Presentors

Rafael de Ameller

Rafael “Rafa” de Ameller is an Earth scientist, a technologist, and an innovator, and since 2018 is the lead of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s Environmental Visualization Lab, also known as the NOAA VizLab. As an expert in Earth systems and satellite data observations and visualization, he heads a team with diverse expertise, including media communications, graphic design, education, computer programming, and data systems engineering.  

The NOAA VizLab is a highly productive team, continuously engaged in preparing a wide variety of communications products from NOAA science data, including daily content for websites and multiple social media platforms, newsletters, educational infographics, geospatial data services and applications, story-driven news articles, technical reports, motion graphics animations, classroom tools, exhibit support and designs, and more.

Juan Pablo Hurtado

Juan Pablo Hurtado was born in La Paz, Bolivia. He obtained his BS in Industrial Engineering from Universidad Mayor de San Simon and worked as a field engineer in the oil and gas industry. After moving to the US, he obtained his Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park, and began working as an electron microscopy trainer and operator. As a microscopy educator at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, he discovered his passion for education and science communication. Currently, he is the Visualization Lead for the Science On a Sphere program at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. His work revolves around using data to develop science educational products, facilitate outreach efforts, and improve accessibility for underserved audiences.

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Presentor

Morgan Zabow 

Morgan Zabow is the Community Heat and Health Program Manager with NOAA's Climate Program Office. In this role, she co-leads an interagency heat communications team, which includes large scale federal social media campaigns and creating infographics and messaging for heat preparedness. She also leads NOAA’s community science Urban Heat Island mapping campaigns, where she works with community members and organizations across the country and internationally to map the hottest parts of their communities in hopes of implementing solutions for those who are most disproportionately impacted by heat. Morgan has a Masters of Public Health in Environmental Health from Emory University, and a Bachelors of Science from the University of Georgia.

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Presenter

Dr. Derek P. Manzello

Dr. Derek Manzello is a coral reef ecologist, with a Ph.D. in Marine Biology and Fisheries from the Rosenstiel School of the University of Miami, Dr. Manzello is Coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch program, an effort focused on the monitoring of coral reef ecosystems through satellite observations. Coral Reef Watch is a part of NOAA’s NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research and uses NOAA and international satellite data to monitor environmental conditions that lead to coral bleaching. From 2001-2021, Derek worked at NOAA’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Miami, FL, where he led the development and implementation of the climate change and ocean acidification monitoring of the NOAA National Coral Reef Monitoring Program for U.S. coral reef ecosystems.

Dr. Manzello has published on multiple topics in coral reef ecology, and regularly conducts research that spans the disciplines of biology, chemistry, and geology. His primary research interest is understanding the impact of climate change and ocean acidification to coral reef ecosystems. Manzello has conducted over 1000 scientific dives while researching coral reefs in all U.S. coral reef jurisdictions, as well as international locations in the Pacific (Galapagos, Panama, French Polynesia, Fiji, Palau, Papua New Guinea) and Indian Ocean (Chagos Archipelago). 

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Presenter

Adam Smith

Adam Smith is an applied climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information–Climate Science and Services Division. He is the lead scientist for the U.S. Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters program. Mr. Smith performs research to standardize and integrate many public and private sector disaster data sources into better quality-controlled disaster cost frameworks as research tools.

Mr. Smith also leads numerous NCEI Industry Proving Ground (IPG) projects seeking to incorporate hazard information needs and product enhancements requested by the private Re/insurance sector.

Mr. Smith regularly briefs the Science for Disaster Reduction working group on U.S. disaster costs and is an NOAA expert on U.S. disaster loss data in support of the international Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2016-2024), the American Meteorological Society Committee on Financial Weather Risk Management (2015–2024), the Hazards and Natural Capital Interagency Working Group (2023-2024) and the World Meteorological Organization international team for Cataloguing of Hazardous Weather, Water, Climate, Environmental and Space Weather Events (2020-2024). The WMO-CHE team is establishing globally agreed standards and procedures for identifying and cataloging hazardous weather, climate, water, and space weather events has hampered the routine characterization and tracking of such events and associated losses and damages.

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Presentors

Dr. Damien Chua

Dr. Damien Chua has been a Research Physicist at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C. since 2004. He received his Ph.D. in Geophysics at the University of Washington in 2002. Dr. Chua specializes in remote sensing of ionospheric and heliospheric plasmas for space weather forecasting applications.

