Our Team

Dr. Saah is a founding member of Spatial Informatics Group.

Dr. Saah has been broadly trained as an environmental scientist with expertise in a number of areas including: landscape ecology, ecosystem ecology, hydrology, geomorphology, ecosystem modeling, natural hazard modeling, remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS) and geospatial analysis. He has used these skills to conduct research primarily at the landscape level in a variety of systems.

Dr. Saah has participated in research projects throughout the United States and Internationally. His academic research uses integrated geospatial science for multi-scale mapping, monitoring and modeling of environmental spatial heterogeneity, particularly in riparian, savanna, and forest ecosystems. These efforts include quantification of change in landscape pattern, investigating the linkages between pattern and processes, and understanding the pattern-process dynamic within different environmental management regimes.

To complement this, Dr. Saah’s consulting research interest and experience include: developing holistic decision support systems for resource management, assessing natural hazards, and quantifying ecosystem service valuation. In addition, all of his research addresses access, availability, and accuracy of geospatial and environmental datasets, and scale in natural resource and environmental research. Dr. Saah is committed to producing high quality research projects that integrate the most current science and technology. He is dedicated to the accurate dissemination of results from these endeavors through innovative presentations, publications, and workshops.

Tim Kramer oversees the SIG Carbon team that includes a portfolio of 25 Improved Forest Management projects, encompassing 1,000,000+ acres and 17 million credits in the voluntary and California compliance market. Tim works with clients, directs SIG’s technical staff, supervises third party contractors, and coordinates with carbon registry administrators. Tim also leads SIG’s efforts to accelerate innovation in natural climate solutions through the integration of remote sensing technologies into forest carbon development and standards.

As a carbon and land management specialist, Tim has more than sixteen years of experience overseeing projects for private, tribal nations, government and non-profit organizations. Prior to joining SIG, Tim worked in state government managing large-scale restoration planning projects and in the private sector where he led efforts to implement large-scale land management and planning initiatives for a wide range of clients. Tim holds a B.A. in Geography from University of Iowa and a Master of Environmental Science (MESc) from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

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Ethel Wilkerson is the Director of Operations for SIG Carbon. She is responsible for the development of forest carbon projects. Ethel is an environmental scientist by training with expertise in stream ecology and watershed management, ecosystem service markets, and climate change mitigation and adaptation. Ethel has served as the program manager for studies on forestry and watershed management, carbon offsets, recreation management, and fisheries restoration and diversification. Ethel has over 15 years experience working with diverse stakeholders on natural resource and sustainability projects.

Ethel has a Master of Environmental Science and Master of Public Affairs (MSES/MPA) from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. She also serves as the President of her community’s land trust and as a Girl Scout leader. Ethel is based in Maine.

As a Senior Carbon Analyst, Santosh will be leading project development and maintenance of US forest carbon offset projects to ensure compliance with standards, methods, and protocols adopted by American Carbon Registry and California Air Resources Board. Santosh am a forest biometrician with expertise in growth and yield modelling, forest optimization, inventory data processing, model developments, forest soils, and ecophysiology of southern pine stands. Santosh has spent past ten years working as a forest data analyst and a biometrician helping TIMOs, REITs, and private landowners in solving their environmental and financial issues.

Prior to joining SIG, Santosh was a senior biometrician for six years in a consulting firm based in the southeastern United States where Santosh lead its effort in growth and yield modelling and forest optimization. Santosh developed the growth and yield system and harvest schedule models for both forest operation group and forest appraisal group. Prior to this, Santosh worked at Virginia Tech as a post doctoral research associate where he researched Carbon and nutrients dynamics in the forest soils.

Santosh received a B.S. in forest science from Institute of Forestry at Tribhuvan University, an M.S. in silviculture and biometrics from the University of Georgia, and a Ph.D. in tree ecophysiology and forest modeling from Virginia Tech.

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Sunil is a Biometrician for SIG Carbon. Sunil is broadly trained in forestry, geospatial technology, forest inventory, data Sunil is a Biometrician for SIG Carbon. Sunil is broadly trained in forestry, geospatial technology, forest inventory, data management, visualization, and analysis and enjoys applying spatial and statistical techniques to understand and quantify forest dynamics.

He enjoys analyzing and managing forest inventory data of various sizes, formats, and inventory designs and forecasting growth and yield the most. His expertise includes data management, spatial and statistical analysis, silviculture, forest inventory, growth and yield model, optimization, and quantifying forest health risks.

