BRIDGEPORT, Pa. — The CWPA Remote interview series continues as Dr. Douglas Morton, Chief of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center and Dartmouth College men’s collegiate club alumnus, talks with Collegiate Water Polo Association (CWPA) Director of Multimedia Justin Cypert.
A 1999 graduate of Dartmouth with a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies and a minor in Chemistry, Dr. Morton leads an interdisciplinary Earth system science lab at NASA to conduct large-scale ecological research using data from NASA’s satellites and airborne platforms, ecosystem models, and fieldwork. His work focuses on tropical forests, fires, and food production. He has worked in Brazil for the past 18 years, with an emphasis on agricultural frontiers in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes and dynamics of deforestation, forest degradation and agricultural management following forest conversion.
Dr. Morton contributes to the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFED, www.globalfiredata.org), a collaborative effort to characterize the impact of global burned area and carbon emissions from fire activity on the Earth system. he is also actively engaged in international efforts to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+), and serves as a technical advisor to SilvaCarbon, a US-Government initiative to build capacity in tropical forest countries to monitor and manage their forest resources.
A 2000 graduate of the Yale University School of Forestry & Environmental Studies with a Master of Forest Science in Forest Ecology and the recipients of a 2008 doctorate in Geography from the University of Maryland, College Park, following his research and dissertation “Changes in Amazon Forest Structure from Land-use Fires: Integrating Satellite Remote Sensing and Ecosystem Modeling,” he serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland in addition to his work with NASA.
