My research is focused on the use of remote sensing to understand the links between climate and vegetation change.
I am currently working as a Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Woods Hole Research Center studying how machine learning can be used to understand and predict boreal forest biomass change.
I spent 2019 working as a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Leciester on the FIre REcovery and Forest Loss in Eastern Siberia (FIREFLIES) projecct.
In 2019 I completed my PhD at the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre under Prof. Jason Evans and Dr. Yi Liu. My thesis focused on separating land degradation, climate variability and climate change in dryland regions using remote sensing. My particular interest is on improving the methods used to separate land degradation from climate induced vegetation variability.
As part of this I developed the Time Series Segmented RESidual TRENDs (TSS-RESTREND) method (Burrell et al., 2017). I published this method as an R-package which I continue to develop. The goal of this work is to create an open access software tool that can be applied to large datasets to produce reliable and reproducible estimates of land degradation.
in 2012 I completed my Bachelor of Environmental Science (Honours, Class 1) at the University of Wollongong. My honors thesis was on Mapping Changes in Estuarine Vegetation Communities on the NSW South Coast using Remote Sensing. The project was undertaken in conjuction with the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (Wollongong) and was superviosed by Prof. Colin Woodroffe.