Lecture

Speakers: Dr. Kathryn Burford and Dr. Youngjae Won, Postdoctoral Research Scholars, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, NC State University

Hosted by: Dr. Aaron Hipp, Professor and CGA Fellow for Social and Behavioral Science Applications, Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management, NC State University

Summary: In this forum presentation, Katie and Youngjae will discuss their ongoing work into improving geospatial measures of park quantity and quality, and the equity implications.

NOTE this event is co-organized by NC State’s Dept. of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management as part of their spring Postdoc Seminar Series.

Katie Burford is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. She is based in Brooklyn, New York, where she also holds a position as Postdoctoral Research Scientist in the Department of Epidemiology Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Katie’s research is motivated by her long-standing commitment to prevent chronic diseases that are related to physical inactivity. In pursuit of this mission, her research agenda has broadly focused on how urban policy and design impact physical activity and injury outcomes related to active transportation (walking and bicycling).

Youngjae Won is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. He is a computational urban policy researcher with strong expertise in data analytics. His research uses large scale human mobility data, advanced geospatial analysis, and econometric methods to examine access to urban green spaces, patterns of use and visitation, and associated social and environmental benefits. Through this work, Youngjae bridges physical infrastructure and human behavior to understand how access translates into use and broader societal benefits.

Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt, Associate Professor and CGA Faculty Fellow, Department of Applied Ecology, NC State University

Introduction by: Dr. Georgina Sanchez, CGA’s Director of Research Engagement

Summary: Animal movement is central to ecology, determining individuals’ access to resources and mates while mediating exposure to threats. Urban landscape structure profoundly alters animal movements. Tracking data can point to potential solutions, but some species, such as most bee pollinators, are still too small to track. In this forum talk, Dr. Youngsteadt presents ongoing work to combine small-scale local bee movement assays with landscape-scale, agent-based modeling to gain a clearer picture of how cities may distort bee foraging patterns, potentially altering their access to resources and their ability to facilitate plant mating.

About the speaker: Elsa Youngsteadt is an associate professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at NC State University. The Youngsteadt Lab investigates the effects of urbanization and climate change on insects, including bees, ants, and butterflies. Youngsteadt also manages a native-bee Extension and outreach program, and developed outreach materials that are used statewide, including guides to bee identification and nesting habitat for North Carolina. After completing her Ph.D. in Entomology at NC State, she worked as a science writer and editor for American Scientist magazine, then returned to research in ecosystems throughout the Americas, from the Carolina sandhills to the Peruvian Amazon. Elsa grew up in Missouri and spent a few years in Wisconsin before settling in North Carolina, where her favorite bee is the carpenter bee and her favorite ecosystem is the longleaf pine savanna.

Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Christa Brelsford, Research Scientist, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Hosted by: Dr. Mollie Gaines, Postdoctoral Research Scholar, FER

Summary: How do we measure connectivity in urban environments? How much heterogeneity in urban environments is to be expected? To what extent is the built environment shaped by socioeconomic processes, and vice versa? In this talk, Dr. Brelsford will present research exploring the causes, consequences, and determinants of the urban built environment and urban heterogeneity. She will describe a handful of methods useful for quantifying urban heterogeneity, present an example of a multi-objective optimization framework for describing risk along hydrologic, economic, and social dimensions, and then demonstrate an approach for quantifying trade-offs between different objectives when designing observation networks of the system.

About the speaker: Christa Brelsford is a Research Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Previously, she was the Liane Russell Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. She obtained her Ph.D. from the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University in 2014 for research on the determinants of residential water demand. Brelsford’s core research focus is on developing empirical methods to understand interactions between human and physical systems, especially in urban contexts.

