Jeffrey R Irwin

Jeff Irwin is a Geographer with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at the Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, SD. Jeff serves as the EROS Survey and Field Campaign Lead working with both the EROS Calibration/Validation Center of Excellence (ECCOE) and Terrain Modeling and Monitoring Focus Areas. Additionally, he leads Lidar Data Quality and 3D Accuracy Research at EROS, which supports the USGS managed 3D Elevation Program (3DEP). Jeff’s responsibilities include ensuring that high quality field data is collected, processed, and published for a variety of activities, including developing methodologies to access the accuracy of airborne lidar and accessing the accuracy of airborne topographic and topobathymetric lidar systems for 3DEP, validating Landsat products, mapping river bluffs for sediment transport and erosion modeling, validating regional topobathymetric digital elevation models (TBDEMs), and researching the utility UAS mounted camera systems for validating satellite imagery. Jeff relies heavily on his years of experience working in the private land surveying world to conduct this work.

Jeff started with the USGS as an intern with EROS Fire Science in 2016. Jeff's work as an intern focused on developing methodology to map understory fuels in northeastern Minnesota using airborne lidar data and mapping historic fires using Landsat imagery. Jeff has an A.A.S. in Civil Engineering Technology from Southeast Technical Institute, as well as both a B.S. and an M.S. in Geography from South Dakota State University.