Evangelista, Paul

Paul Evangelista is a research scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory (NREL) and associate professor in the Department of Ecosystem Science and Sustainability. He received his B.S. in Natural Resource Management (1998), M.S. in Forest Ecology (2004), and Ph.D. in Forest Ecosystem Management (2009) at Colorado State University.

His research at the NREL has extended across a broad array of interests including invasive species, forestry, rare and endangered wildlife, ecosystem services, resource management, fire ecology, and climate change. His interests are frequently examined in the context of space and time through a suite of integrative spatial modeling techniques that combine field data, traditional and expert knowledge, geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing and spatial statistics. Such analytical approaches have been used for early detection of invasive species, discovery of new wildlife populations, mapping forests and landcover, and predicting species’ distribution in response to changing climates and other environmental stressors. Dr. Evangelista’s work the U.S. spans from vegetation inventories in the semi-arid canyon lands of Southern Utah to pine beetle outbreaks in the Central Rocky Mountain forests. Since 1999, he has worked extensively in Ethiopia from local grassroots projects to national-scale biological inventories. He is the Programs Coordinator of the Warner College of Natural Resources – Ethiopia Strategic Alliance and co-founder of the Sustainable African Ecosystems and Societies (SAES) at the School of Global Environmental Sustainability. Dr. Evangelista is also heavily engaged in non-traditional education and capacity building through participation and experiential learning. He is also the Director and Science Advisor for NASA DEVELOP at Colorado State University, a national program designed to provide students geospatial and remote sensing experience in applied research outside of classroom settings.