• Remote sensing of forest ecosystems and regional remote sensing
• Soil-landscape modeling and terrain analysis
• Forest soils
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analysis
• Global positioning satellite systems, digital image processing
• Airborne mapping and environmental monitoring

Paul Gessler was born and raised in Wisconsin. He obtained his bachelor’s (natural resources) and master’s (environmental monitoring) degrees at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and served as a graduate research assistant at the Environmental Remote Sensing Center. He then went to work for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization – Division of Land & Water in Canberra, Australia, where he was charged with developing their geospatial research facilities. He completed his doctorate research in environmental modeling at the Australian National University in 1996 and spent one year as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California–Santa Barbara before joining the faculty at the University of Idaho in 1997. Paul and his family live in rural Latah County where he practices tree farming, gardening and log home renovation in his spare time.

Recent Publication Honors

Refereed Publications

• White, K.P., D.S. Page-Dumroese, M.D. Coleman, M.J. Kimsey, T.M. Shaw, J. Mandzak, P.E. Gessler, and J.A. Moore. Accepted. Douglas-fir growth and foliar nutrient status with nitrogen and multi-nutrient fertilization across parent materials of the Inland Northwest, USA. Journal of Forestry
• White, K.P. , M.D. Coleman, D.S. Page-Dumroese, and P.E. Gessler, M. Kimsey and T. Shaw. Accepted. Examining soil parent material influence over Douglas-fir stem growth response to fertilization: taking advantage of information from spatiotemporally distributed experiments. Forest Ecology and Management
• Tinkham, W.T., A.M.S. Smith, C. Hoffman, A.T. Hudak, M.J. Falkowski, M.E. Swanson, and P.E. Gessler. 2012. Investigating the influence of LIDAR ground surface errors on the utility of derived forest inventories. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 42:413-422.
• Brown, R., P. McDaniel, and P.E. Gessler. 2012. Terrain attribute modeling of volcanic ash distributions in northern Idaho. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 76(1): 1-9
• Jewett, J., R.L. Lawrence, L. Marshall and P.E. Gessler. 2011. Spatiotemporal relationships between climate and whitebark pine mortality in the greater yellowstone ecosystem. Forest Science. 57(4): 320-335.
• Sesnie, S., B. Finegan, P.E. Gessler, S. Rajaniemi, and A. Smith. 2010. The multispectral separability of Costa Rican rain forest composition and structural types with Landsat TM imagery and support vector machines. International Journal of Remote Sensing. 31(11):2885-2909.
• Falkowski, M.J., A.T. Hudak, N.L. Crookston, P.E. Gessler, E.H. Ubeler and A.M.S. Smith. 2010. Landscape-scale parameterization of a tree-level forest growth model: A k-NN imputation approach incorporating LiDAR data. Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 40(2): 184-199.
• Gorsevski P.V., P.E. Gessler and P. Jankowski. 2010. Integrating a fuzzy k-means classification and a Bayesian approach for spatial prediction of landslide hazard. In Fischer MM and Getis A (eds), Handbook of Applied Spatial Analysis, Springer. Chpt. F-1, p. 653-680.
• Eitel, J., D.S. Long, P.E. Gessler, E.R. Hunt, and D. Brown. 2009. Sensitivity of ground-based remote sensing estimates of wheat chlorophyll content to variation in soil reflectance. Soil Science Society of America Journal. 73(5): 1715-1723.
• Dickinson, J., A.Robinson, P.E. Gessler, A.M.S. Smith, and R.J. Harrod. 2009. Flatland in flames: a more simple canopy fire propagation model. International Journal of Wildland Fire. 18:527-535.
• Falkowski, M.J., J. Evans, S. Martinuzzi, P.E. Gessler and A.T. Hudak. 2009. Characterizing forest succession with LiDAR data: an evaluation for the Inland Northwest, USA. Remote Sensing of Environment. 113(5):946-956. H
• Strand, E.K., L.A. Vierling, S.C Bunting, and P.E. Gessler. 2009. Quantifying successional rates in western aspen woodlands: Current conditions, future predictions. Forest Ecology and Management. 257(8):1705-1715. H
• Gorsevski, P.V. and P.E. Gessler. 2009. The design and development of a hyperspectral and multispectral airborne mapping system. ISPRS Journal of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing 64:184-192.
• Sesnie, S., B. Finegan, P. Gessler, Z. Ramos. 2009. Landscale-scale environmental and floristic variation in Costa Rican old-growth rain forest remnants. Biotropica. 41(1): 16-26.
• Gessler, P., R. Pike, T. Hengl, R.A. MacMillan and H.I. Reuter. 2009. The future of geomorphometry. Chapter 28 In: Hengl, T., Reuter, H.I. (eds.), Geomorphometry: concepts, software, applications. Developments in Soil Science, Vol. 33, 637-651. Elsevier.
• Nelson, A., H.I. Reuter and P. Gessler. 2009. DEM production methods and sources. Chapter 3 In: Hengl, T., Reuter, H.I. (eds.), Geomorphometry: concepts, software, applications. Developments in Soil Science, Vol. 33, 65-86. Elsevier.
• Reuter, H.I., T. Hengl, P. Gessler and P. Soille. 2009. Preparation of DEMs for geomorphometric analysis. Chapter 4 In: Hengl, T., Reuter, H.I. (eds.), Geomorphometry: concepts, software, applications. Developments in Soil Science, Vol. 33, 87-120. Elsevier.

*You can view a full list of awards, and publications in Paul's CV.