DOUGLAS CHRISTOPHER MORTON

Biospheric Sciences Branch, Code 618

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

Greenbelt, MD 20771

Tel: 301-614-6688

Fax: 301-614-6695

Email:

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Remote sensing of vegetation phenology, fire, forest disturbances, and land cover change;

Characterizing the response of vegetation to disturbances from land use and climate change using ecosystem models; modeling carbon emissions from tropical deforestation and global fire activity; LiDAR remote sensing of vegetation structure; and policy strategies for climate change mitigation.

EDUCATION

2008Ph.D.Geography, University of Maryland, College Park

Changes in Amazon Forest Structure from Land-use Fires: Integrating Satellite Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Modeling. Advisor: Ruth DeFries

2002M.F.S. Forest Ecology, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

1999B.A.Environmental Studies, Chemistry Minor, Dartmouth College

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY

2010-Research Physical Scientist, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD

2010-Adjunct Assistant Professor, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

2009-2010 NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow, NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD

2008-2009Consultant, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA

2008 (Fall) Lecturer, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

2003-2008 Faculty Research Assistant, University of Maryland, College Park, MD

2001-2003Consultant, Woods Hole Research Center, Woods Hole, MA

2001-2002Teaching Fellow, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, New Haven, CT

2000Research Analyst, Industrial Economics, Inc., Cambridge, MA

FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS

2012-2013Co-Investigator: Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on Fires in the United States, (PI G.J. Collatz, NASA-GSFC, part of the NASA contribution to the National Climate Assessment).

2011-2013Co-investigator: Global Carbon Emissions From Fires: Improving Our Understanding of Interactions BetweenLand Use, Fires, and Climate Change, (PI: JT Randerson, UCI, NASA Carbon Cycle Science.

2011-2013Co-Investigator: DART-LiDAR: A Coupled Atmosphere-Vegetation Model for Simulating Full-Waveform and Photon-Counting LiDAR. (PI B. Cook), NASA

Remote Sensing Theory.

2010-2012Co-Investigator: Modeling the Impacts of Major Forest Disturbances on the Earth's Coupled Carbon-Climate System, and the Capacity of Forests to Meet Future Demands forWood, Fuel, and Fiber. (PI George Hurtt). NASA IDS Program.

2009-2011Science Principal Investigator: Biome boundary shifts during the Landsat era. (NASA PI Jeff Masek) NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program (08/2009-12/2011).

2009-2011Principal Investigator: Fire in Amazon forests: carbon emissions and the role of canopy phenology in current andfuture fire risk. NASA Postdoctoral Program (03/2009-03/2011).

2005-2008Co-Investigator: Reducing uncertainties of carbon emissions from land use related fires with MODIS data: Scaling from local to global. (PI Ruth DeFries), NASA Land-cover and Land-use Change Program (01/01/2005-12/31/2008).

2005-2008Principal Investigator: Savannization of a tropical forest frontier: carbon consequences of climate change and fire from a height-structured ecosystem model. NASA Earth System Science Fellowship (09/01/2005-08/31/2008).

1998-1999Raynolds International Expedition Grant and Andrew W. Mellon Grant in support of honors thesis research in Kenya and Uganda, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Fall, 2008Lecturer, Causes, Impacts, and Implications of Global Change (GEOG123), University of Maryland, College Park

2005Instructor, MODIS Data Analysis, XII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Goiânia, Brazil (in Portuguese).

Spring, 2002Teaching Fellow, Geographic Information Systems, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

Fall, 2001Teaching Fellow, Cartographic Modeling, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies

PROFESSIONAL HONORS AND RECOGNITION

2010American Geophysical Union (AGU) Meeting of the Americas, Biogeosciences Section, Outstanding Student Paper Award

2006American Geophysical Union (AGU), Biogeosciences Section, Outstanding Student Paper Award

2005NASA Large Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Research in the Amazon (LBA) Student Paper Award, in Portuguese

1999High Honors, Environmental Studies Thesis, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH

Journal Review

Nature Geoscience,Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Global Change Biology, Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences, Forest Ecology and Management, Ecological Applications,International Journal of Wildland Fire,Conservation Letters,Ecology Letters,Remote Sensing of Environment,Biogeosciences,Ecological Indicators,Global Biogeochemical Cycles,Ecosystems

SCIENTIFIC LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE

2011Co-organizer, SilvaCarbon Expert Workshops on Forest Degradation and Uncertainty Estimates for Emissions Reporting

2011-Technical Team Member, SilvaCarbon

2011Co-organizer and Reviewer, NASA LBA Data Legacy Review Panel

2010Co-Chair, Land Use and Forest Options for Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction, AGU Meeting of the Americas

