UM Directory

Dr. Jonathan Batchelor is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Coordinator of the GIS Certificate at the University of Montana. They earned their PhD at the University of Washington and completed a postdoctoral appointment there in the Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Laboratory, focusing on the assessment of wildfire treatment outcomes. Their research expertise includes remote sensing, geospatial analysis, and fire ecology, with a particular emphasis on integrating satellite observations, airborne and terrestrial lidar (TLS), drone-based photogrammetry, and spatial statistics to understand fire behavior and landscape change. Jonathan is also an experienced educator, committed to developing applied, hands-on learning experiences in GIS and geospatial technologies, including advanced workflows for lidar processing, 3D modeling, and spatial data integration.

Education

PhD: University of Washington, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences

Masters: Oregon State Univeristy, College of Forestry

Research Interests

Remote sensing, lidar, drone-based photogrammetry, spatial statistics, wildfire behavior, landscape change, fuel treatment effectiveness.

Projects

Empirical Assessments of Wildfire-Treatment Outcomes

Selected Publications

Drone-based, multispectral photogrammetric point clouds to classify fire severity at differing canopy height strata

Terrestrial and Airborne Lidar to Quantify Shrub Cover for Canada Lynx (Lynx canadensis) Habitat Using Machine Learning

Quantifying Forest Litter Fuel Moisture Content with Terrestrial Laser Scanning 

Publications

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jonathan-Batchelor-2

Hobbies

Outside of academia, Jonathan enjoys hiking Montana’s mountain trails, experimenting with drone flights (occasionally resulting in creative crash landings), exploring remote wilderness areas—sometimes with unplanned detours—and the occasional quest involving maps, strategy, and a few well-timed dice rolls, all set to the atmospheric soundtrack of black metal.