Stella Britwum Acquah. I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Forest Resources Management at UBC. I have been working with the Forestry Research Institute of Ghana of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR – FORIG) since 1998. I have a BSc in Computer Science from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana and an MBA in Management Information Systems, University of Ghana, Legon. I have always been interested in analyzing data for scientists in both research and academia. Although I did not have any degree in statistics or forest biometrics, when I joined CSIR-FORIG, I was assisting research scientists in analyzing and designing field experiments. This spurred me on to undertake a BSc and MSc degree in Statistics. My desire to pursue a career in the field of forest biometrics was strengthened when I had to work with forest inventory data. Currently my research area is on effects of thinning on the dynamics of uneven-aged interior Douglas-fir stands in British Columbia. I am specifically assessing temporal changes in the tree spatial patterns over a 21-year period; assessing the growth responses to pre-commercial thinning and mountain pine beetle disturbance; and examining the influence of neighbourhood competition on tree growth in these stands.
Supervisor: Peter Marshall
Pramila Khatri Chhetri. I was born in Pokhara, Nepal. There used to be a program in national television in Nepal “Green forest- the wealth of Nepal”. I was so interested to know the benefits that trees provide through this program and I realized its importance. I chose to do B.Sc. in forestry and completed it in 2007 from Institute of Forestry, Tribhuvan University. In 2008, I joined M.Sc. in Biodiversity and Environmental Management in Botany Department, Tribhuvan University. It was supported by NOMA scholarship and 2nd semester was done in University of Bergen, Norway. I worked as a Livelihood Promotion with RERL/AEPC and as a Program manager with Ecological Services Centre. Currently, I am doing my PhD in Forestry under Prof. Peter L. Marshall. My research interests are in Forest carbon dynamics, modelling, REDD+, climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Supervisor: Peter Marshall
Liam Gilson. I’m a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Bianca Eskelson, and started my program in fall of 2020. My research interests center around applying techniques from statistics and biometrics to answer challenging questions surrounding forest management under climate change. Existing decision support tools, such as growth models, often lack adequate sensitivity to climatic factors. For my dissertation work, I will develop methods and tools to examine genotype-environment interactions in the timber species of BC in order to better predict growth performance under future conditions.
I did my undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota, from which I graduated in 2018 with a BSc. in Forest Management. I decided to pursue forest biometrics at a graduate level, and I graduated from Oregon State University in 2020 with my MSc in Sustainable Forest Management; my thesis examined the environmental drivers of Douglas-fir growth in Oregon and New Zealand, quantifying the principle causes of improved exotic-range growth performance.
Supervisor: Bianca Eskelson
Christina Howard. I am a PhD student within the UBC Forest Measurements and Biometrics Lab under the supervision of Dr. Bianca Eskelson. I completed my BSc in Natural Resources Conservation in 2017 and went on to defend my MSc in Forestry thesis in December 2020, obtaining both degrees within UBC’s Faculty of Forestry. My past research has been focused on bioenergy and biomass supply throughout BC, and I am broadly interested in how climate change is affecting the forest sector and how we can better inform forest managers and policy makers on appropriate climate change mitigation strategies. My PhD dissertation is focused on developing climate sensitive growth model components for tree species in Southern Québec, to support the continued development of climate sensitive decision support tools. I am an avid hiker, completing a through-hike of the Appalachian Trail in 2017, while also training for and competing in triathlon, cycling, and running races.
Supervisor: Bianca Eskelson
Sushil Nepal. I am from Nepal. My research interests include Forest Biometrics, sampling, and spatial and temporal analysis techniques. My research focus is on the application of spatial statistics to characterize spatial patterns of individual trees, stands, and landscapes. I am a PhD student under the supervision of Dr. Bianca Eskelson. In my research project I am applying spatial analysis techniques to compare the forest structure at spatial scales over time in the Black Mountain Experimental Forest (BMEF), California, USA. I am using historical inventory data and recent inventory and LiDAR data from the BMEF.
Education
B.Sc., Tribhuwan University, 2011
M.Sc., Tribhuwan University, 2014
M.Sc., Northern Arizona University, 2017
Supervisor: Bianca Eskelson
Hyeyoung Woo. My research interests involve quantifying the effect of natural disturbances on forest structures. The natural disturbances include, but not limited to, forest fires, tree disease epidemics, and their interactions with global climate changes. Employing diverse of statistical methods such as spatio-temporal analysis and comparing their performances are also attractive. I demonstrated spatial point processing to dealing with forest fire occurrence data in my Master’s thesis at the University of Montana, USA. I completed my Bachelor’s degree at Seoul National University, South Korea. I am going to be a PhD student under supervision of Dr. Bianca Eskelson starting from Jan 2016, funded by Faculty of Forestry Doctoral Fellowship. My PhD research would focus on post-disturbance forest dynamics across western Canada and USA, using GIS-processed forest inventory data and different matching methods.
Supervisor: Bianca Eskelson