Download Holly's CV

Holly Gibbs is a Ph.D. candidate in the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment where her research is supported by a DOE Global Change Environmental Fellowship. Her dissertation research is focused on global-scale tropical deforestation and the implications for the global carbon cycle and climate. Holly is developing techniques to blend remote-sensing data (e.g., AVHRR / MODIS / Landsat) and detailed ground-based surveys to create new spatially-explicit “hybrid” estimates of both gross and net tropical deforestation rates for the 1980s and 1990s. Holly is also studying the fate of cleared land by integrating satellite and ground-based data (e.g., household surveys, detailed census) to better understand tropical land-use dynamics following deforestation. She is particularly interested in how shifting deforestation and land-use practices are leading to less secondary forest regrowth in some tropical regions. Holly is also working to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of carbon emissions from tropical deforestation and subsequent land use.

Holly’s other major research focus is bridging across scales, perspectives, and epistemologies to develop a richer understanding and description of tropical land-use processes. One of her primary professional goals is to develop rigorous and integrative research methods is to conduct earth system science in a new way, one that bridges the globally-consistent "top-down" view with place-based "bottom-up" views and generates knowledge in a more accountable, transparent, and participatory way. Holly recently co-developed the Earth Collaboratory (along with Jon Foley), which is an internet-based mechanism attempting to conduct global-scale participatory research on tropical deforestation.

She is also highly engaged in connecting her science to international policy and works closely with Conservation International’s Center for Applied Biodiversity, the Tropical Forest Group, and the Coalition for Rainforest Nations. Holly has worked closely in support of the UNFCCC initiative to Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD). Download REDD methods summaries for policy-makers: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation: combating climate chage; Estimating Tropical Deforestation and Degradation for REDD; Estimating Tropical Forest Carbon Stocks for REDD.

Before coming to SAGE, Holly received a B.S. in Environmental Science (1999) and M.S. in Natural Resources / Remote Sensing (2000) from The Ohio State University. Holly received funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Ohio Wildlife Rehabilitation Center to research the impact of hand-raising big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) on their flight and echolocation ontogeny for her undergraduate honors thesis project. For her M.S. research, Holly quantified human-induced changes in global vegetation and the associated impacts on above-ground carbon storage, albedo, and surface roughness.

She then headed south to Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Environmental Sciences Division to lead remote-sensing and GIS research for global carbon and water cycle projects before starting her Ph.D. in 2003.

Holly spends most of her ample spare time outdoors where she enjoys paddling, backpacking, climbing mountains, listening to bluegrass, playing Frisbee with her dog, and searching for little brown jugs.