Dr. Arnaud Thernisien

Dr. Arnaud Thernisien received an engineering degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Physique de Marseille (now Ecole Centrale de Marseille), France, in 1999, and a Ph.D. degree in Optics, Photonics and Image processing at the Université Paul Cézane of Marseille, France, in 2008. 

He worked at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, where he developed a ground processing pipeline and worked on in-flight calibration of the LASCO coronagraphs onboard the ESA-NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft. In 2003, he started to work as a contractor and then, in 2013, as an employee in the Space Science Division, Solar Physics Branch, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC, USA. 

On the research side, he developed a forward modeling technique for the 3D reconstruction of solar coronal features, particularly coronal mass ejections (CMEs), using data from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft. On the engineering side, he was the optics lead of the SoloHI (Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager) instrument as well as the WISPR (Wide Field Imager for Parker Solar Probe) instrument. 

Dr. Thernisien is the current Principal Investigator of the Compact Coronagraph (CCOR). CCOR is a series of operational space coronagraphs, funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that will be used to perform space weather forecasts.

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Presentor

Dr. Dimitrios Vassiliadis

Dimitrios Vassiliadis earned his Ph.D. in space physics at the University of Maryland, College Park and was a postdoc at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center. There, he worked on magnetospheric dynamics and space weather effects as well as developed predictive models based on data from spacecraft such as ACE, WIND, SAMPEX, POLAR, etc., and ground magnetometers and other systems. 

He then taught physics, astronomy, and other subjects in academia where he worked with graduate and undergraduate students on space physics and aerospace engineering projects such as cubesat and sounding-rocket payloads. Since joining NOAA/NESDIS, he has been active in the Space Weather Follow On (SWFO) and Space Weather Next (SW Next) programs, and other flight projects.

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Presenter

Mark Miesch

Mark Miesch is a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado and NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). 

As a member of SWPC's solar and solar wind team, he uses computer models to predict when coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and other space weather hazards might impact Earth and how damaging such events are likely to be to our technological society. Additionally, as a research-to-operations specialist, he is always on the lookout for innovative ways to improve the accuracy and timeliness of such predictions through model improvements, data assimilation, ensemble methods, and machine learning. He is also the leading SWPC expert on the solar cycle and the origins of solar magnetism.  

Before coming to SWPC, Miesch was the software infrastructure lead for the Joint Effort for Data assimilation Integration (JEDI), a next-generation data assimilation system for terrestrial weather forecasting developed and maintained by UCAR's Joint Center for Satellite Data Assimilation (JCSDA). Miesch has also engaged in extensive fundamental research on the dynamics of solar and stellar interiors, including turbulent convection, hydromagnetic dynamo theory, and numerical modeling.  

He is a graduate of the University of Colorado in Boulder (PhD) and Michigan Technological University (BS).

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Presenter

Shawn Dahl is a space weather forecaster at NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, CO. Shawn signed on with the U.S. Air Force in 1985, where he spent 22 years serving around the world in the intelligence and meteorology operations' fields; all while continuing university studies in history and physical sciences. He retired from the Air Force in 2007 and held jobs as a meteorological technician for the National Weather Service (NWS) and as a lead weather forecaster for the U.S. Air Force. He finally settled into his current position at SWPC eight years ago. Shawn also conducts additional work at SWPC as a focal point for customer decision support services, training, and education outreach programs. Shawn's work in education and outreach was recognized by the NWS as a National level Cline Award winner in 2018.

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Presenter

Dr. Elsayed Talaat is the Director of the Office of Space Weather Observations at NESDIS. In this role, he provides leadership and oversight of the development, acquisition, integration, installation, and acceptance of major system elements for NOAA's operational environmental satellite systems.

Before joining NOAA, Dr. Talaat was the Chief Scientist of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. In this role, he directed overall development efforts for the Heliophysics space science program in Solar, Heliospheric, Magnetospheric, and Ionospheric, Thermospheric, and Mesospheric physics. Previously, he was a Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters where he served as Program Scientist for the Living with a Star mission and science line, grant research lines, and Heliophysics and Planetary missions. Before joining NASA, he was Supervisor of the Earth and Planetary Atmospheres Section at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), where his research focused on developing remote sensing techniques as well as data analysis and modeling of geophysical and planetary phenomena. 

