The Forests We Need, the Forests We Create

Matt received his undergraduate degree in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from the University of Texas at Austin. He then went on to get a Master’s degree at Dartmouth College, where he studied the impact of the invasive shrub glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus) on tree seedling recruitment. After Dartmouth, Matt spent several years working for the Nature Conservancy and as a high school biology teacher, before starting a Ph.D. in the E3B department at Columbia University with Ruth DeFries.  His thesis work focused on land cover change and functional connectivity in the San Juan-La Selva Biological Corridor in northern Costa Rica. Matt then did a postdoc with Doug Morton at the NASA Goddard Biospheric Sciences Lab before starting as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).  His lab’s research at UMBC lies at the intersection of remote sensing, conservation policy, and ecology, with specific focal areas in monitoring agricultural expansion and forest recovery, assessing the effectiveness of conservation and restoration policies, and using remote sensing to assess landscape-scale habitat degradation.  Their work takes them to central America, India, the Bahamas, and the wilds of suburban Maryland