GIS Center Faculty
The GIS Center is run by a GIS Center Director (Charlie Bettigole) and supported by collaboration with faculty members across disciplines at Skidmore.
Charlie Bettigole
GIS Center Director
Charlie Bettigole is the Director of the GIS Center for Interdisciplinary Research at Skidmore College. Charlie teaches all of Skidmore's GIS and remote sensing courses, and focuses on connecting students with a diverse array of applied, real-world research projects.
Charlie has a background in Wildlife Biology and Spatial Ecology (M.S. University of Vermont). He is broadly interested in leveraging the latest technologies in geoinformatics and data science to help solve pressing ecological dilemmas.
His current research is focused on optimizing sampling designs for mapping soil carbon, national-scale analyses of grazing system resiliency, remote sensing of invasive species in the Adirondack Park, NY, and the use of LiDAR datasets to detect remnants of Maya land use patterns in northern Guatemala. Research highlights include a spatially-explicit count of the number of trees on earth (3.04 trillion), and building tools and techniques to support large-scale mapping of soil carbon (stratifi web tool).
Prior to arriving at Skidmore in 2019, Charlie was a co-founder and program director of the Ucross High Plains Stewardship Initiative at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies - a program focused on sustainable ranching and land management in the American West.
Outside of work, you can find Charlie exploring the Adirondack Mountains by ski, mountain bike, and fly rod with his family.
Affiliated Faculty
- Siobhan Hart - Anthropology
- Heather Hurst - Anthropology
- Kris Covey - Environmental Studies and Sciences
- Kurt Smemo - Environmental Studies and Sciences
- A.J. Schneller - Environmental Studies and Sciences
- Nurcan Atalan-Helicke - Environmental Studies and Sciences
- Jordana Dym - History
- Andrew Lindner - Sociology