Jodi Brandt joined IFRI a postdoctoral research fellow in November 2012. Jodi’s primary objective is to identify strategies for how to conserve biodiversity in a rapidly changing world.  Her main approach is to measure land-use and land cover change from satellite imagery, and integrate those measurements with data on people and biodiversity to understand the causes and consequences of land cover change.

At IFRI, Jodi works on the Central African Forests and Institutions project (CAFI). The main objective of the CAFI project is to identify linkages between governance and forest change in the Congo Basin. Jodi will work with land cover change and governance data from Congo and Cameroon, to determine the effectiveness of Protected Areas, as well as the impacts of logging concession management and certification on forest cover and change. She looks forward to her first field visit to the study area in the summer of 2013!

Jodi came to IFRI with a PhD in Forest and Wildlife Ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a M.S. from the University of Maryland, and a B.S. from Yale University. She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala, a Fulbright scholar in Bolivia, and performed her PhD research in southwest China. She was drawn to IFRI by the interdisciplinary nature of the group, and has learned a great deal already from her IFRI colleagues in her short time at the University of Michigan.

Contact Jodi