Sunil has a PhD in Forestry from Auburn University, an MS in Forestry Sciences from Mississippi State University and a BS in Forestry from the Institute of Forestry, Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He has more than nine years of working experience at the Department of National Park and Wildlife Conservation, Nepal.

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Mike is a Carbon Analyst for SIG Carbon, and supports project managers and technical staff in the development, coordination and completion of forest carbon projects. Prior to joining SIG Carbon, Mike was a research specialist at Princeton University, where he developed methods to assess the emissions impacts of land use change, and served as an environmental specialist in the Peace Corps. Mike has a MS in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy from the University of Minnesota and a BS in Forest Management from Colorado State University.

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Keith is a Senior Carbon Manager where he is responsible for developing and managing forest carbon offset projects. Keith has over twelve years managing conservation forestry projects and programs. For the past seven years he has developed and implemented a wide variety of forest restoration and wildfire mitigation projects across the Colorado Front Range. He has additional expertise in forest management planning, and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification system.

Keith is a Certified Forester and holds a Masters of Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Keith hails from northern New Mexico and is based in Boulder, Colorado.

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Eric Jaeschke is a senior project manager at SIG and a seasoned forester with ten years of experience in forestry. Eric is responsible for the development, coordination and completion of forest carbon offset projects. In this capacity, Eric manages technical deliverables and the workflow of multiple projects through the development and monitoring phases.

Previously, Eric was a lead auditor, senior project manager, and GIS specialist in the forest carbon industry and was involved in the audit of over 75 projects in voluntary and compliance carbon markets. His experience also includes several years as a field forester for the USDA Forest Service. Eric is a California Air Resources Board Lead Verifier, Certified Forester with the Society of American Foresters (SAF), a California Registered Professional Forester, and a West Virginia Registered Professional Forester. Eric holds a B.S. in Forestry from West Virginia University and a M.S. in Forestry from North Carolina State University.

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Gary Johnson leads the software development team for Spatial Informatics Group.  His passion is finding new ways to use advanced computational techniques to solve meaningful environmental problems.

He specializes in the dynamic modeling of spatially distributed environmental phenomena and has built a variety of software applications in this domain, including ecosystem services (SPAN and ARIES), carbon sequestration (CAMEO), and wildland fire (IWAP, GridFire, and Pyregence).

His research interests include simulation modeling, literate programming, functional programming, extreme value statistics, decision support systems, risk assessment and uncertainty modeling, data mining, and machine learning.

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Dr. Thomas Buchholz leads the Forest and Agriculture Team at SIG. Thomas has more than 16 years of experience in working with governments, academia, nonprofits and the private sector in forest management, economics as well as energy and carbon life cycle assessments (LCA) for of natural forests as well as timber and biomass plantations in the US, Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Thomas combines technical expertise on forest ecology, wildfire risk and behavior, remote sensing applications, ecosystem service markets (e.g. carbon offsets) and wood product markets to provide new forest management opportunities to clients. Thomas has affiliations with the University of Montana, Strathmore University in Nairobi, Kenya, and the Gund Institute for Environment at the University of Vermont. He has been the lead author of numerous peer-reviewed science publications and technical reports on forest economics and forest-based bioenergy topics across the globe, ranging from carbon LCA’s for wildfire-prone forests in the western US to bioenergy economics in East Africa. Thomas is based in Missoula, Montana.

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James Cwiklik is a Senior Carbon Manager at SIG with over five years of experience in forest carbon. Previously, he was Technical Manager and a Verification Forester with SCS Global Systems. In this role he operated as Manager of the domestic forest carbon offset team, lead auditor, technical specialist, and technical reviewer under various carbon standards and registries. This role included training and managing verification foresters and contractors, performing field audits, vegetation sampling, carbon quantification and modeling, as well as extensive document reviews. He is certified as a US Forest Carbon Specialist Lead Verifier under the California Air Resources Board and as a Project Expert under Climate Forward. Prior to his work with SCS Global Services, he was a Lead Consulting Forester with Davey Tree’s Resource Division supervising a team of foresters for Pacific Gas and Electric’s (PG&E) Community Pipeline Safety Initiative (CPSI) project. He has contributed to the efforts of eradicating the Asian longhorned beetle in southwestern Ohio as an Inventory Arborist and Quality Control Specialist. He also has experience as a Forest Technician Crew Leader having previously worked with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources performing forest inventories across northern Michigan.
Mr. Cwiklik has a Masters of Forestry from Michigan Technological University. He completed his undergraduate work at the University of Pittsburgh, receiving a B.A. in Environmental Studies, with a minor in Religious Studies and a certificate in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He is an avid reader, musician, and traveler in search of beautiful destinations and rich history.

