I am a research geographer for the Western Geographic Science Center (WGSC).
I work on the conservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the enhancement of natural resource and wildland fire management activities within socio-ecological or human-environment systems. I conduct interdisciplinary studies to understand the consequences of climate and land use change to determine priorities for conservation action or to inform natural resource management. I employ geographic information systems, passive and active remote sensing, environmental modeling, and high performance computing in my quantitative analyses. My area of interest and expertise is the western USA.
Professional Experience
Research geographer, (10/2011 - present), Western Geographic Science Center, USGS
Student Career Experience Program (SCEP), (3/2009 - 10/2011), Western Geographic Science Center, USGS
Graduate student researcher, (8/2005 - 8/2011), Biogeography Lab, UC Santa Barbara
Research assistant (7/2008 - 9/2009), Conservation International
Research assistant (7/2008 - 9/2009), Allen-Diaz Lab, UC Berkeley
Graduate student researcher, (1/2008 - 6/2008), National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, UC Santa Barbara
Education and Certifications
2011, PhD in Environmental Science and Management from the University of California Santa Barbara. "Ecosystem services and cost-effective conservation planning".
2005, MS in Environmental Science and Management from the University of California Santa Barbara.
2001, BA in Biology from Colorado College
Science and Products
Remote Sensing of Invasive Annual Grasses -- Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Integrated Wildland Fire Science
Land Use and Climate Change Team
Changes to Watershed Vulnerability under Future Climates, Fire Regimes, and Population Pressures
Circuit-based potential fire connectivity and relative flow patterns in the Great Basin, United States, 270 meters
A National Land Use And Land Cover Projection For Threat Assessment And Conservation Planning
Human and infrastructure exposure to large wildfires in the United States
Assessing large landscape patterns of potential fire connectivity using circuit methods
Anthropogenic stressors compound climate impacts on inland lake dynamics: The case of Hamun Lakes
Augmented normalized difference water index for improved monitoring of surface water
Estimating wildfire fuel consumption with multitemporal airborne laser scanning data and demonstrating linkage with MODIS-derived fire radiative energy
The Fire and Tree Mortality Database, for empirical modeling of individual tree mortality after fire
Cost-effective fuel treatment planning: A theoretical justification and case-study
Case study: Thomas Fire
Evaluating the mid-infrared bi-spectral index for improved assessment of low-severity fire effects in a conifer forest
Effects of 21st century climate, land use, and disturbances on ecosystem carbon balance in California
Sediment transport and deposition
Sustainability of utility-scale solar energy – critical ecological concepts
DSWE_GEE v1.0.0
Science and Products
- Science
Remote Sensing of Invasive Annual Grasses -- Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem
Exotic annual grasses such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) have heavily invaded portions of the western United States, rapidly degrading habitats and increasing wildfire risk. Cheatgrass and other ESIs (desert alyssum [Alyssum desertorum], and annual wheatgrass [Eremopyrum triticeum]) are an emerging threat to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE); climatic changes including earlier snowmelt/run...Integrated Wildland Fire Science
The size and number of large wildland fires in the western United States have grown dramatically over the past decade, with a contingent rise in damages and suppression costs. This trend will likely continue with further growth of the wildland urban interface (WUI) into fire prone ecosystems, hazardous fuel conditions from decades of fire suppression, and a potentially increasing effect from...Land Use and Climate Change Team
We are a research team focusing on understanding the rates, causes, and consequences of land change across a range of geographic and temporal scales. Our emphasis is on developing alternative future projections and quantifying the impact on environmental systems, in particular, the role of land-use change on ecosystem carbon dynamics. We are interested in how land-use and climate systems will...Changes to Watershed Vulnerability under Future Climates, Fire Regimes, and Population Pressures
