“There’s a satellite for that!”

Jessica Fayne uses her experience in hydrology, remote sensing, and spatial data to explain how natural hazards and climate change interact

Watching a tsunami devastate Java in 2006 sent Jessica Fayne, who began her role as an assistant professor in EARTH on September 1, on the path to Earth Sciences. Remote sensing, with its versatility and accessibility, appealed to her: So many types of data from all around the world were publicly available, just waiting for her to explore. During her PhD at UCLA, she forged complementary skill sets in hydrology, remote sensing, and spatial data analysis, with the aim of improving how we predict and measure the impacts of climate change and natural hazards.

Fayne’s research at U-M ranges from wildfire susceptibility and terrestrial water storage to landslide and flood mapping and prediction. She’s also working on radar sensitivity to wind and wet vegetation. These are interdisciplinary problems requiring interdisciplinary responses, and Faynebrings remote sensing expertise to them all.

“There are so many satellites, and every time you learn to speak the language of a new satellite, you open the door to working with a whole new set of people,” Fayne said. “Whatever you can think of, there’s a satellite for that!”

Fayne is looking forward to teaching EARTH 408: Introduction to GIS in the Earth Sciences this fall as well as developing a new class in remote sensing. “These tools are so versatile and translatable,” she said. “We need a new generation who really knows this stuff.”

Tracing mammals’ dominance through time

Luke Weaver wants to know how and why mammals came to be “the most prominent players” in terrestrial ecosystems today

Today, paleontologist Luke Weaver researches mammalian biodiversity in the fossil record. But he started out wondering about human evolution.

“I wanted to know what makes us human,” Weaver said. “Then, what makes a primate? Ultimately, I got to, ‘what makes a mammal a mammal?’ I’ve been pulled further and further back in evolutionary history. There’s just something fascinating about understanding the roots, of what makes us, us.”

Weaver, an assistant professor in EARTH and assistant curator at the U-M Museum of Paleontology, uses the fossil record to understand how mammals came to dominate the world, from biodiversity and evolutionary perspectives: how diverse they were, what they were doing when they were alive, and how external factors like climate and tectonics shaped mammals’ trajectories. He’s particularly interested in reconstructing how placental versus marsupial reproduction arose.

Doing this work at U-M is “an absolute dream job,” Weaver said.

“At EARTH, the hardest thing is to find people I don’t have a potential collaboration with,” Weaver said.“It’s one of, if not the, best places for anyone who’s paleo-interested.”