Kristi Sayler

Kristi Sayler is a physical scientist with the US Geological Survey at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD. She has worked on numerous projects involving mapping land cover and land use change using remotely sensed data. She was one of the original team members on the Land Cover Trends project, helping both with project design and land cover mapping activities. In 2010, this project completed one of the first ever assessments of 1973-2000 land-cover change for the conterminous U.S. She has also helped with the development of a scenario-based land-cover projection model called Forecasting Scenarios of Land-use Change (FORE-SCE). The model has been successfully used for applications examining the impacts of projected land cover change on carbon dynamics, climate, and regional hydrology. She has more recently become involved with the Land Change Monitoring Assessment and Projection (LCMAP) science team contributing to the Assessment Team’s analysis of current and historical processes of cover and change. In 2016, Kristi also took on a supervision role for members of the Integrated Science and Application Branch at EROS. In April 2020, Kristi became the Project Manager for the LSDS Science Research and Development (LSRD) project. This project provides science consultation and support across the formulation, development, and operations phases of the Landsat missions which includes performing algorithm development and validation for the generation of advanced science data products to enable monitoring of land surface change, conducting and evaluating technology investigations related to new sensor and science data processing capabilities,  and producing and distributing provisional science products for community evaluation to facilitate product generation capabilities from research to operations. The LSRD project also maintains the Landsat Missions Website and conducts Landsat user community outreach to communicate Landsat mission objectives, capabilities, and accomplishments.