Donald Field

Term: 2022 - 2025

Monitoring and Assessment Team Assignment: Submerged Aquatic Vegetation

STAC Member Since: July 2004 (Founding Member)

Title: Remote Sensing Specialist

Departments: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Ret.)

Education: PhD Remote Sensing and GIS, University of South Carolina, Columbia (2007) MS Fisheries and Wildlife, Clemson University (1983) BS Marine Biology, UMass Dartmouth (1980)

Primary Focus Area: Remote Sensing of Submerged Habitats

Secondary Focus Area(s): Investigating the capabilities of new remote sensing platforms

Career Experiences: I started my career as a fisheries technician at the Beaufort NOAA Lab in 1982, focusing on fisheries and seagrass issues in North Carolina and the Florida Keys. In 1986 I moved to Washington, D.C. and worked with the NOAA Strategic Assessment Branch, compiling and analyzing data on wetlands extent and change for the coterminous U.S. Since 1991 I have been working more on the technical side of remote sensing. In 1996 I moved to Charleston, SC and NOAA’s Coastal Services Center, working on the Coastal Change Analysis Program (CCAP). I started working on the terrestrial side, examining change in coastal wetlands using the Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite. In 2000 I got to move back to my favorite spot – Beaufort, NC and since that time have moved mostly into remote sensing of submerged habitats – coral, seagrass and algae. I particularly enjoy evaluating the myriad of new sensors that are coming on line, and developing new techniques to integrate ground truth data into image processing procedures. Over the past 5 years I have been lucky enough to be involved in projects using remote sensing to map submerged resources in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Florida, Washington and Alaska.