Co-principal investigator

College Associate Professor

Major Field of Interest

Geospatial measurement and modeling of vegetation, disturbance and the carbon cycle in arid and semi-arid systems.

Education

• B.S., Archaeology, Boston University, 1990
• M.S., Geography, University of Maryland, 1992
• Ph.D., Ecology, Colorado State University, 2004
• Post-Doctoral, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University

Courses Taught

RGSC 317 Rangeland Communities

Research

Dr. Prihodko is a broadly trained Ecologist enthusiastic about interdisciplinary research. Dr. Prihodko's current research interests are in the area of geospatial measurement and modeling of vegetation, disturbance and the carbon cycle in arid and semi-arid systems.

Past research has included characterizing the sensitivity and uncertainty of land surface models due to their parameterization with data assimilation techniques and model parameterization of drought tolerance in the seasonally dry Amazonian rainforest to improve coupled carbon-climate simulations. More recently, her work has focused on coupled human and natural systems in continental Africa and extensive grazing systems in Africa and the Himalayas. A new emphasis is on climate change impacts in the drylands of the US southwest. Current projects include:

• Development of a model of vegetation, disturbance (fire and herbivory) and carbon cycle dynamics for continental Africa to assess the role of Africa in the global carbon cycle
• Modeling dryland water and energy exchange to understand land surface-atmosphere interactions at local to regional scales in southwestern USA drylands
• Evaluating long-term vegetation change in southwestern USA sky-islands with historical ecologic and climate records and contemporary data collection and modeling

Expertise

Logic Programming, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Commonsense Reasoning, Intelligent Agents, Planning and Plan Verification