Dr. Ian McGregor

Current research

At Cary Institute, Dr. McGregor is collaborating with Dr. Evan Gora to better understand and characterize tropical forest mortality dynamics from two fronts. First, he is the developer of the code workflow for the Gigante project, where drone imagery is automatically processed to detect canopy gaps from giant trees in order to facilitate ground-validation and quantification of mortality events. Second, he works closely with project partners for the lightning project to more accurately detect lightning strikes, compare mortality dynamics of lightning to other causes like windthrow, and create a lightning risk assessment model for forested areas. Dr. McGregor's research is centered on Barro Colorado Island, Panama, while supporting analyses at other Gigante sites across the Tropics.

Previous research

Dr. McGregor completed his PhD at NC State under the guidance of Dr. Josh Gray. As a NASA Future Investigator in Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) recipient, he developed a near real-time, monitoring algorithm to detect deforestation in northern Myanmar. Using a mix of optical and synthetic aperture radar data, his research focused on three main areas: assessing the importance of trade-offs between accuracy and latency, improving detections by incorporating deforestation drivers, and integrating adaptive capacity to have a continuously improving model.

Prior to his PhD, Dr. McGregor worked as a research analyst with the Smithsonian’s Forest Global Earth Observatory (ForestGEO), and earned degrees from the University of Oxford (MSc) and the University of California Berkeley (BSc). His environmental policy and field experience together span the US, northern Europe, central Africa, and Myanmar with a primary focus in forest ecology.