Pamela Nagler, Ph.D.

Dr. Pamela Nagler’s interest in landscapes developed naturally through her experiences with a variety of lands and cultures throughout her early years. She first worked with USGS as a hydrological technician with the Water Resources Division, mentored by Drs. Jake Peters and Jamie Shanley. After obtaining a B.S. in Geography, Pamela interned with the late Barry Bishop (a member of the first American team to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1963) at the National Geographic Society in Washington DC, where she was greatly influenced to pursue her passion for geography as a career. She then worked for the Solid Waste Division of the EPA followed by a couple of years with the Defense Mapping Agency. At the University of Maryland at College Park, Pamela earned an M.A. in Geography with an emphasis on Land Remote Sensing; her Advisor, Dr. Sam Goward, served as the Landsat Science Team Leader from 1992 and completed Landsat’s Enduring Legacy: 50 years in 2017. As his mentee, she gained experience and skills needed to address environmental applications using remote sensing tools. During her Master’s program, Pamela had a research assistantship with the USDA Agriculture Research Service under the guidance of Dr. Craig Daughtry, and helped develop techniques using hyperspectral data to distinguish soil from litter in the landscape. Pamela continued this research in Japan with a fellowship sponsored by NSF. Dr. Yoshio Inoue, her academic host at the Japan National Institute of Agro-Environmental Studies in 1996-1997, encouraged Pamela to return to the US to continue her academic studies. Pamela spent time in ten Asian countries before starting her Ph.D. research with Dr. Alfredo Huete at the University of Arizona in Tucson, AZ. Pamela's dissertation research used remote sensing tools to study environmental applications in the Colorado River delta in Mexico and her post-doctoral work with Dr. Edward Glenn was funded through a NASA grant. With direction from Ed Glenn, she studied seaweed productivity while living in Molokai, Hawaii, phytoremediation at DOE Legacy Mine sites on Navajo Nation near Monument Valley, and conservation and policy of the Colorado River Delta in the Borderlands of the U.S. and Mexico. Pamela received a PECASE Award at the White House with POTUS Obama in 2010, became a Kavli Fellow with the Academy of Sciences in 2011, and was internationally recognized by CSIRO in 2013. Pamela spent a year at CSIRO in their Land and Water Division in Adelaide, South Australia. Pamela serves students in three departments at the University of Arizona, including SNRE, SWES and more recently, Biosystems Engineering. She also serves on three journal Editorial Boards and as a Board Member of the FWS Sonoran Joint Venture.