Dr. Yunuen Reygadas

Assistant Professor

Department of Geosciences, Mail Stop 1053, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1053 

Education 

PhD
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies,
Geographic Information Science
Texas State University, 2019

Master´s Degree                                   Environmental Geography Research Center,

Environmental Geography                National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2012

Bachelor´s Degree                                Faculty of Philosophy and Literature,

Geography                                             National Autonomous University of Mexico, 2009 

Professional appointments
Academic

Institution                                          Texas Tech University

Position                                               Assistant Professor

Period                                                  August 2023 – Present

Activities                                            

Research and education on remote sensing and spatiotemporal statistical analysis/modeling with a particular focus on land-use/land-cover changes and their environmental impacts.

Institution                                          University of Richmond-remote

Position                                               Postdoctoral Research Associate

Period                                                  July 2020 – October 2022

Activities                                            

Lead remote-sensor on NASA-SERVIR funded project: responsible for developing and implementing open-source algorithms and models to understand how forest disturbances affect ecosystem service indicators in the Southwestern Amazon.

Institution                                          Texas State University-San Marcos

Position                                              Graduate Research and Teaching Assistant

Period                                                  August 2015 – May 2019

Activities                                             Lecturer and lab instructor. Research assistant of the project

“Drivers of Land Cover Change in the Maya Biosphere Reserve”.

Non-academic

Institution                                          Department of Transportation, City of Austin

Position                                               IT Geospatial Analyst Sr

Period                                                  March 2020 – Jun 2020

Activities                                             Developed spatial models of parking services demand/supply. Performed spatio-temporal analysis of parking transactions.

Institution                                          Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food of Mexico (SAGARPA)

Position                                              Remote Sensing Specialist

Period                                                  Jun 2014 - July 2015

Activities                                             Co-responsible for implementing random forest models to facilitate Mexican cropland monitoring using SPOT images.

Institution                                          Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies on Energy and Environment (CMM)

Position                                              Project Engineer

Period                                                  September 2012 – April 2014

Activities                                             Developed a novel methodology to estimate risk of extreme meteorological events in Mexico.

Institution                                          TomTom, Mexico

Position                                               Internal Geographic Information Specialist

Period                                                   August 2009 – July 2010

Activities                                             Performed quality control updating protocols applied to TomTom

navigators’ cartography.

Publications
Peer-reviewed journal articles

Reygadas Y., S. Spera, and D. S. Salisbury. 2023. Effects of deforestation and forest degradation on ecosystem service indicators across the Southwestern Amazon. Ecological Indicators.

Reygadas, Y., S. Spera, V. Galati, D. S. Salisbury, S. Silva, and S. Novoa. 2021. Mapping forest disturbances across the Southwestern Amazon: tradeoffs between open-source, Landsat-based algorithms.

Environmental Research Communications. 

Devine, J. A., N. Currit, Y. Reygadas, L. Liller, and G. Allen. 2020. Drug trafficking, cattle ranching and land use and land cover change in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Land Use Policy.

Reygadas, Y., J. Jensen, G. G. Moisen, N. Currit, and E. T. Chow. 2020. Assessing the relationship between vegetation greenness and surface temperature through Granger causality and impulse-response coefficients: a case study in Mexico. International Journal of Remote Sensing. 

Reygadas, Y., J. Jensen, and G. G. Moisen. 2019. Forest degradation assessment based on trend analysis of MODIS-Leaf Area Index: a case study in Mexico. Remote Sensing. 11(21): 2503. 

Ojeda-Olivares, E. A., S. Sandoval-Torres, S.I. Belmonte-Jimenez, J.O. Campos-Enriquez, F. Zignol, Y. Reygadas, and J. Tiefenbacher. 2019. Climate change, land use/land cover change, and Population growth as drivers of groundwater depletion in the Central Valleys, Oaxaca, Mexico. Remote Sensing 11(11): 1290. 