Dr. Talaat received his Bachelor of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering from the University of Washington, and a Master’s of Science and doctorate from the University of Michigan in Atmospheric and Space Sciences. He has authored or collaborated on over 60 journal papers and over 250 conference papers.

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Biography

William Sweet is a NOAA Oceanographer spearheading efforts to track and predict changes in sea level and coastal flood risk to support sound decision making.

He leads NOAA’s annual high tide flood assessment, is the lead author for the U.S. Interagency Sea Level Rise Task Force’s 2017 and 2022 reports, co-leads the U.S. Department of Defense’s Coastal Assessment Regional Scenario Working Group and is a chapter author for the 4th and on-going 5th National Climate Assessments.  William received his Masters and Ph.D. in oceanography from N.C. State University.

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Biography

As satellite remote sensing and data gathering applications become more and more advanced, Kevin Fryar discusses how he works to develop future tools to get vital weather satellite information to those who need it.

He has held operational, staff, and management positions within the National Weather Service (NWS) and the Air Force over the last 20 years. As the Chief of Staff for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) program, he puts into practice everything he's learned.

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Biography

As the National Flash Flood Services Lead in the National Weather Service's Water Resources Services Branch, Kate Abshire leads the development of flash flood service concepts, prioritized requirements, and operational policies and procedures to enhance flash flood operations, products, and services in close collaboration with the Water Resources Service Program Team and NWS Headquarters personnel.

Previously, she worked in the Office of Water Prediction combining a technical background in hydrologic and hydraulic modeling with the field of social science, working on efforts to engage stakeholders about their water resources information and service needs to gather requirements and feedback for the NWS Water Resources Program. Kate contributed to the NOAA Model for Service Delivery and the Service Delivery Guidance and Best Practices document as part of the NOAA Water Initiative. She also coordinates interagency collaboration among NWS, the USGS, USACE, and FEMA through the Integrated Water Resources Science and Services (IWRSS) consortium.

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Biography

Melissa Deas serves as the Chief Resilience Officer at the District’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA). She leads efforts to ensure the District can thrive in a changing world by pushing forward policies that address shocks (e.g.  hurricanes, economic downturns, and pandemics) as well as chronic stressors (e.g.  affordable housing, stressed infrastructure, and inequality).

In this talk, Melissa discusses why some urban areas experience higher temperatures than surrounding rural areas, and potential solutions.  

Melissa comes to HSEMA from the District’s Department of Energy and Environment, where she oversaw the implementation of the District’s climate preparedness plan: Climate Ready DC. Before working for the District, Melissa served as a resilience expert for the California Energy Commission, Georgetown Climate Center, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Melissa received her B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University and her Master of City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Biography

Jorel Torres is a Research Associate II: JPSS Satellite Liaison at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA), located in Fort Collins, Colorado. Torres liaisons between the National Weather Service (NWS) user community and the research community focusing on JPSS products, applications, and satellite training development for users.

Presentation

With the launch of the next polar-orbiting JPSS satellite slated for Sept. 2022, meteorologist Jorel Torres, NOAA's JPSS Satellite Liaison, will be discussing the many ways that data from these Low Earth Orbiting satellites can be used and the role that JPSS-2 will play when it becomes operational in orbit.

Biography

Dan Lindsey is the NOAA/NESDIS GOES-R Program Scientist. He has been with NOAA since 2004 in Ft. Collins, Colorado, and specializes in satellite remote sensing of mesoscale phenomena from the geostationary platform, including thunderstorms, tropical cyclones, and aerosols such as smoke and blowing dust.

Presentation

NOAA's next geostationary satellite in the GOES-R series, GOES-T, is scheduled to launch in February of 2022. 

In honor of this event, join GOES-R Program Scientist, Dan Lindsey, who will be discussing the many ways that data from geostationary satellites can be used as well as the role that GOES-T will play. 

Previous NEDTalks this month featured Jorel Torres from the JPSS program and Dan Lindsey from the GOES-R program who spoke about the importance of satellite data and the many ways that data from Low Earth Orbiting (LEO) and Geostationary (GEO) satellites are used. 

This week, they are returning for a panel discussion along with Michael Pavolonis, a physical scientist from the NOAA Center for Satellite Applications and Research (STAR), along with Carl Jones, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service. 

Together, they will discuss how data from both LEO and GEO satellites is combined and the many ways they use this valuable information in their own work. They will also be answering questions from the public submitted on Twitter using #AskNOAAsatellites. 

