Mark Friedl

Mark Friedl is a Core Faculty Member of the Global China Initiative at the Boston University Global Development Policy Center. He is also William Goodwin Aurelio Professor in Mathematics and Science and Director of the Center for Remote Sensing in the Department of Earth and Environment at Boston University, where he leads the Land Cover and Surface Climate Group. His research focuses on dynamics in land cover and land surface processes, both human-induced and natural, at local-to-global scales. He is especially interested in observations and models that characterize and improve understanding of how terrestrial ecosystems are responding to climate change and human activities, and how these responses affect ecosystem processes and services.  Current research foci include mapping land use, land cover and land cover change at regional and global scales, monitoring and modeling dynamics in vegetation phenology and related ecosystem processes, and using remote sensing to characterize the properties, geography and dynamics of global land use and human dominated ecosystems.  He has been a Bullard Fellow in Forest Science at Harvard University, an Erasmus Mundus visiting scholar in Europe and a visiting scientist at the Complex Systems Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.