Ross provides strategic direction and oversight for the Center’s programs and initiatives in research and teaching. He works passionately across disciplinary boundaries to develop innovative analytics for scenario-based modeling and visualization of sustainable solutions to complex natural resource challenges. Ross is Professor of Geospatial Analytics in the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program and faculty member in the College of Natural Resources. Prior to joining NC State, Ross was Professor of Geography and Executive Director of the Center for Applied GIScience at UNC Charlotte.  He has been principal investigator of numerous research grants from the National Science Foundation, USDA, RENCI, and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, among others, which have produced innovative decision-making tools ranging from spatial-temporal simulations used to detect the spread of infectious forest diseases to forecasts of alternative futures of urban sustainability over large megaregions. According to Ross, “everything is spatial and location matters in science, society and decision-making processes.”

Roles

• Faculty
• Leadership

Publications

• Tangible geospatial modeling for collaborative solutions to invasive species management (2017)
• Assessing effect of dominant land-cover types and pattern on urban forest biomass estimated using LiDAR metrics (2017)
• Forecasts of urbanization scenarios reveal trade-offs between landscape change and ecosystem services (2017)
• Uncertainties in mapping forest carbon in urban ecosystems (2017)
• Immersive tangible geospatial modeling (2016)
• Tangible landscape: cognitively grasping the flow of water (2016)
• Continental-scale quantification of landscape values using social media data (2016)
• pFUTURES: A parallel framework for cellular automaton based urban growth models (2016)
• Wildfire and forest disease interaction lead to greater loss of soil nutrients and carbon (2016)
• Changing disturbance regimes, ecological memory, and forest resilience (2016)

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