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Susan R. Crow
Geospatial Technologies Lab Director

Since 1993, Susan has been engaged in projects around the state of Georgia to apply decision processes and Geographic Information Systems technology to help communities better understand implications of current growth management strategies and envision alternative futures. Most of her work is focused on water resources and watershed planning. For example, her work on the Broad River Community Watershed Project involved developing a watershed-wide GIS database and spatial analysis models to highlight areas of high development potential and sensitive natural resources.
( http://home.earthlink.net/~broadriverwa/brwa.proj.html)

From 1999 to 2001, Susan worked with Environmental Systems Research Institute's (ESRI) spatial modeling team and was responsible for technology assessment and consultation on spatial modeling applications. Susan has participated as an Invited Visiting Fellow at the Coastal Institute of The University of Rhode Island and an Invited Participant in the 2001 Workshop in Landscape Change sponsored by NSF, NCGIA and LAF. She is a past Associate Editor of Wetlands and an invited speaker at various conferences, and institutions, including the Ecosystem Management Initiative and the Landscape Architecture Program at The University of Michigan and the National Consortium for Rural Geospatial Innovations in America Technical Workshop Program.

Presently Susan is a affiliate Research Scientist with the Center for Remote Sensing and Mapping Science in the Department of Geography and the River Basin Center in the Institute of Ecology at UGA in Athens. Susan serves on the National Science Foundation's Visiting Committee for AgrowKnowledge: The National Center for Agriscience & Technology at Kirkwood Community College. She also is a member of the teaching faculty in the Agriscience and Environmental Systems four-year degree program on the University of Georgia, Tifton Campus. Her research interests include application of remote sensing and GIS technologies for environmental assessment and decision support, citizen participation in environmental planning and policy development, and effectiveness of incentive-based programs to achieve public policy initiatives for natural resource conservation.
Danna Betts
Research Technician III

Danna Betts has worked at NESPAL at the University of Georgia , Tifton Campus for about seven years. Presently, Danna is working with ArcGIS and related visualization software to examine existing development and illustrate alternative future growth scenarios for Georgia coastal counties. Her previous work program included database management for two major projects: an agricultural water withdrawal permit mapping project for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Environmental Protection Division (EPD), and the University of Georgia 's Agricultural Water Pumping (AWP) project. The permit mapping project included: working with EPD staff to understand permit regulations and obtain an up-to-date permit database; importing GIS datasets displaying agricultural fields; working with County Agents to arrange permit mapping workshops; working with farmers to explain goals of the mapping initiative and to map their irrigated field areas; coordinating with farmers and EPD staff to plan efficient strategies for completing the mapping project; monitoring communications and follow-up to map all agricultural water withdrawal permits in 17 Georgia counties; and producing official Permit Maps for farmers and landowners. For the AWP project Danna coordinated with team members who were gathering data from 800 field metering sites to populate and maintain a database of monthly field records and instantaneous records from automated sites. Danna has completed two A.A.S. degrees from Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College , and is currently pursuing her B.S.A. in Agriscience and Environmental Systems at the University of Georgia , Tifton Campus. Danna was born and raised in Thomas County , Georgia , and currently lives in Cook County with her husband, Tony.

Mario Giraldo
GIS/RS Technician

Mario is a GIS/RS technician working on special projects for the Geospatial Technology Laboratory. From his origins in Colombia, South America, Mario came to the U.S., as an Agriculture Engineer with a BsD, to pursue graduate studies in Geography at University of Georgia in Athens. During his master program, Mario participated in a collaborative agricultural research initiative between UGA, EARTH University and the International Center for Agriculture CATIE in Costa Rica. During the summers of 2002 and 2003, he conducted field work at EARTH University that resulted in a geospatial database to support research in precision agriculture, watershed management and environmental degradation. Graduating with a Master in Science in 2003, his thesis examined landuse changes in the Caribbean of Costa Rica between 1973 and 2001, using Landsat imagery and aerial photographs. The GIS database developed for this project may support agricultural production and tropical forest management following sustainable development criteria. Mario’s current research interests include geospatial technologies applied to decision making processes in the rural landscape and Remote Sensing and GIS applications in agriculture and regional planning processes.
Nicholas O’Day
GIS Technician

Over the course of the past three years, Nicholas has worked in the GTL and has become an integral part of several ongoing projects. In particular, he has worked on a cooperative project with the USDA Southeast Watershed Research Laboratory digitizing fields from historical aerial photography and relating detailed seasonal crop data to enhance the Little River watershed database. He has assembled USFWS National Wetlands Inventory data to create comprehensive datasets for several study areas in Georgia . Nicholas also contributed to a project in which land use/land cover changes were digitized, from historical photographs of Effingham County , to assess trends in the county over the past 40 years.  Nicholas has become proficient in the use of various ESRI applications and federal and state digital datasets. When he is not in the GTL, he is on the Valdosta State University campus where he is working on a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with an emphasis in Finance.  Nicholas expects to graduate in Spring 2007.
Tammy L. Coppage
GIS Technician

Tammy joined the GTL in June 2004, as a student intern. She graduated from Valdosta State University in December 2004, with a B.S. in Environmental Geography. She has worked on major projects including delineating land use/land cover changes over a 40 year period in Effingham County , Georgia . The project involved interpreting and digitizing land use changes from historical aerial photography. Working on various projects in the lab, she has enhanced her skills in air photo interpretation. She has become particularly experienced with the ArcGIS editing environment and familiar with ERDAS Imagine's Spatial Modeler. Tammy has developed considerable expertise using bibliography software to construct digital reference libraries. Currently she is working on a farmland preservation project for Effingham County , Georgia . Tammy was born and raised in Burke County, Georgia, and was recently married to her husband Herman.