Dr. Jen Pontius serves as the Associate Dean for Curricular Affairs in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural resources, is the principle investigator for the Forest Ecosystem Monitoring Cooperative and is the Program Director of the Environmental Science Program. She teaches in UVM’s Environmental Science, Forestry and Sustainability, Ecology and Policy programs. Her research is cross-disciplinary with the goal of scaling field observations and relationships to a landscape-scale using remote sensing and GIS tools to inform the management of northeastern forests. Often this involves working across scales (temporal and spatial), data sources (field, satellite, spatial) and integrating across disciplines. This linking of geospatial and natural science methodologies provides the landscape perspective necessary to mitigate the impacts of environmental stressors, with the information necessary to guide activities at local to regional scales.
Dr. Pontius holds a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Virginia, a M.S. in Natural Resources, and a PhD in Earth & Ecosystem Sciences from the University of New Hampshire. Previously, Dr. Pontius was a research ecologist and remote sensing specialist with the US Forest Service Northern Research Station.