Jenna Keany
PhD Graduate, Postdoctoral Fellow

Northern Arizona University, Environmental Futures Research Institute

Researchgate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jenna-Keany

Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ahr03FwAAAAJ&hl=en

Jenna Keany is a PhD candidate in Ecological and Environmental Informatics (T3 option) at Northern Arizona University. As a NASA FINESST grant recipient in the Earth Sciences division her proposal "Investigating African Forest Elephant Impacts on Forest Structure and Carbon Balance Using Multiscale Lidar Techniques" expands on her collaborative work with the Wildlife Conservation Society and NASA’s Biological Diversity and Ecological Forecasting Initiative to determine how Central African forest elephants impact canopy structure. Using near‐global lidar data from the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) sensor and forest elephant occurrence data, Jenna will establish forest elephant’s impact on vegetation through feeding and movement. Additionally, her research will compare GLAS and GEDI lidar to evaluate large‐scale changes in forest dynamics after heavy elephant poaching incidents over the last 20 years. Finally, she is interested in expanding access to NASA data products in rural communities in Central Africa and closing the gap between on-the-ground conservation and the remote sensing community.