Devine, J. A., D. Wrathall, N. Currit, B. Tellman, and Y. Reygadas. 2018. Narco-cattle ranching in political forest. Antipode.

Manuscripts under review

Cooley S., N. Pinto, M. Becerra, J. W. Vela-Alvarado, O. Rivera, K.Nielsen, J. W. Davis, G. E. Preciado, I. Clark, A. Fricker, N. Aguilar-Amuchastegui, Y. Reygadas, M. Irigoyen, R. DeFries, D. Menge.

Combining spaceborne lidar from GEDI with local knowledge in the forest-agriculture interface of Ucayali, Peru. Conservation Science and Practice.

Manuscripts in preparation

A. Flores, R. Kennedy, P. Oloffson, S. Chen, Y. Reygadas, S. Spera, T. Mayer... +20. Global intercomparison of forest disturbance algorithms.

LaRocca S., Y. Reygadas, S. Spera, D. S. Salisbury, and V. Galati. Increasing variability of the length and precipitation of the wet and dry seasons across the Southwestern Amazon.

Aryal R. R., A. K. Acharya , C. Wespestad, R. Kennedy, J. Dilger, K. Dyson, E. Bullock, S. Chen, M. Kono, Y. Reygadas, D. Saah, K. Tenneson. Multi-algorithm-informed stratification approach for detection and area estimation of forest canopy degradation, loss, and gain in Nepal.

Reports

Salisbury, D. S., Y. Reygadas, T. Hernández, S. Thomas, V. Jetton, E. Collard, D. Demerit, N. Winiarski, C. Simpson, and S. Spera. 2022. Workshop report: Ecosystem services and socio-environmental dynamics in the indigenous territories of the Ucayali-Yurúa-Juruá". Breu, Yurua, Peru. June, 2022.(English and Spanish).

Salisbury, D. S., Y. Reygadas, T. Hernández, S. Thomas, V. Jetton, E. Collard, D. Demerit, N. Winiarski, C. Simpson, S. Spera, D. Alvarado, W.A. Flores de Melo, and V. Martín. 2022. Workshop report: Transboundary corridors and ecosystem services of the Southwestern Amazon. June, 2022.

Pucallpa,Ucayali,Peru. 

Selected maps

Reygadas, Y. 2022. Annual forest cover conditions across the Southwestern Amazon, 2003-2020. 

Reygadas, Y., S. Salisbury. 2021. Map of road proposals, national parks, and topography of the Sierra del Divisor Range, Peru-Brazil borderlands. Spatial Analysis Lab, University of Richmond. NASA

SERVIR. (also publised in Spanish and Portuguese)

Salisbury D. S., S. A. Spera, E. Collard, A. Frisbie, M. R. Place, Y. Reygadas, and E. Zizzamia. 2021. Atlas de las carreteras propuestas en la zona transfronteriza Ucayali Perú-Acre, Brasil. Spatial Analysis Lab, University of Richmond. NASA SERVIR. 

Scholarly presentations

Invited talks

Reygadas, Y. 2023. Talk: Effects of forest cover changes on ecosystem service indicators across the Southwestern Amazon. Training: Precipitation trends estimation using GEE & R. Guest speaker and instructor. Advancing Women´s Prosperity in the Workplace: Train the Trainers Workshop. May 28 - June 4. SERVIR Global, Arizona State University, and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. Cali-Palmira, Colombia.

Reygadas, Y. 2022. Geospatial technology to connect space to village: the effect of forest cover changes on ecosystem services across the Southwestern Amazon. Keynote speaker. GIS Day, November 2022. Organizing insititutions: Geographic Society of Lima; Geomatic Lab, School of Geography, Major National University of San Marcos; Research Center in Applied Geography, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru; Geography Commission of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, Peru section.

Selected conference presentations

Reygadas, Y., S. Spera, and D. Salisbury. 2021. The impact of forest conditions on water recycling across the Southwestern Amazon. American Geophysical Union. New Orleans, LA & Online Everywhere, December 13-17. 