The project aimed to use existing models and data to understand how wildfires (number, size, and location) and land-use change will affect watersheds, and therefore water supply, under current conditions and future climates (through 2050) in the western U.S. The projected changes in temperature and precipitation are expected to affect water supply in two major ways: 1) decreased water availability - Data
Circuit-based potential fire connectivity and relative flow patterns in the Great Basin, United States, 270 meters
The rasters in this dataset represent modeled outputs of potential fire connectivity and relative flow patterns in the Great Basin. We define ‘fire connectivity’ as the landscape’s capacity to facilitate fire transmission from one point on the landscape to another. We applied an omnidirectional circuit theory algorithm (Omniscape) to model fire connectivity in the Great Basin of the western UnitedA National Land Use And Land Cover Projection For Threat Assessment And Conservation Planning
This dataset contains a projection of land use and land cover for the conterminous United States for the period 2001 - 2061. This projection used the USGS's LUCAS (Land Use and Carbon Scenario Simulator) model to project a business as usual scenario of land cover and land use change. By running the LUCAS model on the USGS's YETI high performance computer and parallelizing the computation, we ran 1 - Multimedia
- Publications
Filter Total Items: 22
Human and infrastructure exposure to large wildfires in the United States
An increasing number of wildfire disasters have occurred in recent years in the United States. Here we demonstrate that cumulative primary human exposure—the population residing within the perimeters of large wildfires—was 594,850 people from 2000 to 2019 across the contiguous United States (CONUS), 82% of which occurred in the western United States. Primary population exposure increased by 125% iAuthorsArash Modaresi Rad, John T. Abatzoglou, Jason R. Kreitler, Mohammad Reza Alizadeh, Amir AghaKouchak, Nicholas Hudyma, NIcholas Nauslar, Mojtaba SadeghAssessing large landscape patterns of potential fire connectivity using circuit methods
ContextMinimizing negative impacts of wildfire is a major societal objective in fire-prone landscapes. Models of fire connectivity can aid in understanding and managing wildfires by analyzing potential fire spread and conductance patterns. We define ‘fire connectivity’ as the landscape’s capacity to facilitate fire transmission from one point on the landscape to another.ObjectivesOur objective wasAuthorsErin K. Buchholtz, Jason R. Kreitler, Douglas J. Shinneman, Michele R. Crist, Julie A. HeinrichsAnthropogenic stressors compound climate impacts on inland lake dynamics: The case of Hamun Lakes
Inland lakes face unprecedented pressures from climatic and anthropogenic stresses, causing their recession and desiccation globally. Climate change is increasingly blamed for such environmental degradation, but in many regions, direct anthropogenic pressures compound, and sometimes supersede, climatic factors. This study examined a human-environmental system – the terminal Hamun Lakes on the IranAuthorsArash Modaresi Rad, Jason R. Kreitler, John T. Abatzoglou, Kendra Fallon, Kevin Roche, Mojitaba SadeghAugmented normalized difference water index for improved monitoring of surface water
We present a comprehensive critical review of well-established satellite remote sensing water indices and offer a novel, robust Augmented Normalized Difference Water Index (ANDWI). ANDWI employs an expanded set of spectral bands, RGB, NIR, and SWIR1-2, to maximize the contrast between water and non-water pixels. Further, we implement a dynamic thresholding method, the Otsu algorithm, to enhance ANAuthorsArash Modaresi Rad, Jason R. Kreitler, Mojitaba SadeghEstimating wildfire fuel consumption with multitemporal airborne laser scanning data and demonstrating linkage with MODIS-derived fire radiative energy
Characterizing pre- and post-fire fuels remains a key challenge for estimating biomass consumption and carbon emissions from wildfires. Airborne laser scanning (ALS) data have demonstrated effectiveness for estimating canopy, and to a lesser degree, surface fuel components at fine-scale (i.e., 30 m) across landscapes. Using pre- and post-fire ALS data and corresponding field data, this study estimAuthorsT. Ryan McCarley, Andrew T. Hudak, Aaron M. Sparks, Nicole S. Vaillant, Arjan J.H. Meddens, Laura Trader, Jason R. Kreitler, Luigi BoschettiThe Fire and Tree Mortality Database, for empirical modeling of individual tree mortality after fire
