Mickey Campbell uses AI to better understand forests and give wildland firefighters tools for real-time decisions. Campbell, who completed his PhD in geography from the U, uses image and lidar data collected from the ground, air, and space to study Earth systems and how we interact with them. He applies AI to monitor piñon–juniper woodlands, an ecologically important and climatically sensitive ecosystem that spans the West. Another focus, he said, is scalable, precise mapping of forest health changes over space and time. “Drought and insect outbreaks have triggered widespread die-offs, yet current monitoring relies on coarse, manually collected data,” he said. His AI models map tree mortality to track degradation in a changing climate. He also applies his expertise to wildfires, developing tools to enhance firefighter response and safety.
