SAL Staff
Spatial Analysis Lab
Jessica Mitchell joined the Spatial Analysis Lab as director in 2018. Her interests combine remote sensing with environmental assessment experience to advance new techniques for analyzing impacts and land management decision making. She is currently evaluating methods for scaling vegetation structure, canopy chemistry and biodiversity variables from leaves and individuals to plots, landscapes and regions. Some of the data she works with are traditional plot-based measurements; ground and airborne laser scanning (lidar) and reflectance spectroscopy estimates; and time-series satellite observations. Vegetation applications include mapping plant chemistry and forage quality; linking plant diversity across trait, species, functional and environmental variables; developing scalable high-resolution shrub structure products; coordinating teams to quantify the impacts of habitat decline on environmental and socio-economic resources; and advancing spectral digitization of plant collections. (Mitchell CV)
Rebekah Fields is working as a Spatial Ecologist for the Spatial Analysis Lab after earning a Master’s degree in Systems Ecology from the University of Montana. Her research broadly includes ecological applications of machine learning, remote sensing, and vegetation-based species distribution models on top of a thesis understanding floral resource use by bumble bees. She most recently worked as a research assistant at Salish Kootenai College where she was involved with an NSF REU in the department of geosciences working with students to create their own research projects. She loves asking questions and understanding how everything works, from the smallest mushrooms to the largest landscape scale processes. (Brassfield CV)
Claudine Tobalske, currently a faculty affiliate, has been at SAL since 2008. She has over 25 years of GIS experience in the field of natural resources conservation and management, starting as a Ph.D. student at SAL, then as a GIS analyst and ecologist for the Oregon Natural Heritage Information Center, on to her current position at SAL. Her interests range from wildlife habitat models to vegetation mapping using remote sensing at different scales, from 1m NAIP to 30m Landsat. She has extensive experience with the full suite of ESRI products and image analysis software such as Erdas Imagine and eCognition. (Tobalske CV)
Magda Miecznik is a GIS Technician working for the Spatial Analysis Lab. She began working for SAL in June of 2023 as a Crew Lead for the Invasive Grass Remote Sensing Project. As a GIS tech, she is working with Rebekah Fields and Jessica Mitchell on a Fuel Treatment project designed to determine where environmental injustice occurs in conjunction with fuel treatments on Forest Service lands. Magda hopes to attend University of Montana’s Masters of Forestry program in the Fall of 2024 with a focus in Fire Ecology and further develop her GIS skills with the GIS focus as well. Her interests in fire ecology sparked when she was part of a fire ecology field crew in the Sierra Nevada looking at the regeneration of Giant Sequoias after megafires. She received a Bachelor’s of Science in Conservation Biology and Ecology with a minor in GIS from Montana State University. (Miecznik CV)