Francis L. Precht

[IMAGE]
Associate Professor
Department of Geography
Frostburg State University

research interests:
[IMAGE] biogeography
[IMAGE] vegetation-environment relationships
[IMAGE] landscape ecology
[IMAGE] forest dynamics/community ecology
[IMAGE] ecological modeling using GIS

recent research projects:
[IMAGE] Female Black Bear Habitat Use Patterns
[IMAGE] Spatial Patterns of Vulnerability to Brown-headed Cowbird Parasitism

current research projects:
[IMAGE] Edge Considerations in Modeling Vulnerability to Brood Parasitism
[IMAGE] Vegetation/Solar Radiation Modeling
[IMAGE] Normalization of Satellite Imagery to Remove Topographuc Effects
[IMAGE] Multi-temporal Land Cover Classification
[IMAGE] Identifying Ecological Response Units (ERU's)

research summary:
My research is primarily in investigating environmental & ecological processes which affect landscape pattern and structure. In particular: What impact does pattern have on processes that act in a landscape? How are these processes influenced by landscape patterns? In what way do these interactions affect landscape pattern? What role does scale play in identifying influential variables ? Interests in vegetation-environments relationships, landscape ecology and community ecology naturally arise from these questions. I employ techniques ranging from point pattern analyses (univariate as well as bivariate, the latter of which is a terrific method for examining interaction effects), spatially distributed models (i.e. whole mosaic models) using Geographic Information systems (GIS) methods, GPS for field data collection, and Remote Sensing for coarse scale areal characterization.

current courses: (coarse name links to course syllabi)
[IMAGE] Biogeography(GEOG 445/545)
[IMAGE] GIS(GEOG 416/516)
[IMAGE] Climatology(GEOG 405)
[IMAGE] Computer Mapping & Graphics(GEOG 416)
[IMAGE] Physical Geography(GEOG 103)

some kewl (and some obligatory) links:
F.S.U. Dept. of Geography home page {gotta fix this link}
Frostburg State University home page
Association of American Geographers (AAG) home page

Francis L. Precht (Bud) f_precht@fre.fsu.umd.edu (E-mail to f_precht@fre.fsu.umd.edu)

This site is under perpetual construction! [IMAGE]

Back to Department of Geography's Home Page.