About
I’m an environmental scientist and geospatial data engineer who works at the intersection of applied conservation, remote sensing, and environmental history.
On the technical side, I build reproducible geospatial tools; most recently, I built an open Google Earth Engine workflow for detecting winter livestock-waste applications on snow, published in Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment. On the theoretical side, I study how environmental professionals see and value the landscapes they manage, which was the subject of my master’s thesis on urban forestry in Austin and Denver. I’m also a co-author of “Great Green Walls: Hype, Myth, and Science” (Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 2023), a critical peer-reviewed review of large-scale afforestation programs across Africa and China.
I hold an M.S. in Environment and Resources from the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and a B.A. in Mathematics from Carleton College. I’ve collaborated with the Environmental Law & Policy Center on satellite-based environmental monitoring projects, and I’ve worked for Forrester Research synthesizing data and AI research for a corporate audience. Alongside the academic and technical work, I map and write about the prairies of southern Wisconsin and grow rare native plants from seed, documenting the process, successes and failures alike, at Practical Seed Ecology.
What I work with
Remote sensing & geospatial: Google Earth Engine (Python & JavaScript), QGIS, ArcGIS, Envi, Sentinel-2 & Landsat imagery.
Data science: Python (pandas, geopandas), data cleaning and pipeline design, Jupyter, reproducible workflows.
Research & writing: qualitative fieldwork and interviews, environmental history and archival research, science communication for general audiences.
Publications
- Suiter, A., Hatami, P., & Gao, S. (2026). Near-real-time detection of manure applications on snow-covered croplands in Google Earth Engine using Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8/9.
- Turner, M. D., Davis, D. K., Yeh, E. T., Hiernaux, P., Loizeaux, E. R., Fornof, E. M., Rice, A. M., & Suiter, A. K. (2023). Great Green Walls: Hype, Myth, and Science.