Andrew T. Hudak

GPS work in Oregon

Welcome to my homepage!


I am a Research Forester with the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station in Moscow, Idaho.

I am also affiliated with the Departments of Forest Resources and Rangeland Ecology and Management in the College of Natural Resources at the University of Idaho.

Research Interests:

Landscape, Fire and Vegetation Ecology; Remote Sensing of Vegetation Structure; Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Management

Current Projects:

  1. Assessing fuel loads across forest edges in Idaho. Fuel loadings in the overstory, understory, and forest floor vary according to distance from the forest edge, stand age, species composition, management history, and topographic position in the landscape. Field data gathered during the summer of 2002 will be linked statistically with remotely sensed imagery and other environmental data to map fuel characteristics across the landscape. Our study areas are along a dry-wet precipitation gradient and include Boise Basin Experimental Forest, the University of Idaho Experimental Forest, Priest River Experimental Forest, and Deception Creek Experimental Forest. This project is funded through the interagency Joint Fire Science Program and is part of a larger endeavor to compare the effects of climate and management on the distribution of forest fuels; parallel work is proceeding in the dry and wet forests of Puerto Rico and Alaska.
  2. Application of lidar remote sensing for mapping forest canopy structure. Lidar, similar to radar, is an active remote sensing laser technology used to measure the height of the ground, the top of the canopy, and the intervening canopy layers. It has tremendous potential as a tool for precision forest management. Current efforts are focused on gathering ground truth data and acquiring lidar data (pending funding).
  3. Relating spatially-discrete forest inventory plot data to spatially-continuous Landsat and environmental data for mapping forest structural variables at the regional scale using imputation. Collaborators at the Moscow Forestry Sciences Laboratory have developed the Most Similar Neighbor imputation model, while collaborators at the Corvallis Forestry Sciences Laboratory have developed the Gradient Nearest Neighbor imputation method. My objective is to compare the utility of these imputation approaches for mapping a variety of forest structural variables across western Oregon.
  4. Structural maps such as those produced in items 1, 2 and 3 above serve as valueable spatial inputs into ecological process models such as the Forest Vegetation Simulator.
  5. Exploring the human-environmental interactions that determine fire and vegetation patterns in rangelands. Fire suppression as a result of decades of overgrazing has caused woody plant encroachment across much of the global savannas. Natural (e.g. edaphic) and human (e.g. management) factors interact to determine savanna vegetation patterns, which are related to historic fire patterns through mutual feedbacks. This research is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's Biocomplexity in the Environment program. Work to date has been centered on Madikwe Game Reserve in South Africa, but there are plans to expand to similarly encroached regions in the interior Columbia Basin and Australia (contingent on additional funding).

At this point, you may want to decide if you're more curious about my professional experience, personal life, or someone or something else at the Moscow Forestry Sciences Laboratory.

You may also email me!