People

Erin Hestir is an associate professor in environmental systems at the University of California, Merced, where she also serves as associate director of CITRIS at UC Merced. Her research focuses on aquatic ecosystems under threat from competing pressures to meet societal needs for water and food security while sustaining biodiversity and other ecosystem services such as water quality. She has expertise in geospatial analytics, hyperspectral and satellite remote sensing, and sensor networks for inland and coastal waters and wetlands. Hestir also has expertise in the application of remote sensing for water resources and ecosystem management, and in facilitating the adoption of remote sensing for environmental reporting.

Erin Hestir is also an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland in Australia. She is a member of the International Ocean Color Coordinating Group working group on coastal and inland water quality, and is the North American coordinator for the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Freshwater Biodiversity Observation Network.

Hestir earned her bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, and her Ph.D. from UC Davis. She held a postdoctoral fellowship in Environmental Earth Observation at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Australia, where she led a research program to improve systematic national monitoring of water quality and aquatic ecosystems using Earth observations. Prior to joining UC Merced, Hestir was an assistant professor and Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Fellow at North Carolina State University.