2009- Reviewer, NASA Terrestrial Ecology Program

2009-Science Advisor, School for Ethics and Global Leadership (SEGL), Washington DC

2008-Member, DIVERSITAS Biome Boundary Shifts (BBS) Working Group

2008Chair, Sustainable Forest Management Session, NASA LBA Conference

2008Co-Chair, Future Directions for Fire Research at NASA, NASA Carbon Cycle and Ecosystems Meeting

2007-2008Reviewer, National Institute for Climate Change Research (NICCR)

2006Co-chair, Rates and Patterns of Land Use Change Session, NASA LBA Science Team Meeting

2005Co-Chair, Observing Land Cover Session, NASA LBA Science Team Meeting

2003-Member, American Geophysical Union

INVITED PRESENTATIONS (2005-)

2011AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco. “What drives the Amazon green-up Phenomenon?”

2011Johns Hopkins University, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences Bromery Lecture. “Forecasting Fire Activity in Amazonia Using Sea Surface Temperatures.”

2011Global Land Reserve Workshop, organized by the Franqui Foundation at the Academia Belgica, Rome. “A Time Series Look at the Land Reserve in Amazonia.”

2011SilvaCarbon Expert Workshop on Forest Degradation, Washington. “Monitoring Forest Degradation from Fire in Amazonia.”

2011REDD+ Training Workshop, organized by the US Forest Service and Instituto Floresta Tropical in Belém, Pará. “Desmatamento e Degradação de Florestas Tropicais: Efeitos no Balanço de Carbono” (in Portuguese).

2011Advancing Land-use Modeling and Analysis for Carbon Cycling Studies at Princeton University. “Land Use Emissions from Fires in Tropical Forests.”

2011Inaugural meeting of the French Foundation for Research on Biodiversity, Paris, France. “Integrating Remote Sensing and Models to Improve Projections of Fire in Amazon Forests.”

2011 International Society of Tropical Foresters at Yale University in New Haven, CT. “Remote Sensing and REDD+: Mapping and Monitoring Tropical Forest Carbon Stocks.”

2010UNFCCC Climate Change Meeting (COP-16) in Cancun, Mexico. “Satellite Monitoring of Agriculture & Land Abandonment in Amazonia.”

2010Bellona Foundation Pavilion at the UNFCCC Climate Change Meeting (COP-16) in Cancun, Mexico. “REDD+ v2.0: LiDAR.”

2010AGU Meeting of the Americas, Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. “Climate Regulation of Fire Activity Along the Cerrado-Amazon Biome Boundary.”

2009United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15), Copenhagen, Denmark. “Modeling Historic Carbon Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.”

2009REDD Carbon Accounting in Amazonia (Contabilidade do Carbono em Projetos de REDD), The Nature Conservancy, Cuiabá, Brazil. “Estimating Baseline Carbon Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation in Mato Grosso” (in Portuguese).

2009Columbia University, E3b Seminar Series, New York, NY. “Fire in Amazon Forests: Causes, Consequences & Opportunities.”

2008AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, CA. “Assessing the Impact of Recurrent Fires on Forests in Southern Amazonia”

2008NASA LBA International Science Conference, Manaus, Brazil. “Modeling changes in Amazon forest structure from repeated exposure to anthropogenic fires.”

2008University of New Hampshire, Sustainability Seminar Series, Durham, NH. “21st Century Challenges and Opportunities for Sustainable Land Use in Amazonia.”

2007NASA 11th LBA-ECO Science Team Meeting, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. “Contribution of Fire to Forest Disturbance in the Upper Xingu Basin.”

2007XIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto. Florianopolis, Brazil. “Secondary forest dynamics and Cerradão loss in Mato Grosso during 2001-2005 from MODIS phenology time series” (in Portuguese).

2006 NASA 10th LBA-ECO Science Team Meeting, Brasilia, Brazil. “2001-2006 Trends in Amazon Forest Conversion Fires.”

2005Society for Conservation Biology, Brasilia, Brazil. “Quantifying Cropland Expansion in Cerrado and Transition Forest Ecosystems with MODIS Satellite Image Time Series.”

2005II Congresso de Estudantes e Bolsistas do Experimento LBA, Manaus, Brazil. “A Nova Dinâmica do Desflorestamento em Mato Grosso: Implicações para os Processos do Ecossistema” (in Portuguese).

2005NASA 9th LBA-ECO Science Team Meeting, São Paulo, Brazil. “Annual pasture and cropland expansion in Mato Grosso from MODIS phenology metrics.”

2005 XII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Goiânia, Brazil. “Validation of MODIS annual deforestation monitoring with CBERS, Landsat, and field data” (in Portuguese).

