Saghi Sarafi

PhD Program

Research Areas:

Remote Sensing, GeoAI and Machine Learning, Vegetation and Land Cover Mapping, Wildlife Detection and Species Classification, Urban Heat and Climate Dynamics

Key Word Interests:

Remote sensing; Deep learning; Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs); Random Forest; Wildlife monitoring; Urban heat islands; Land cover change; Google Earth Engine (GEE)

Biography:

Saghi Sarafi is a Ph.D. student in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico. Her research focuses on remote sensing, geospatial analytics, and machine learning for mapping and understanding environmental change. Her current work explores automated vegetation mapping, land-cover change detection, and methods for quantifying uncertainty in dynamically updated geospatial products. She is broadly interested in using geospatial data and computational methods to better understand vegetation dynamics and environmental change.

Education:

Ph.D. student, Geography and Environmental Studies, University of New Mexico; M.A., Spatial Information Management, Carinthia University of Applied Sciences, Austria; M.A., Urban Design, Yazd University, Iran; B.A., Urban Planning, University of Kurdistan, Iran

Select Publications:

Sarafi, S., Lippitt, C. D., & Paulus, G. (in press). Landcover change and urban heat in a warming climate: A global satellite perspective. Theoretical and Applied Climatology.