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Kurt H.  Riitters
Kurt H. Riitters 

Employee Information
Name: Kurt H. Riitters 
Title: Landscape Ecologist
Unit: Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (4854)
Phone: 919-549-4015
Fax: 919-549-4047 - Location Fax
E-Mail: kriitters@fs.fed.us

Location Information
Mailing
Address:		 USDA-Forest Service
Southern Research Station
Forestry Sciences Laboratory
P.O. Box 12254
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
Shipping
Address:		 3041 E. Cornwallis Road
Research Triangle Park NC 27709
Location
Phone:

Research Information

Education:
University of Minnesota, Elected Studies, BES, 1976.
University of Minnesota, Forest Management, MF, 1978.
Oregon State University, Forest Science, PhD, 1986.

Current Research:
  1. Develop new approaches to measure, evaluate and predict landscape and forest spatial patterns and their implications for resource management. Current research focuses on multi-scale approaches from image processing, mathematical morphology, and graph theory.
  2. Conduct regional-to-global scale assessments of landscape patterns including forest fragmentation in support of United States commitments to national and international environmental reporting. Current research supports the United States Resource Planning Act (RPA), the international Montreal Process (MPCI), the non-governmental State of the Nation's Ecosystems report card, and other assessment processes.
  3. Develop approaches to harmonize landscape pattern assessment and management across disciplinary, legal, and scale boundaries. Current research focuses on national and international harmonization of status and trends indicators for forest, range, agriculture, and urban systems estimated from satellite imagery and land-cover maps.

Collaborative Research:
  1. Founding member of the Center for Landscape Pattern Analysis, an informal, interagency, international research consortium.
  2. Agency leader for United States landscape pattern assessments in the Resource Planning Act Assessments (RPA - forest and range spatial patterns) and Montreal Process Sustainability Reports (MPCI - forest fragmentation).
  3. Agency co-leader for biodiversity assessments in the Montreal Process.
  4. Expert support for landscape pattern assessments in the State of the Nation's Ecosystems report card by the H.J. Heinz Center.
  5. Research Collaboration Agreement with the European Commission, DG-Joint Research Center, for developing approaches to forest spatial pattern assessment.
  6. Collaborative research with Universita di Lecce (Italy) on multi-scale, spatial-temporal analysis of socio-ecological systems.
  7. Forest health assessments at national scale with the Forest Health Monitoring program.
  8. Adjunct Full Professor, Department of Forestry, North Carolina State University.
  9. Editorial Board, Landscape Ecology.

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Kurt H. Riitters

View a list of other employees in the Eastern Forest Environmental Threat Assessment Center (4854) Unit.