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

JOURNAL ARTICLES

  1. McManus, K, Morton DC, Masek JF, Wang D, Sexton J, Nagol J, Ropars P, Boudreau S. (submitted). Satellite-based evidence for shrub and grassland expansion in northern Quebec since 1986.
  1. Wang, D, Morton DC, Masek JF, Wu A, Nagol J, Xiong X, Levy R, Vermote E, Wolfe R. (2012). Impact of sensor degradation on the MODIS NDVI time series. Remote Sensing of Environment, 119:55-61.
  1. Macedo M, DeFries RS, Morton DC,Stickler CM, Galford GL, Shimabukuro YE. (2012). Decoupling of deforestation and soy production in the southern Amazon during the late 2000’s. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, doi/10.1073/pnas.1111374109
  1. Morton DC, Sales MH, Souza Jr CM, Griscom B. (2011). Historic emissions from deforestation and degradation in Mato Grosso, Brazil: 1) Source data uncertainties. Carbon Balance and Management, 6:18, doi:10.1186/1750-0680-6-18.
  1. Chen Y, Randerson JT, Morton DC, DeFries RS, Collatz GJ, Kasibhatla PS, Giglio L, Jin Y, Marlier M. (2011). Predicting fire season severity in South America using sea surface temperature anomalies. Science, 334:787-791, 11 November 2011.
  1. Mu M, Randerson JT, van der Werf GR, Giglio L, Kasibhatla PS, Morton DC, Collatz GJ, DeFries RS, Hyer EJ, Prins EM, Griffith DWT, Wunch D, Toon GC, Sherlock V, Wennberg PO. (2011). Daily and hourly variability in global fire emissions and consequences for atmospheric model predictions of carbon monoxide. Journal of

Geophysical Research, 116, D24303, doi:10.1029/2011JD016245.

  1. Morton DC, DeFries RS, Nagol J, Souza Jr. CM, Kasischke ES, Hurtt GC, Dubayah R (2011). Mapping canopy damage from understory fires in Amazon forests using annual time series of Landsat and MODIS data. Remote Sensing of Environment 115(7): 1706-1720.
  1. van der Werf GR, Randerson JT, Giglio L, Collatz GJ, Mu M, Kasibhatla PS, Morton DC, DeFries RS, Jin Y, van Leeuwen TT (2010). Global fire emissions and the contribution of deforestation, savanna, forest, agricultural, and peat fires (1997-2009).Atmos. Chem. Phys., 10, 11707-11735.
  1. Le Page Y, van der Werf GR, Morton DC, Pereira JMC (2010). Modeling fire-driven deforestation potential in Amazonia under current and projected climate conditions. Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences115, G03012, doi:10.1029/2009JG001190.
  1. Chen Y, Randerson JT, van der Werf GR, Morton DC, Kasibhatla PS (2010). Nitrogen deposition in tropical forests from deforestation and savanna fires. Global Change Biology 16(7), 2024-2038, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2009.02156.x.
  1. Giglio L, Randerson JT, van der Werf GR, Kasibhatla PS, Collatz GJ, Morton DC, DeFries RS (2010). Assessing variability and long-term trends in burned area by merging multiple satellite fire products. Biogeosciences 7, 1171-1186.
  1. van der Werf GR, Morton DC, DeFries RS, Olivieir JGJ, Kasibhatla PS, Jackson RB, Collatz GJ, Randerson JT (2009). CO2 emissions from forest loss. Nature Geoscience 2, 737-738.
  1. van der Werf GR, Morton DC, DeFries RS, Gilgio L, Randerson JT, Collatz GJ, Kasibhatla PS (2009). Estimates of deforestation-induced carbon fluxes in the southern Amazon based on satellite data and biogeochemical modeling. Biogeosciences 6, 239-245.
  1. DeFries RS, Morton DC, van der Werf GR, Giglio L, Collatz GJ, Randerson JT, Houghton RA, Kasibhatla PS (2008). Fire-related carbon emissions from multiple land use transitions in southern Amazonia. Geophysical Research Letters 35, doi:10.1029/2008GL035689.
  1. van der Werf GR, Dempewolf J, Trigg SN, Randerson JT, Kasibhatla P, Giglio L, Murdiyarso D, Peters W, Morton DC, Collatz GJ, DeFries RS (2008). Climate regulation of fire emissions and deforestation in equatorial Asia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(51), 20350-20355.
  1. Morton DC, DeFries RS, Randerson JT, Giglio L, Schroeder W, Van der Werf GR (2008). Agricultural intensification increases deforestation fire activity in Amazonia. Global Change Biology 14, 2262-2275.
  1. Giglio L, Csiszar I, Restás Á, Morisette JT, Schroeder W, Morton DC, Justice CO (2008). Active fire detection and characterization with the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER). Remote Sensing of Environment 112, 3055-3063.
  1. Schroeder W, Prins E, Giglio L, Csiszar I, Schmidt C, Morrisette J, Morton DC (2008). Validation of GOES and MODIS active fire detection productions using ASTER and ETM+. Remote Sensing of Environment 112, 2711-2726.
  1. Chambers JQ, Asner GP, Morton DC, Anderson LO, Saatchi SS, Espirito-Santo FDB, Palace M, Souza Jr. CM (2007). Regional ecosystem structure and function: ecological insights from remote sensing of tropical forests. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 22(8), 414-423.
  1. Morton DC, Shimabukuro YE, Rudorff BFT, Lima A, Freitas R, DeFries RS (2007). Challenges for conservation at the agricultural frontier: deforestation, fire, and land use dynamics in Mato Grosso. Agua & Ambiente 2(1), 5-20.
  1. Pongratz J, Bounoua L, DeFries RS, Morton DC, Anderson LO, Mauser W, Klink C (2006). The impact of land cover change on surface energy and water balance in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Earth Interactions 10, Paper 10-019.
  1. Morton DC, DeFries RS, Shimabukuro YE, Anderson LO, Arai E, Espirito-Santo FDB, Freitas R, Morisette J (2006). Cropland expansion changes deforestation dynamics in the southern Brazilian Amazon. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 103(39), 14637-14641.
  1. Jasinski EW, Morton DC, DeFries RS, Shimabukuro YE, Anderson LO, Hansen MC (2005). Physical landscape correlates of the expansion of mechanized agriculture in Mato Grosso, Brazil. Earth Interactions 9, Paper 09-016.
  1. Schroeder W, Morisette J, Csiszar I, Giglio L, Morton DC, Justice CO (2005). Characterizing vegetation fire dynamics in Brazil through multisatellite data: Common trends and practical issues. Earth Interactions 9, Paper 09-013.
  1. Anderson LO, Shimabukuro YE, DeFries RS, Morton DC (2005). Assessment of deforestation in near real time over the Brazilian Amazon using multitemporal fraction images derived from Terra MODIS. IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Letters 2(3), 315-318.
  1. Morton DC, DeFries RS, Shimabukuro YE, Anderson LO, del bon Espírito-Santo F, Hansen MC, Carroll M (2005). Rapid assessment of annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon using MODIS data. Earth Interactions 9, Paper 09-008.

