Joshua Caster, PhD

Joshua has experience conducting scientific investigations across a wide range of disciplines, including hydrology, hydrogeology, archaeology, geoarchaeology, geomorphology, biogeomorphology, and quaternary geology. His research interests focus on understanding past, present, and future landscape alterations within dryland ecosystems resulting from the changing environment and human activity. His current work with the Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center supports a variety of environmental and cultural resource management efforts within Grand Canyon National Park and other federal lands throughout the southwestern United States. Much of this work incorporates field-based investigations with remote sensing technology, including light detection and ranging (lidar) instruments, airborne and drone-based photography, and satellite imagery, to quantify terrestrial surface processes. He uses these technologies to characterize bio-physical interactions at millimeter to multi-kilometer scales for refining our understanding of how and why dryland landscapes are changing and the role management actions can play in altering landscape evolution.