Amy L. McCleary
Email: alnorman@email.unc.edu
Telephone: 919-962-3870
BioSketch
Member, Association of American Geographers (AAG); American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS); and Population Association of America (PAA). Awards include NSF-IGERT pre-doctoral traineeship in Population and Environment at the Carolina Population Center (2005–present); Carolina Population Center Summer Research Residency grant (2006 and 2008); William S. Livingston Outstanding Teaching Assistant (2005); Liberal Arts Graduate Research Fellowship (2005); and Tinker Summer Field Research grant (2004).
Research Emphasis
Amy McCleary’s research broadly focuses on examining population-environment interactions in Latin America from a mixed-methods approach. Her research interests include: land use/land cover (LULC) change, remote sensing of the environment, geographic information science (GISci), and coupled human-natural systems. Her dissertation research explores pattern-process relations and LULC dynamics on Isabela Island, Galápagos by linking household and community characteristics to social and ecological factors. Mixed methodologies within a GISci framework are emphasized, including remote sensing, GIS, and qualitative social surveys. Previous projects have explored integration of remotely sensed imagery and household social surveys to examine the causes and consequences of reforestation patterns in the Ecuadorian Amazon; exploring coupled human natural systems in the Ecuadorian Amazon through remote sensing analyses and agent-based models; refining forest classifications in the western Amazon (Peru) through an intra-annual multi-temporal approach; and using airborne radar soundings and satellite-based radar data to characterizing the West Antarctic ice sheet.
