Projects that I led during my graduate program focused on characterizing the land-use/cover change dynamics of heterogeneous mountainous landscapes in Guatemala. Central to this work was developing a methodology to map shade-grown coffee systems, given their spectral similarity to natural forest ecosystems. Resulting work was published in PE&RS and Applied Geography. New work with scholars from Conservation International is forthcoming.
Publications
- Hunt, D., K. Tabor, J.H. Hewson, M.A. Wood, L. Reymondin, K. Koenig, M. Schmitt-Harsh, and F. Follett. 2020. Review of remote sensing methods to map coffee production systems. Remote Sensing of the Environment 12(12).
- Schmitt-Harsh, M. 2013. Landscape change in Guatemala: Driving forces of forest and coffee agroforest expansion and contraction from 1990 to 2010. Journal of Applied Geography 40: 40-50.
- Schmitt-Harsh, M., S. Sweeney, and T. Evans. 2013. Classification of coffee-forest landscapes using Landsat TM imagery and spectral mixture analysis. Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing 79(5): 457-468
Recent Presentations
- Schmitt-Harsh, M. 2019. Mapping coffee-forest landscapes in Guatemala. Conservation and Forest Conservation Workshop. Conservation International, Washington DC, August 13.