Wildland fires have a multitude of ecological effects in forests, woodlands, and savannas across the globe. A major focus of past research has been on tree mortality from fire, as trees provide a vast range of biological services. We assembled a database of individual-tree records from prescribed fires and wildfires in the United States. The Fire and Tree Mortality (FTM) database includes recordsAuthorsC. Alina Cansler, Sharon M. Hood, J. Morgan Varner, Phillip J. van Mantgem, Michelle C. Agne, Robert A. Andrus, Matthew P. Ayres, Bruce D. Ayres, Jonathan D. Bakker, Michael A. Battaglia, Barbara J. Bentz, Carolyn R. Breece, James K. Brown, Daniel R. Cluck, Tom W. Coleman, R. Gregory Corace, W. Wallace Covington, Douglas S. Cram, James B. Cronan, Joseph E. Crouse, Adrian Das, Ryan S. Davis, Darci M. Dickinson, Stephen A Fitzgerald, Peter Z. Fule, Lisa M. Ganio, Lindsay M. Grayson, Charles B. Halpern, Jim L. Hanula, Brian J. Harvey, J. Kevin Hiers, David W. Huffman, MaryBeth Keifer, Tara L. Keyser, Leda N. Kobziar, Thomas E. Kolb, Crystal A. Kolden, Karen E. Kopper, Jason R. Kreitler, Jesse K. Kreye, Andrew M. Latimer, Andrew P. Lerch, Maria J. Lombardero, Virginia L. McDaniel, Charles W. McHugh, Joel D. McMillin, Jason J. Moghaddas, Joseph J. O'Brien, Daniel D. B. Perrakis, David W. Peterson, Susan J. Pritchard, Robert A. Progar, Kenneth F. Raffa, Elizabeth D. Reinhardt, Joseph C. Restaino, John P. Roccaforte, Brendan M. Rogers, Kevin C. Ryan, Hugh D. Safford, Alyson E. Santoro, Timothy M. Shearman, Alice M. Shumate, Carolyn H. Sieg, Sheri L. Smith, Rebecca J. Smith, Nathan L. Stephenson, Mary Stuever, Jens Stevens, Michael T. Stoddard, Walter G. Thies, Nicole M. Vaillant, Shelby A. Weiss, Douglas J. Westlind, Travis J. Woolley, Micah C. WrightCost-effective fuel treatment planning: A theoretical justification and case-study
Modelling the spatial prioritisation of fuel treatments and their net effect on values at risk is an important area for applied work as economic damages from wildfire continue to grow. We model and demonstrate a cost-effective fuel treatment planning algorithm using two ecosystem services as benefits for which fuel treatments are prioritised. We create a surface of expected fuel treatment costs toAuthorsJason R. Kreitler, Matthew Thompson, Nicole Vaillant, Todd HawbakerCase study: Thomas Fire
No abstract available.AuthorsJason R. Kreitler, Amy E. East, Joel B. Sankey, Christina (Naomi) TagueEvaluating the mid-infrared bi-spectral index for improved assessment of low-severity fire effects in a conifer forest
Remote sensing products provide a vital understanding of wildfire effects across a landscape, but detection and delineation of low- and mixed-severity fire remains difficult. While data provided by the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity project (MTBS) are frequently used to assess severity in the United States, alternative indices can offer improvement to the measurement of low-severity fire effecAuthorsR McCarley, A.M.S Smith, C.A. Kolden, Jason R. KreitlerEffects of 21st century climate, land use, and disturbances on ecosystem carbon balance in California
Terrestrial ecosystems are an important sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), sequestering ~30% of annual anthropogenic emissions and slowing the rise of atmospheric CO2. However, the future direction and magnitude of the land sink is highly uncertain. We examined how historical and projected changes in climate, land use, and ecosystem disturbances affect the carbon balance of terrestrial ecoAuthorsBenjamin M. Sleeter, David Marvin, D. Richard Cameron, Paul Selmants, LeRoy Westerling, Jason R. Kreitler, Colin Daniel, Jinxun Liu, Tamara S. WilsonSediment transport and deposition
Sediment transport and deposition (sedimentation) occurs from natural and anthropogenic sources in rivers, lakes, and reservoirs. Substantial changes in sediment transport (such as a major increase or decrease in sediment supply) can impact aquatic ecosystems that depend on a particular sediment quantity and particle size, for example, through altering stream-channel geomorphology or fish habitat.AuthorsJoel B. Sankey, Amy E. East, Jason R. Kreitler, Christina (Naomi) TagueSustainability of utility-scale solar energy – critical ecological concepts
Renewable energy development is an arena where ecological, political, and socioeconomic values collide. Advances in renewable energy will incur steep environmental costs to landscapes in which facilities are constructed and operated. Scientists – including those from academia, industry, and government agencies – have only recently begun to quantify trade-offs in this arena, often using ground-mounAuthorsKara A. Moore-O'Leary, Rebecca R. Hernandez, Dave S. Johnston, Scott R. Abella, Karen E. Tanner, Amanda C. Swanson, Jason R. Kreitler, Jeffrey E. Lovich - Software
DSWE_GEE v1.0.0
Code for implementation of the Dynamic Surface Water Extent algorithm in Google Earth Engine. Multiple scripts allow the creation of single-scene or composited Dynamic Surface Water Extent (DSWE) images from Landsat and MODIS data. All code is written for use in the JavaScript API.