About the research team

William Anderegg

Assistant Professor,

Biology Department

Focus: Ecology, climate change, droughts, forests

Bill oversees the ecological data collection and ecosystem modeling components of the project. The goal of the ecosystem modeling is to simulate the impacts of climate change and firewood harvesting on woodland biomass in the 21st century.

Mickey Campbell

Assistant Professor of Geosciences,

Fort Lewis College

Focus: : GIS, remote sensing, lidar, vegetation mapping, wildland firefighter safety

 Mickey uses geospatial technology for a variety of applications, with a particular emphasis on the linkage between field and lidar remote sensing data for mapping woodland biomass.

Shaniah Chee

Undergraduate Research Assistant

Anthropology Department

Focus: Traditional lifeways, maintaining cultural traditions, community sustainability, traditional ecological knowledge

Shaniah assists with ethnographic and ecological data collection. She also represents the University of Utah as Miss American Indian Woman Scholar 2019-2020 to spread awareness of higher education to Native youth.

Brian Codding

Associate Professor,

Anthropology Department

Focus: Behavioral ecology, human ecology, human-environment interactions, land use practices

Brian coordinates the various elements of the project and oversees ethnographic data collection. His research combines approaches from ecology and ethnography to explain variation in present and past human behavior, focusing on the dynamic interactions between individual decisions and local environmental contexts.

Philip Dennison

Professor,

Geography Department

Focus: Remote sensing of vegetation, including vegetation response to disturbances like drought and fire

Using lidar data collected over the study area, Phil leads the modeling of tree biomass available for firewood harvesting. Multispectral remotely sensed data will be used to scale estimated biomass to a larger area.

Shane MacFarlan

Assistant Professor,

Anthropology Department

Focus: Culture, cooperation, conflict, natural resource management

Shane examines how Navajo culture and social organization affects cooperation and the use of natural resources.

Kate Magargal

Postdoctoral Research Associate,

Anthropology Department

Focus: Ethnography, archaeology, Indigenous land management, paleoecology, ethnoarchaeology, behavioral ecology, ecological disturbance, anthropogenic fire

Kate leads the collection of ethnographic data by working with study participants.

Cortenay Strong

Associate Professor,

Atmospheric Sciences

Focus: Climate dynamics, climate change, atmosphere-cryosphere interaction, downscaling

Court leads the evaluation of climate change for the Navajo Nation region, developing high resolution climate data using the Weather Research & Forecasting (WRF) regional climate model.