Biography

Jennifer Horney is Professor and Founding Director of the Program in Epidemiology and Core Faculty at the Disaster Research Center at the University of Delaware. Her research focuses on measuring the health impacts of disasters, as well as the linkages between disaster planning and household actions related to preparedness, response, and recovery. Dr. Horney received her Ph.D. and MPH from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was a member of a team of public health practitioners who responded to Hurricanes Isabel, Charley, Katrina, Wilma, Irene, and Harvey where she conducted rapid assessments of disaster impact on public health. She has also provided technical assistance to public health agencies globally around disasters, infectious disease outbreaks, and pandemic influenza planning and response.

Biography

Currently, James is a Research Associate at the Cooperative Institute Research Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado-Boulder as well as a Co-Principal Investigator, North Central Climate Adaptation Science Center. He specializes in developing programs that utilize the interface between Indigenous People’s Traditional Knowledge and Western Science. He has over 25 years’ experience serving as a cross cultural/broker resource to Federal Government, Higher Education Institutions and Non-Profits to developing, maintaining positive on-going working relationships with federally and non-federally recognized Indian tribes, Tribal College and Universities and Tribal Communities.

He is a founding member of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Indigenous Alliance that was established at GEO Week 2019 in Canberra, Australia to foster a continued, effective, respectful, and reciprocal relationship with GEO and representatives of indigenous communities from around the world.

He was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, USA and is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. His higher education comes from Sinte Gleska University.

Biography

Dr. Michael Mendez is an assistant professor of environmental policy and planning at the University of California, Irvine. He previously was the inaugural James and Mary Pinchot Faculty Fellow in Sustainability Studies at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Dr. Mendez has more than a decade of senior-level experience in the public and private sectors, where he consulted and actively engaged in the policymaking process. This included working for the California State Legislature as a senior consultant, lobbyist, gubernatorial appointee, and as vice chair of the Sacramento City Planning Commission. His new book “Climate Change from the Streets,” published through Yale University Press (2020), is an urgent and timely story of the contentious politics of incorporating environmental justice into global climate change policy.

​Dr. Mendez contributed to state and national research policy initiatives, including serving as an advisor to a California Air Resources Board member, and as a participant of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s workgroup on “Climate Vulnerability and Social Science Perspectives.” Most recently, he was appointed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to the Board on Environmental Change and Society (BECS). He also serves as a panel reviewer for the National Academies of Sciences’ Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP).

Biography

Jim Blackburn is a professor in the practice of environmental law in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University, teaching courses in sustainable development and environmental law. He is also a practicing environmental lawyer with the Blackburn & Carter law firm in Houston and a Rice faculty scholar at the Baker Institute. At Rice, he serves as the co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center and as director of the undergraduate minor in energy and water sustainability. At the SSPEED Center, Blackburn has been responsible for the development of landscape-scale green space solutions for surge damage mitigation, including the Lone Star Coastal National Recreation Area, a web-based ecological services exchange and structural alternatives. He is the author of “The Book of Texas Bays” (Texas A&M University Press, 2004), which focuses on the environmental health of bays in Texas and efforts undertaken to protect them. He has received various public service awards, including the Barbara C. Jordan Community Advocate Award from Texas Southern University in 2007, the National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation in 2001 and the Bob Eckhardt Lifetime Achievement Award for coastal preservation efforts from the Texas General Land Office in 1998. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary membership by the American Institute of Architects for legal work associated with urban quality of life issues in Houston. Blackburn received a B.A. in history and a J.D. from The University of Texas at Austin and an M.S. in environmental science from Rice University.

Featuring: Bill Thomas, Heather Lazrus, and Michelle Montgomery of the Rising Voices

Abstract

The Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences aims to advance science through collaborations that bring Indigenous and Earth (atmospheric, social, biological, ecological) sciences into partnership. Panelists will discuss and explore the nature of Indigenous data, which is often referred to as Traditional Knowledge (TK)- why and how does it differ from Western knowledge? The panelists' research and experiences will demonstrate how combining western technology and Indigenous research can yield novel insights into and actions for preserving our environment. Additionally, they will explain how oral histories and TK contain information that cannot be picked up with remote sensing technology or other Western principles, and how much of Indigenous generational knowledge of the land was later replicated by Western technology.

