Advisory Board and Editors Spatial & Geographic Information Science
Timothy O. Randhir
Dr. Timothy O. Randhir is a Full Professor at the Department of Environmental Conservation, University of Massachusetts, USA. Dr. Randhir received a Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1995 and did post-doctoral work at Purdue University before joining the University of Massachusetts as a faculty member. He has a Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Sciences from Annamalai University and a Master's degree in Agricultural Economics from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. Dr. Randhir is a consultant to the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, the American Association of Advancement of Sciences, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and the US Department of Agriculture. In addition, he serves as Editor of three international journals in earth systems, climate change, watershed science, ecological economics, and computational environmental sciences. His publications include a book on Watershed Management, several book chapters, more than 110 refereed articles in top international journals, and several professional conference presentations. His research extends worldwide, including Honduras, Columbia, Peru, Uruguay, Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, El Salvador, eSwatini, Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mongolia, Kirghizstan, Uganda, Turkey, Iran, Russia, China, India, and Indonesia. He is the President of the Southern New England Chapter of the Soil and Water Conservation Society.
Tarek Rashed
ٍSenior Research Professor and Director of Geoinformatics at the Polis Center, IUPUI. Dr Rashed is a Geospatial Information Technologies Research Scientist with over 24 years of experience in GIS and spatial decision making and their applications. His research interests span several areas including geographic information science, remote sensing, smart cities, big data, disaster risk management, mitigation, multicriteria decision making, urban resilience, and planning.
Mauro Rossi
Mauro Rossi is an expert on mapping, modeling and forecasting of landslides, floods and erosion processes in different geo-environmental and anthropic contexts. He has developed (i) new methodologies for statistical and deterministic analysis of the susceptibility and hazard posed by different geo-hydrological phenomena and for the estimation of their impacts, (ii) new statistical approaches to the definition of rainfall thresholds for triggering Landslides, (iii) early warning systems, (iv) approaches to the design optimal models for estimating landslide susceptibility and for the assessment of social risk posed by landslides and floods. He has also developed specific softwares for the landslide susceptibility modelling, for the landslide magnitude modelling and for the joint modeling of landslides and erosion processes in relation to different scenarios of geomorphological, climatic, vegetational and anthropic changes, in order to adequately characterize the hillslopes and the hydrological basins dynamics.
Aniello Russo
Senior Scientist at the NATO STO CMRE in La Spezia (Italy), Assistant Professor (on special leave) at the Polytechnic University of Marche (Italy) in the scientific sector Oceanography and Atmospheric Physics. Main research field concerns physical oceanography and relationships with atmosphere, clima, marine environment and biology. Participated in over 20 oceanographic cruises in the Mediterranean Sea and Polar areas.
Arnold R. Salvacion
Arnold is a Research Fellow at Centre for Crop and Disease Management, Curtin University. He is an environmental scientist with more than 15 years of research experience in agriculture, natural resource, applied climate science, human ecology, quantitative geography, and geographic information system. In 2021, he was awarded as one of the Outstanding Young Scientists by the National Academy of Science and Technology (Philippines) for his contribution to the advancement of human ecological research in the country. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Human Ecology and Sustainability and also serves on the Editorial Board of Spatial Information Research, and SN Social Sciences.
Maria J Santos
Assistant Professor in Environmental Sciences, Utrecht University.
My research combines field methods, GIS, remote sensing, statistical modeling, historical archival research, and conservation biology, history, and planning. I focus on four research areas:
* Assessing interaction and feedback mechanisms of social-ecological systems in space and time
* Identifying global change drivers through conservation histories and relate them to changes and fluxes in species and ecosystems, land use policy, and environmental governance
* Investigating how land use and climate changes affect spatial and temporal dynamics of species and habitat at multiple scales
* Use of state of the art remote sensing, GIS and quantitative analysis to answer interdisciplinary research questions
Richard Schuster
I am the Director of Spatial Planning and Innovation at the Nature Conservancy of Canada and an Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University, studying the ecological impacts of human activities and develop novel techniques to prioritize conservation areas and strategies. I have a theoretical and applied background in quantitative ecology and statistics and spatial big data analysis. I develop novel analytical tools for researchers and other practitioners to explore and use in conservation planning and management.
Farzin Shabani
I am an Associate Investigator in palaeo-ecological vegetation modeling for the new ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH). I am also a Research Fellow in environmental modeling and climate change in the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University.
My profile at Macquarie University: https://directory.science.mq.edu.au/users/1600
My profile at Flinders University: https://www.flinders.edu.au/people/farzin.shabani
ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage (CABAH): https://epicaustralia.org.au/
Jacyra Soares
Degree in Meteorology from University of São Paulo (1983), Master in Oceanography (Physical Oceanography) from University of São Paulo (1989) and PhD from University of Southampton, England (1994). In 1995 held postdoctoral activities in the Oceanographic Institute at USP. Experience in Physical Oceanography and Meteorology, with emphasis on numerical modelling and in situ observations of air-sea interaction (oceanic and atmospheric turbulence) and micrometeorology (Planetary boundary layer, turbulence, radiation and energy balances, turbulent fluxes). Study of the atmosphere and ocean in Equatorial and Antarctic regions.
Stefan Steiniger
Stefan Steiniger is a Professor at the School of Construction and Transport Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, Chile, and in charge of the spatial data infrastructure/observatory of the Chilean Centre for Urban Sustainable Development (CEDEUS). With a background in automated geo-visualization, spatial data analysis, geodesy and geo-information technologies in general he has a wide interest in developing free & open source GIS tools and their applications in diverse fields including cartography, wildlife ecology, landscape ecology, urban planning, and transportation. His latest research focuses on (i) developing web platforms for urban accessibility analysis - such as CiudadCaminable.com and Walkability.App, (ii) processes and tools for the calculation (Python and R), visualisation (Dashboards) and management of sustainable city indicators and their data, as well as (iii) the development of scenario modelling tools for urban planning.
Armando Sunny
Dr. Armando Sunny is a Researcher and Professor within the Applied Biological Sciences Research Center, Science Faculty at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico (UAEM).
He is interested to know how certain features of the landscape affect the genetic diversity and structure of species in anthropized environments, for this he performs analysis of landscape genetics, population genetics, niche modeling, SIG, landscape connectivity and global change analysis, especially in amphibians and reptiles.
Tal Svoray
My contribution to the field of Ecology as a geographer includes the development of a new spatially and temporally explicit modeling approach. This approach allows to better understand the impact of the hydrological cycle on ecosystem productivity and soil erosion. The novelty in this approach lies in the ability to simulate field (rather than synthetic) conditions of spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics using GIS. This allows confronting advanced mathematical models with ecosystem complexity by using experiments, observations and measurements. The research group I established introduced the concept of coupling numeric simulation using Richard's equations with real conditions of semiarid hillslopes using spatial databases. This way we were able to compute water budgets in the heterogeneous stony soils of dry environments. This modelling approach was also used to tackle current practical questions such as the effect of climate change on ecosystem productivity.
The broad view on ecohydrological processes helped me to get invited as Guest Editor to edit two special issues in two leading journals: Water Resources Research (WRR) and Geomorphology, and to author two review papers (published in Int. J. of Remote Sensing and in Movement Ecology). My experience allowed me also to initiate and lead an international workshop on Confronting Mathematical Models with Ecosystem Complexity, hosting distinguished scientists from all over the world.