Dr Matthew Hethcoat

Matthew is a Research Scientist with the Canadian Forest Service (CFS) who uses remote sensing tools to quantify and understand emerging issues that relate to global change ecology. He received his PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2020, where his research advanced the monitoring of tropical selective logging over large spatial and temporal scale by utilizing open-source satellite imagery. He continues to work with collaborators from the US Forest Service, World Resources Institute, and a Peruvian government agency tasked with monitoring forest resources (OSINFOR) to develop remote sensing tools to accelerate their institutional and technical capacity as well as enable more efficient government oversight of the forestry sector in Peru.

His work with CFS spans a broad set of topics, such as developing a national-scale monitoring system to track industrial drivers of forest loss; improving the detection and mapping of remote tundra fires; tracking health metrics across a suite of re/afforestation projects; understanding how climate/weather and prior forest management can influencing fire severity; helping to define and track forest degradation within a Canadian context; and identifying remotely sensed climate refugia metrics for songbirds and trees.