Abstract

In terms of climate change and disaster, socially and economically disadvantaged populations are disproportionately impacted, have more limited access to recovery resources, and often take longer to recover, or not recover at all. Residents of environmental justice neighborhoods generally have high levels of uncertainty, distrust, and suspicion about research related to natural hazard vulnerabilities and environmental conditions. To improve resiliency, it is imperative to increase local government awareness of social inequity and the actions that can be taken to ameliorate it. Curtis Brown will discuss challenges, opportunities, and resources for people looking for disaster resources and solutions to share with their communities.

Biography

Dr. Don Engel is a professor and the Assistant Vice President for Research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). As AVPR, Don leads UMBC’s Office of Research Development. Don’s research is on the applications of visualization and artificial intelligence (esp. image processing and computational linguistics) to data-driven discovery (esp. in the physical and life sciences). After completing a Ph.D. in physics and master’s in computer science, Don spent several years working for Congress and executive branch agencies as a science and technology policy advisor. Don’s background also includes clinical experience as a resident in radiation oncology medical physics.

Abstract

A discussion of UMBC’s visualization research and related facilities, including spherical displays, VR/AR head mounted devices, 3D scanning, an immersive VR wall, and glasses-free 3D display. The presentation includes work taking place in UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC) and the IRC-affiliated Assistive Visualization and Artificial Intelligence Lab (AVAIL).

Biography

Max Schneider is a PhD student in Statistics at the University of Washington, Seattle. This summer, he is interning at the Environmental Modeling Center within NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction in College Park, MD. In his dissertation work, Max builds spatiotemporal models to forecast earthquakes in the Pacific Northwest. He focuses on quantifying various sources of error in these models and how to visualize them to diverse audiences. He collaborates with cognitive psychologists to directly study the effect visualizations have on how people use forecasts. In his work at NOAA, Max quantifies the uncertainty within coupled numerical models of hurricane impacts, for the US COASTAL Act. His motivation is to improve operational forecasting with a statistical approach to uncertainty quantification and visualization.

Abstract 

Every day, thousands of forecast maps are produced by NOAA and related agencies. All forecasts come with error but how can we best visualize uncertainty on a forecast map? Max Schneider, PhD student in Statistics and NCEP intern, says the effectiveness of different approaches towards visualizing this uncertainty can be carefully studied in user experiments. In this talk, he presents a human subjects experiment where three common visualization techniques go head-to-head, to see which one enables effective map-reading and judgments using the forecasts.

Biography

David Hall joined NVIDIA in January 2018, after working as an Assistant Professor of Research in Computer Science at CU Boulder. Dr. Hall has technical expertise in theoretical physics, numerical methods, computational fluid dynamics, and artificial intelligence. David spent the previous decade developing non-hydrostatic atmospheric models for high resolution climate modeling in HPC environments. As a solution architect at NVIDIA, Dr. Hall’s primary role is to help scientist and engineers understand and translate the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence into practical solutions in the areas of weather, climate, and space. Dr. Hall earned his PhD in Physics from the University of Santa Barbara, CA and a BA in physics from CU Boulder.

Abstract

Artificial intelligence has made a lot of headlines lately, but it is not clear to everyone how these tools can be applied to science. In this NEDTalk, we demonstrate how supervised deep-learning may be viewed as a new and powerful approach for developing software routines that were previously beyond our reach. With these tools, we can automate, accelerate, and improve upon existing applications and develop a host of new capabilities. After surveying many of the ways it may be applied to the Earth system, we’ll take a deeper dive into how AI can be used to detect and track tropical storms.

Biography

Christin Khan is a Fishery Biologist in the Protected Species Branch at the Northeast Fisheries Science Center in Woods Hole. She is an aerial survey observer and data manager of the North Atlantic Right Whale Sighting Survey which conducts aerial surveys to monitor right whale abundance and distribution from New Jersey to Canada. When not in the air, Christin also works on right whale social behavior, automated image recognition, right whale outreach signs, the Right Whale Sighting Advisory System, interactive Google map, and the Whale Alert app.

Abstract

Motivated by recent developments in image recognition, we hosted a data science challenge on the crowdsourcing platform Kaggle to automate the identification of endangered North Atlantic right whales. The winning solution automatically identified individual whales with 87% accuracy with a series of convolutional neural networks to identify the region of interest on an image, rotate, crop, and create standardized photographs of uniform size and orientation and then identify the correct individual whale from these passport-like photographs. Recent advances in deep learning coupled with this fully automated workflow have yielded impressive results and have the potential to revolutionize traditional methods for the collection of data on the abundance and distribution of wild populations.