Personal Statement & Resume Coursework Research Projects Web Portfolio Photos Resources RS & GIS Data Trail Maps & Reports Climbing Topos PCI Support ESPM C12 Office: 222 Mulford Hall Mailing address: Ecosystem Sciences 140A Mulford Hall Berkeley, CA 94720 About this site	Research Projects Noise and air pollution modeling in San Francisco The San Francisco Department of Public Health is concerned that new zoning and construction will increase noise pollution and impact a large number of people in the city. Although car counts have been taken throughout the city (1995 – 2004), these data represent less than 20% of the streets in San Francisco. In this project, a Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to represent streets of different sizes and the distribution of known noise point sources in San Francisco. From these layers, contour maps were created to identify different noise levels within the city. To improve the descriptive ability of this analysis by extrapolating information from areas of known vehicle counts to areas where no traffic levels have been measured, a technique was needed to assess vehicle distribution throughout the city. To do this, an object-oriented classification method was developed to extract vehicle shapes from high-resolution aerial photography (orthophotos). By deriving vehicle counts from these orthophotos, we were able to define the traffic type distribution (for example, cars versus trucks), which is an important factor in both noise and air quality models. Modeling the spatial dynamics of plague epizootics in California The plague bacillus (Yersinia pestis) is present in distinct foci in 49 of California’s 58 counties, and epizootic outbreaks linked with climate and land-cover change could pose an increased risk for transmission of the disease to humans. The links between landscape conditions and enzootic/epizootic plague dynamics (including the spatial distribution of vectors and wild rodent hosts) are not well characterized; in addition, existing mathematical models of plague focus primarily on human-to-human and domestic rat transmission. To create a risk model which identifies potential epizootic outbreaks, detailed plague surveillance data from the California Department of Health Services will be compiled into a GIS database to represent information gathered from the active surveillance of rodent, flea, and carnivore populations. Using this database and remotely sensed data (MODIS Land Surface Temperature and NDVI data products), I am building a spatial metapopulation model to inform the study of relationships between climate, land-cover change, and epizootic plague cycles in California.