Sean is a Forest Biometrician working on the development and maintenance of U.S. forest carbon offset projects within SIG’s quantitative carbon team. Sean has over 20 years of experience in global forest inventory and biometrics, including 13 years in TIMO environments and 8 years with different forestry consulting firms. His experience covers all major US forest geographies as well as numerous species and regions in Central and South America and a few combinations of species and geography in Europe. Sean’s areas of expertise include forest inventory design, management, and compilation; growth and yield model development, validation, application, and comparison; statistical analysis; data management, processing, summarization, and reporting, and forest inventory support for all aspects of forest management. Sean received a B.S. in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.S. in Forest Biometrics from Michigan State University, an M.S. in Statistics from Oregon State University, and a Ph.D. in Forest Modeling from Oregon State University.

Maggie’s educational background includes forest ecosystems, natural resource management, climate vulnerability assessments, and geographic information systems (GIS). Maggie obtained her BS from the University of California, Berkeley, in Forest and Natural Resources and her MS from Oregon State University. Her thesis investigated the vulnerability of Oregon and Washington’s natural areas to climate change through climate envelope modeling and a qualitative risk assessment using ArcMap. Professionally, Maggie’s been managing numerous grants and monitoring projects for the Wildlife Conservation Board and California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW). Most recently, she was responsible for the implementation of CDFW’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program (CRGP). This included the formulation and development of statewide policies and guidance for CRGP, and leading the strategic planning based on the directive of California’s Environmental Restoration and Protection Account pursuant to Revenue and Taxation Code section 34019(f)(2).

Chris Shrieves is a Carbon Manager for SIG Carbon: managing and supporting the origination, development, and ongoing oversight of forest carbon projects. He also ensures that projects comply with carbon offset programs, standards, protocols, and methodologies. He previously worked at The Nature Conservancy, where he was responsible for capturing, tracking, and analyzing/reporting on the Conservancy’s conservation-related activities, managing the carbon project review process, and supporting the Carbon Project Review Committee. Chris’ background is in climate policy, carbon pricing and markets, forest carbon, conservation, and data science, with a B.A. and M.A. from George Mason University and certificates from the University of Toronto and Cornell University.

Gary Roller is the Field Lead for SIG Carbon. He is a California Registered Professional Forester (#2899) with over 18 years’ experience in natural resource management, applied forest ecology, research-grade data collection, and sampling design. Gary has held instructor positions in silviculture, dendrology, and forest mensuration, as well as positions as a forester and a research associate at the University of California Berkeley, Wildland Fire Science Laboratory and the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station. He is co-author of several publications in forest ecology and fire behavior modeling. Gary received both his B.S. in Forestry and Natural Resource Management and M.S. in Forestry Science and from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA.

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Jarrett Barbuto is a geospatial analyst and research scientist for SIG Carbon. Prior to joining SIG, Jarrett was a supervisory GIS technician at University of Vermont’s Spatial Analysis Lab, and a member of the Lab’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Team. Jarrett is a FAA Certified UAS Pilot, and has completed over 50 UAS missions (from flight planning to data collection and processing to feature extraction and map production). Jarrett has been involved in a wide-variety of GIS projects, which have utilized different sources of remotely sensed data (e.g., multispectral, hyperspectral, and near-infrared), that mostly focused on the creation of high-resolution land cover maps. During his post-college gap years, Jarrett worked in mountain communication departments at Mt, Bachelor and Jackson Hole resorts, where he was responsible for posting daily snow condition reports. He holds a BS degree in Environmental Science with a focus on Natural Resources at the University of Vermont.

William Keeton is a Professor of Forest Ecology and Forestry at the University of Vermont’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and an advisor to SIG Carbon. He directs UVM’s Carbon Dynamics Laboratory, is Chair of the Forestry Program, and directs the Vermont Forest Ecosystem Management Demonstration Project. Dr. Keeton received his BS in Natural Resources from Cornell University and his Masters in Conservation Biology and Policy from Yale University. He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Ecology from the University of Washington. His current research focuses on forest carbon management including modeling, climate change impacts on forest ecosystems, natural disturbance-based silvicultural systems, natural disturbance ecology, the structure and function of late-successional forest systems, forest-stream interactions, and forest biodiversity. Dr. Keeton served as a Fulbright Scholar in Ukraine and continues to work actively on sustainable forest management in Eastern Europe. He has been a P.I. or Co-P.I. on over 2.5 million in research grants and served as major adviser for 18 graduate students. His record includes over 70 publications (including more than 40 peer-reviewed journal papers).