Reygadas, Y., S. Spera, D. Salisbury, and V. Galati. 2020. Mapping forest disturbances across the Southwestern Amazon: Evaluation and Comparison of Optical Remote Sensing Algorithms. American Geophysical Union. Online Everywhere, December 1-17. 

Reygadas, Y. 2018. Variation in vulnerability to land degradation through fuzzy logic: a 15-year time-series analysis in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, New Orleans, Loussiana, April 10 - 14.

Reygadas, Y. 2017. Assessing the correlation of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) clusters in the Maya Biosphere Reserve. Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, Boston, Massachusetts, April 5 - 9.

Reygadas, Y. 2016. Change in flood hazard in four sub-basins of the southern region of the City of Morelia, Mexico, 1995-2011-2050. Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco, California, March 29 – April 2. 

Teaching experience

Lecturer                                                Remote Sensing of the Environment Fall 2023

Lecturer                                                Principles of Remote Sensing

Fall 2017, Spring 2018, and Spring 2019

Lab instructor                                    Geographic Information Systems Design and Implementation

Fall 2018

Lab instructor                                    Fundamentals of Geographic Information Systems Fall 2016 and Spring 2017

Lab instructor                                    Introduction to Physical Geography Fall 2015 and Spring 2016

Technical/professional skills (experience level)

Languages                                           Spanish (native); English (advanced); Italian (intermediate) Programming languages                R and Python (advanced)

Software/environments                 ArcGISPro, Google Earth Engine, and Rstudio (advanced); QGIS

(intermediate)

Data analysis                                      Remote sensing, geographic information systems, spatial and time series analysis, geostatistics, and machine learning modeling (advanced)

Certifications

Trusted Reviewer. Indicates a high level of peer review competence and the ability to constructively critique scientific literature to an exceptional standard.

December 2022, does not expire

Fellowships
The Sally Ann Karnau Geography Dissertation Research Scholarship. $ 1,000. Department of Geographty, Texas State University.

2019

Doctoral Research Support Fellowship. $ 5,000. The Graduate College, Texas State University. 2019

Latin America Research Scholarship. $ 1,000. International Office, Texas State University. 2018 and 2019

The Bernard W. Detlefsen Doctoral Excellence Scholarship. $2,000. Department of Geography, Texas State University.

2017

Fellowship for Studying in Foreign Countries. Awarded $76,000; accepted $62,300. National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT).

2016-2019

The Graduate College Scholarship – Liberal Arts. $1,000. The Graduate College, Texas State University.

2016

Doctoral Merit Fellowship. $9,000.

The Graduate College, Texas State University. 2015-2016

Master´s Degree Studies Fellowship. $10,600.

National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT). 2010-2012

Undergraduate Thesis Scholarship. $1,000.

Program to Support Research and Technological Innovation Projects (PAPIIT), The Office for Academic Affairs (DGAPA).

2008-2009 

Awards
The John Wiley Graduate Award for Excellence in Geography Department of Geography, Texas State University

April 2017

Best Undergraduate Thesis in Geography

Academy of Geography of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics November 2010

Awarded with the “Gabino Barreda Medal” on having obtained the highest-grade point average at the end of BA in Geography

National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) July 2009

First place in the “Go to Argentina” contest, traveled to Argentina as a member of the “Eighth

Humboldt International Meeting”

Promoted by the Academy of Geography of the Mexican Society of Geography and Statistics September 2006

Other academic activities

Research stay about urban hydrologic modeling

Department of Geography of the Ludwing Maximimilians University-Munich Advisor: Dr. Peter Hasdenteufel

May - July 2011

Collaborator in the project “Economic assimilation in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico”

Geography Institute, National Autonomous University of Mexico 2008- 2009

Member of the Third Academic Exchange Mexico-France

National Preparatory School #1 “Gabino Barreda”, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

April - May 2004