MS in Natural Resources and Environment (2004) and Certificate in Spatial Analysis (2005) at School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. For her MS thesis Iryna investigated variation in aboveground net primary production and canopy properties in northern Michigan forests at the University of Michigan Biological Station and worked as a Graduate Student Research Assistant in SNRE Plant Physiological Ecology Lab. Currently Iryna is a PhD Student at UC Berkeley in the Ecosystem Sciences Division of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.

Yanlei Chen

Currently, my research interests include global scale geographic data analysis, focus on spherical spatial analysis, and application of remote sensing data in ecosystem models. During my graduate study in UC Berkeley, I developed a spatial and temporal analysis tool which can apply several spatial and temporal analyses in spherical coordinates on a global scale.

Ph.D. Student Environmental, Science, Policy and Management 2008-present University of California, Berkeley

B.S. Biomedical Engineering 2004-2008 Tsinghua University, China

Yu-Ting Huang

Yu-Ting is interested in the dynamic systems analysis and construction of resources flows and quantity, as well as their effects and implications, and the applications to resources management and planning. Her current research primarily focuses on studying water resources using spatially distributed hydrological modeling, remote sensing and GIS.

Yu-Ting has a B.S. in Civil Engineering with a minor in Law, and a M.S. in Environmental Planning and Management from National Taiwan University. She undertook a series of Taiwan government-funded research projects while she studied in Taiwan. Her thesis research applied the concept of material flow analysis and industrial ecology to establish parts of the sands and gravels database from waste concrete in Taiwan. Prior to her Ph.D. study at UC Berkeley, she worked on biological hydrogen production research from biomass and completed a M.S. in Environmental Engineering at Iowa State University.

Liheng Zhong

Research Interests: Agricultural water use estimation and hydrological modeling.

Liheng is currently working on crop type mapping in the San Joaquin Valley, CA. Prior to joining EM³, he was a student at Peking University where he earned a B.S. in spatial science and technology.

Josh Harmsen

Josh's research interest is in remote sensing and modeling of natural systems. Specifically he uses hyperspectral imagery to detect and extract biometrics from vegetation, with a primary focus on invasive plant species. To achieve this he has been using segmentation techniques on hyperspectral data and also object based ecological models that focus on ecosystem function. In addition, he is working on improving computational efficiency and feasibility of large data sets and demanding processes like modeling through hardware and software solutions.

Josh graduated from Dartmouth College 2005 with a BA in Environmental Studies with a Discipline in Geospatial Science. He then worked for the Yellowstone Ecological Research Center (YERC) in Bozeman, Montana as a NASA Beyond Hayden Intern. He continued working with YERC as a research scientist on various vegetation mapping and modeling projects from 2006-2008.

Jun Hak Lee

I am interested in remote sensing and GIS related to forest ecosystem modeling.

I have B.S. and M.S. in Forest Resources and Environmental Science at Korea University (Seoul, Korea). Currently, I am Ph.D. Candidate in Ecosystem Science, ESPM, University of California, Berkeley. My research is about 1) Extracting individual tree level forest eco-physical information from airborne LiDAR, 2) Combining aerial photographs and LiDAR for forest ecosystem modeling, 3) Integrating multi-source remotely sensed data for ecosystem process modeling.