Alexandra Evans is a postdoc at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) working closely with 
researchers at the United States Geological Survey (USGS). She’s interested in using remote sensing platforms to learn more about the coastal mosaic and how ecosystems respond to/recover from press (e.g. rising sea levels) and pulse (e.g. hurricanes) disturbances. By using a variety of remote sensing techniques, she hopes to learn more about the combined ecogeomorphological processes behind ecosystem recovery/adaptation at varying spatial and temporal scales and help identify the triggers of ecosystem shifts. Recently, she has been developing Phragmites mapping methods using sensors onboard sUAS with the goal of studying changes in invasive species cover. She is also using human-in-the-loop image segmentation methods to map land cover relevant for piping plover habitat on barrier islands and examine changes with hurricane impacts.
Prior to her postdoc at WHOI/USGS, Alexandra earned a PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from University of New Hampshire’s (Durham, NH) Natural Resources & Earth Systems Science PhD program in 2021, as well as a M.S. in Geology and a B.S. in Environmental Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, NY) in 2015. Alexandra’s previous work related to her dissertation explored how sUAS and close-range remote sensing techniques can be used to improve river ecological assessment and restoration – particularly surrounding dam management decisions such as dam removal.