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PREVIOUS PLANNING COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Chalita Forgotson (nee’ Sriladda)
Received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in forestry from Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand, in 2002 and 2005, respectively, and the Ph.D. in plant science from Utah State University in Logan, UT, USA, in 2011. She was a Senior Research Scientist and Applications Coordinator for NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center with Science Systems and Applications, Inc. (SSAI). She is an Ecologist with expertise in plant ecophysiology, wetlands and urban forestry, and agriculture, forestry, and other land use (AFOLU) in the USA and Asia. Her specializations include applying critical thinking and science to climate change adaptation and mitigation, carbon stock assessment, low emission development strategies, and applications of satellite data.
Andy Hudak
Andrew Hudak got his Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of Colorado. From 1999-2001, he began working for the U.S. Forest Service as a postdoctoral Research Ecologist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station. Since 2001, he has worked as a Research Forester with the Rocky Mountain Research Station. He currently studies biophysical relationships between field and remotely sensed data, including estimating aboveground biomass carbon across the western U.S. from airborne lidar, Landsat time series, and other environmental data; predicting fuel/carbon loads from 3D point cloud metrics at multiple scales; and relating fuel consumption to energy flux and fire effects.
Raha Hakimdavar
Raha Hakimdavar is a Hydrologist with the US Forest Service in Washington DC. Dr. Hakimdavar works at the forest-water nexus with a focus on the use of new and emerging technologies to inform water management decisions and related policies. Her research focuses on evaluating the impact of land change due to extreme events on hydrology and quantifying the co-benefits of nature-based solutions. Previously, Dr. Hakimdavar was a Presidential Management Fellow at the US Forest Service and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and a hydrology/flood risk consultant with UN Environment and the World Bank in the Caribbean. Dr. Hakimdavar received her Ph.D. in Hydrology and M.S. in Civil Engineering from Columbia University, and B.S.in Civil Engineering from California State Polytechnic University-Pomona. She was a visiting scholar at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands in 2013/14 through a Fulbright Fellowship in Flood Management and was awarded the 2018 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Sustainability and Innovation Award for her contributions to the fields of hydro-ecology and ecological engineering.
Matt Reeves
Matt Reeves is a Research Ecologist with the Human Dimensions Program at Rocky Mountain Research Station. He specializes in use of remote sensing and GIS to facilitate evaluation of contemporary issues facing US rangelands. Dr. Reeves is keenly interested in facilitating management and administration of our Nations’ rangelands and is pursuing numerous efforts to partner with the National Forest System to improve the quality and usefulness of Forest Plan Revisions. He is the Forest Service liaison to the Northern Plains Regional Climate Hub and serves on the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable (http://sustainablerangelands.org/) while being a member of the Resources Planning Act (RPA) scientist cadre. His research focuses on developing novel rangeland analysis tools aimed at helping managers and regional stakeholders to make more cost effective and efficacious management decisions.
Cynthia West
Dr. Cynthia D. West is Executive Director of the Office of Sustainability and Climate in the U.S. Forest Service. This office oversees national climate change policy and program development for the Agency to mitigate climate change and increase forest resiliency. She has 20+ years with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and has extensive experience in forest economics, social sciences, forest products, ecosystem services, urban forestry, and fish and wildlife research. Dr. West has served in various leadership roles in USFS’ Research and Development (R&D), including as the Associate Deputy Chief for R&D with responsibility for administering a $300 million annual research program to inform policy and land management decisions that improve the health and use of U.S. forests and grasslands, including 193 million acres of national forests. Before coming into the Washington Office as Director for Resource Use Sciences in the Washington Office, Dr. West served as Deputy Station Director for USFS’ Pacific Northwest Research Station in Portland, OR for 9 years. In this position, she provided oversight for the Station’s research programs across 10 laboratories and 11 experimental forests in Alaska, Washington, and Oregon. Dr. West also held positions in academia at Virginia Tech and Mississippi State University. She started her career working in forest management, with Weyerhaeuser in North Carolina. Dr. West holds a BS degree in Forestry Management, an MBA in Marketing and Management, and a PhD in Wood Science and Forest Products from Virginia Tech. As a research scientist, Dr. West published more than 60 papers and spoke at more than 80 conferences on forest sector trade and industry development.