Charles Bettigole, Spatial Ecologist and Director, Ucross High Plains Stewardship Initiative

Charlie is a spatial ecologist and director of the Ucross High Plains Stewardship Initiative, a research center housed within the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. The Initiative hosts a dynamic team of staff, students, and faculty, united by a passion for the American west and large landscape management. Charlie leads a team of spatial analysts designing remote-sensing applications to better understand large-scale implications of land management – from invasive species detection to streamlined monitoring of rangeland productivity over long time series. Of particular interest to the carbon world, Charlie has been part of a Yale team of faculty and doctoral students working on innovative, low-cost techniques for mapping soil-carbon at fine-scales, using in-situ soil measurements, remote sensing, and machine learning algorithms. Charlie also works with students and dozens of western partners to provide experiential learning opportunities that get undergraduate and graduate students out of the classroom to research, implement, and engage on pressing environmental issues. Charlie holds a BS from Middlebury College, and an MS in wildlife biology from the University of Vermont.