About Jessica

Dr. O'Connell is a landscape ecologist, data scientist, and remote sensing specialist. She is the PI of the Landscape Modeling Lab. Her research evaluates spatiotemporal processes, often in wetland-dominated landscapes, with a goal of forecasting ecosystem resiliency to stressors, such as climate change and sea level rise. Her research evaluates multiple responses, such as landscape vegetation, carbon balance, and surface water dynamics. Lab research outputs include scalable open-science tools that map ecosystem functions and trajectories. Dr. O'Connell conducted her postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Georgia. Students in the O'Connell Landscape Modeling Lab receive interdisciplinary training that spans field ecological studies, emerging computational technologies, and remotes sensing product development.

Website Google Scholar Profile CV

Interests

  • Remote sensing analyses and products
  • Data science, machine learning, and emerging technologies
  • Field ecological observations and experiments
  • Open science and reproducible research
  • Wetlands: tidal, depressional, coastal, interior, fresh, brackish, and saltwater; grassy marshes, playas, prairie potholes, mangroves, and forested swamps
  • Plant population and community dynamics, whole plant productivity and phenology
  • Landscape carbon, plant-soil interactions, surface temperature, water dynamics, belowground remote sensing
  • Climate change
  • Ecosystem functions and services, wildlife habitat provisioning, ecosystem forecasting and trajectories
  • Landscape ecosystem conservation, restoration, and resiliency

Education

PhD, - Oklahoma State University
Stillwater, OK, 2012

MS, - Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA, 2006

BA, - Sonoma State University
Rohnert Park, CA, 2003

Awards, Honors, Grants

  • Press: Changing Seas, PBS documentary concerning the GCE-LTER, features BERM, our coastal resiliency and ecosystem trajectory belowground biomass model, https://www.changingseas.tv/season-13/1302/
  • Grant: Assessing the climate change mitigation potential of wetland restoration in the Conservation Reserve Program: Measurements, modeling, and scaling changes in soil carbon and greenhouse gas fluxes. USDA, 2021-2025
  • Grant: A tidal and species based MODIS GPP product for estimating marsh blue carbon across the Southeastern United States. NASA, 2017-2020
  • Grant: A novel hybrid approach for mapping belowground productivity and carbon sequestration potential within Georgia salt marshes. Georgia Sea Grant, 2016-2018

Memberships

  • Co-PI, Georgia Coasatal Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research Project; https://gce-lter.marsci.uga.edu/
  • American Geophysical Union
  • Ecological Society of America
  • Coastal & Estuarine Research Federation