Lectures

Hosted by: Rachel Kasten, CGA’s Student Services Specialist

Speakers:

> Eli Horner — Quantifying and Partitioning Uncertainty through Space and Time in Ecological Forecasts using the Sobol Method; co-advised by Dr. Chris Jones and Dr. Ross Meentemeyer

Summary: Whenever we make predictions about the future, we need to consider the uncertainty in those predictions. The more we know about where predictive uncertainty is high and about what uncertainty sources contribute most to that uncertainty, the better we can prioritize model development and data collection to make our models better. My work and presentation focuses on quantifying the uncertainty through both space and time for predictions of the spread of sudden oak death in Oregon and then partitioning that uncertainty, that is, breaking it down into its parts to tell us how much of our overall uncertainty comes from each uncertainty source, along with how these patterns change over both space and time.

> Gwen Kirschke — Running a Field Campaign: Challenges and Rewards; advised by Dr. Elsa Youngsteadt

Summary: In this presentation, I will describe a field campaign I ran at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in summer 2025. During this campaign, I lead a 6-person field team that collected ground cover, floral abundance, and floral resource information in 480 quadrats across 8 sites, concurrent with flights by the NEON Airborne Observation Platform, which collected high-resolution hyperspectral imagery. I am using these field data to train models predicting floral resource abundances throughout the subalpine valley where we worked. In order to test whether resulting floral resource products improve our ability to predict the ecologically relevant measure of bee productivity, an undergraduate researcher and I measured solitary bee nesting rates at 6 sites in the same domain, and collected traditional, transect-based measures of floral resource availability to use as a comparison. I will also speak generally about the process of planning, funding, and conducting field work, and why I have found it to be a valuable part of my research program, despite the challenges.

> Titilayo Tajudeen — Assessing Coastal Forest Retreat under Current and Future Climate and Sea Level Rise Projections; advised by Dr. Katie Martin

Summary: Coastal forests are increasingly threatened by saturated soils and rising salinity due to sea-level rise, saltwater intrusion, and storm surges. In response to increasing salinization and flooding, healthy coastal forests that rely on freshwater are transforming into landscapes dominated by dead or dying trees, bordered by salt-tolerant shrubs and grasses, eventually becoming marshes or open water. Quantifying the rate and pathways of these landscape changes is essential for understanding how coastal ecosystems deteriorate and for predicting future transformations. The speed and direction of wetland shifts will depend on the rate of saltwater intrusion, sea level rise, and factors such as soil type, landforms, and hydrologic connectivity. Although some studies have documented the conversion of these areas, limited research has examined the lateral and vertical retreat rates of forests, and our understanding of the future progression of forest-to-marsh loss is still limited. To improve our understanding of these impacts, I analyzed long-term trends in forest retreat from remote sensing data to determine how quickly the ecosystem is shifting both inland and vertically and the factors contributing to these losses.

Lecture

Speaker: Dr. Ted Wong, Data Scientist and Research Associate, Urban Analytics, Ross Center for Sustainable Cities, World Resources Institute

Hosted by: John Vogler, Research Scholar, CGA

Summary: World Resources Institute is a large environmental NGO which (among other things) provides geospatial data and analyses to local governments to support sustainable urban planning. This talk will examine how WRI builds and deploys data products supporting city-level planning and decision-making for extreme heat, urban biodiversity, and decarbonization. We will discuss theories of change, user research, project-level business models, strategies for mainstreaming, representation of uncertainty, and of course all the technical considerations behind our data products.

About the speaker: Ted Wong is a data scientist on the Urban Analytics team at WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities. He develops data products, analytical tools, and training resources to support governments and communities in equitable, data-backed planning processes for decarbonization and climate resilience. Ted is an ecologist by training, and before coming to WRI he was a faculty member at Bryn Mawr College and the Community College of Philadelphia. He teaches an occasional GIS class for social policy students at the University of Pennsylvania. Ted has a B.S. and Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, and a Master of Forest Science degree from the Yale School of the Environment.

Symposium

The MGIST Digital Symposium is an opportunity for our graduating professional master’s students to present their Capstone projects to the geospatial community at NC State and beyond. This includes student peers, alumni, faculty and staff from across the university, and our community and industry partners.

Schedule TBD