Jenna Keany receives NASA FINESST grant

Jenna Keany, a third year PhD student in Ecological and Environmental Informatics (T3 option) working with Chris Doughty, has been awarded full funding from the competitive NASA-FINESST grant in the Earth Sciences division. Her proposal, Investigating African Forest Elephant Impacts on Forest Structure and Carbon Balance Using Multiscale Lidar Techniques, expands on her collaborative work with the Wildlife Conservation Society and NASA’s Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting Initiative to determine how Central African forest elephants impact canopy structure. Using near‐global lidar data from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) sensor and forest elephant occurrence data, Jenna will establish forest elephant’s impact on vegetation through feeding and movement. Additionally, her research will compare GLAS and GEDI lidar to evaluate large‐scale changes in forest dynamics after heavy elephant poaching incidents over the last 20 years . The grant will also fund Jenna’s attendance to multiple conferences each year and will support her overall development as a future investigator. Congratulations, Jenna!