Personnel
Faculty
Professor and Lab Director
Paul Laris is Professor and former Chair of Geography. He has been a faculty member of the Geography Department since 2002. Paul studies and teaches about human-environmental relationships in the geographic tradition. He is keenly interested in the relationships between human use of fire on the landscape and its long-term consequences. He started the Savanna LABO to better understand the tree-grass dynamics in the context of disturbances in Africa, California and beyond. He is the author of dozens of articles with his students. Paul’s research has been funded by NASA, CSULB, National Geographic and the National Science Foundation. He teaches courses on environmental change and field methods and supervises graduate student research.
Lecturer and GIS Lab Manager
Scott is a reformed geologist who admittedly has always had a greater affinity for maps, drones, and GPS equipment than dirt and rocks. After having practiced engineering geology in the private sector for over three decades, he found a home here in Geography in 2015 after earning his MA under the guidance of the Department’s tenured faculty. His areas of expertise include low-altitude remote sensing using small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS), digital image processing, GIS, and the collection of spatially-referenced field data. He is particularly fascinated with the application of geospatial techniques to reconstruct historical landscapes.
Assistant Professor
My research interests broadly focus on how environmental heterogeneity and species interactions shape traits and metacommunity variation. I am especially interested in how trait-based approaches can help us understand novel ecological communities and inform our efforts at restoration and rewilding to restore functional ecological trajectories in the face of environmental uncertainties.
Graduate Research Associate
Ekaterina has deep passion in Remote Sensing and Geographic Information System. She is currently pursuing a Master of Science degree in Geographic Information Science at the California State University Long Beach. Along with working as a Research Assistant with Professor Paul Laris in his Savanna LABO Lab, she works as an Instructional Student Assistant in the Geography department Lab where she provides support to students in the geospatial techniques in Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing and Cartography.
Graduates
Graduate Research Associate
Brendan was a Geography graduate student whose interests include field work in physical and environmental geography, remote sensing and GIScience. His work as a Research Associate for Dr. Paul Laris offered him opportunities to do work which included geo-rectifying years of sUAS imagery, flying drones, collecting vegetation data in the field, and teaching students how to conduct research. He was also a lab technician in the Geography department’s teaching labs where he helped students with remote sensing and GIS lab exercises.
Graduate Research Associate
Mina was a graduate student that received his training in Earth System Science from UC Irvine, where he developed a passion for applying remote sensing and GIS to study landscape and ecosystem changes for conservation efforts. His work included serving as a satellite operator for a private SAR company and participating in the NASA DEVELOP program, where he worked on Earth observation projects ranging from mapping the thermal impacts of ocean warming on coastal fisheries to identifying riparian zones in South Africa. Mina currently serves as a Geospatial Assistant for the National Park Service, where he builds interactive dashboards to help manage invasive species challenges across parklands. Outside of coding in Python, you can often find him experimenting with growing new fruits and veggies in his garden or catching waves at the beach.
Graduate Research Associate
Alex was an ornery graduate student with interests in UAV remote sensing of plants, high resolution image analysis, and Python programming. He was perhaps best known for frequently lingering by our department’s coffee machine. After CSULB, Alex was a graduate teaching assistant and Ph.D. student in the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona, and currently works as a product engineer at Esri.
Graduate Research Associate
Graduate Research Associate
Lilian was a graduate student with interests in fire hazards and human interactions as well as scientific programming. After graduating in 2017 from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Earth Science, Lilian interned for the NASA DEVELOP National Program as a team lead at the National Center for Environmental Information where she studied annual climate variations throughout the Northeast US. After that, Lilian briefly worked as a GIS contractor for Apple Inc. before deciding to return to the academic world as an intern for the Climate Hazards Group at UC Santa Barbara. There she studied precipitation patterns and learned python programming. Lilian is currently a PhD student at Simon Fraser University.
Savanna LABO Field Associates
Affiliation: River Ridge Ranch & Institute
Position: Founder and President
Affiliation: Institut Polytechnique Rural de Katibougou, Mali
Position: Professor and Forester
Affiliation: Universite Felix Houphouet-Boigny a Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Position: Assistant Professor
Affiliation: Institut Polytechnique Rural de Katibougou, Mali
Position: Student
Affiliation: Village of Tabou, Mali
Position: Traditional Forester / Village Leader
