Evan Brooks

Dr. Evan Brooks is a Researcher in the Department of Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation at Virginia Tech's College of Natural Resources and Environment. His work focuses on leveraging remote sensing and big data to monitor and model landscape changes, particularly in forests. He specializes in analyzing land cover and land use dynamics at regional to continental scales, with a strong emphasis on temporal trajectory analysis using satellite imagery.

Brooks holds a Ph.D. in Forestry (Remote Sensing specialization) from Virginia Tech (2013), an M.S. in Statistics (2010), an M.A. in Mathematics (Probability) from the University of North Texas (2007), and B.A. degrees in Physics and Mathematics from the University of North Texas (2004).

His research interests include landscape ecology, human-natural system interactions, and the development of advanced algorithms for forest monitoring. Notable projects include contributions to the Resource Planning Act 2020 Assessment (2016–present) and the USDA-funded PINEMAP project (2013–2016), where he worked on climate and soil data integration for growth modeling.

His publications emphasize innovative applications of Landsat data, statistical quality control, and ensemble methods for forest change detection. He collaborates widely on topics like carbon cycle predictions, forest productivity under climate change, and algorithmic approaches to environmental monitoring.