BOOKS, BOOK CHAPTERS

  1. Morton DC, DeFries RS, Shimabukuro YE (in press). Cropland expansion in Cerrado and transition forest ecosystems: Quantifying habitat loss from satellite-based vegetation phenology. In: Cerrado Land-use and Conservation: Assessing Trade-offs Between Human and Ecological Needs. Klink C, DeFries RS, Cavalcanti R, eds. Conservation International, Washington, DC.
  1. Alves DS, Morton DC, Batistella M, Roberts DA, Souza Jr. S (2009). The Changing Rates and Patterns of Deforestation and Land Use in Brazilian Amazonia. In: Amazonia and Global Change. Gash J, Keller M, Bustamente M, Silva Dias P, eds. American Geophysical Union, Washington, DC.
  1. Morton DC, Roessing M, Camp A, Tyrrell M (2003). Assessing the Environmental, Social, and Economic Impacts of Wildfire. New Haven, Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry, Yale University. 59 pp.

CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

  1. Morton DC, Shimabukuro YE, Freitas RM, Arai E, DeFries RS (2007). Secondary forest dynamics and Cerradão loss in Mato Grosso during 2001-2005 from MODIS phenology time series. Anais XIII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Florianópolis, Brasil, 21-26 abril 2007, INPE, p. 6859-6866.
  1. Morton DC, Espirito-Santo FDB, Shimabukuro YE, DeFries RS, Anderson LO (2005). Validation of MODIS annual deforestation monitoring with CBERS, Landsat, and field data. Anais XII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Goiânia, Brasil, 16-21 abril 2005, INPE, p. 3159-3166.
  1. Anderson LO, Shimabukuro YE, DeFries RS, Morton DC, Espirito-Santo FDB, Jasinski E, Hansen M, Lima A, Duarte V (2005). Utilização de dados multitemporais do sensor MODIS para o mapeamento da cobertura e uso da terra. Anais XII Simpósio Brasileiro de Sensoriamento Remoto, Goiânia, Brasil, 16-21 abril 2005, INPE, p. 3443-345.

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