Environmental Remote Sensing and Insight to
Large-scale Ecological Dynamics
James R. Kellner, Assistant Professor of Geographical Sciences,
University of Maryland, College Park
Monday, November 12, 2012 at Noon
Barus and Holley 190
Biography: Dr. Kellner combines environmental remote sensing with field
studies, quantitative methods, and modeling to address questions in basic and applied tropical
forest ecology from ecological and evolutionary perspectives. Kellner is leading efforts to
understand the role of natural disturbance in mediating the carbon balance of tropical forests.
He is also directing a collaborative team to determine whether foliar chemistry in tropical
rainforest landscapes is an expression of local environmental conditions or genetic adaptation.
Kellner works with a group of researchers to understand the factors responsible for the success
or failure of biological invasions in the Hawaiian Islands, and he aims to use this information
to inform conservation and management of threatened and endangered species. Kellner
has served on NASA’s terrestrial-ecology airborne-science steering committee since 2011.
He received his PhD from the University of Georgia in 2008, and completed a postdoctoral
fellowship in the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science. He has
been on the faculty at the University of Maryland, College Park, since 2011.