Columbia Crest, Summit of Mt. Rainier (14,411'), 8 a.m. July 10, 1994

Robert A. Norheim's work web pages

Time spent mapping mountains will
not be deducted from your life.

My work consists of supporting the research programs listed below with cartography, spatial analysis/GIS, remote sensing, field work, software testing, fire modeling, software development, data analysis, and more. I work in conjunction with research faculty and staff, graduate students, and Forest Service researchers who study climate change, landscape ecology, and fire ecology, and who need to effectively communicate their research with maps.

Affiliations at University of Washington College of the Environment

You may ask, how did I get all these affiliations at UW?

Our projects are funded by a wide variety of federal, state, and local agencies, including the US Forest Service, Joint Fire Science Program, USGS Global Change Research Program (Western Mountain Initiative), NOAA, State of Washington Departments of Ecology, Fish and Wildlife, and Transportation, National Science Foundation, NASA, Great Northern and North Pacific Landscape Conservation Cooperatives, USGS Pacific Northwest Climate Science Center, State of Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Sound Transit, King County, NBII, FGDC, and others.

Here's a list of publications that I have spawned along the way as an author or co-author.

Maps I have prepared have appeared in:

70+ research papers in over 35 different journals
20 Masters theses and Doctoral dissertations
25+ funding proposals
8 books or book chapters
Numerous reports, posters and conference proceedings
Innumerable presentations
On the front page of the Seattle Post-Intellegencer

I have also produced all of the maps for a number of books and multi-chapter reports. Having all of the maps done by one cartographer helps give the book a more coherent feel. These include:

Climate Impacts on Washington's Hydropower, Water Supply, Forests, Fish, and Agriculture
The Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment
Adapting to climate change at Olympic National Forest and Olympic National Park.
The landscape ecology of fire
Effects of climatic variability and change on forest ecosystems: a comprehensive science synthesis for the U.S. forest sector.
Climate Change and United States Forests
Climate Change in the Northwest: Implications for Our Landscapes, Waters, and Communities.
Climate change vulnerability and adaptation in the North Cascades region, Washington.

Current and Upcoming Projects (2018)

Producing maps in support of a project to help tribes build capacity for responding to climate change.
Geospatial analysis and mapping to understand the effectiveness of fuel treatments on fire severity in the 2014 Carlton Complex and 2015 Eastern Washington wildfires
Creating this story map highlighting recent wildfire research in the PNW
Developing Tableau Visualizations to help disseminate voluminous climate data
Developing maps and a Tableau visualization examining changes in extreme precipitation events in western Washington
Mapping sea level rise in Washington State as part of a coastal hazards resilience project
Spatial analysis and mapping in support of a vulnerability assessment for the Colville Indian Tribe
Forest Adaptation Handbook

Continuing Projects

Development of maps for research papers, field work, public outreach, presentations, proceedings, posters, proposals, reports, book chapters, theses and dissertations as requested by researchers and graduate students
Spatial analysis, remote sensing, and field work for research projects in climate change and variability, mountain ecology, and wildland fire.

Recent Projects (2008-17)

Spatial analysis and mapping in support of a vulnerability assessment for the Nooksack Indian Tribe
Assembling and analyzing data for a project to determine fuel treatment effectiveness in the Carlton Complex fires
Generating maps for assessing climate change impacts at Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve
Spatial analysis and mapping in support of a climate change adaptation plan for the Stillaguamish Tribe
Producing maps for CIG's Time of Emergence Project
Developing maps for CIG's Washington State Parks Vulnerability Assessment
Creating maps of floodplain inundation
Producing maps in support of research of the impacts of extreme weather events under climate change
Producing maps for Adaptation Partners projects
Producing maps for species vulnerability assessments for the Stillaguamish, Nooksack, and Colville tribes
Developing data for use in the VIC model
Identifying and evaluating riparian corridors as migration pathways under climate change
Compiling maps and data for assessing transboundary climate connectivty
Developing metadata for JFSP-funded projects at FERA (wrote successful grant for $49,000 to support this work)
Using remote sensing to improve the estimate of canopy cover for FCCS fuelbeds for the Wildland Fire Emissions Information System
Invited speaker for University of Washington GIS Day 2012
Developing maps for the National Climate Assessment (Forestry sector and Northwest region reports)
Developing maps of climate change for land managers in the Yellowstone region
Producing a series of maps examining climate change across the North Pacific rim
Producing maps for the North Cascadia Adaptation Partnership
Providing spatial analysis and developing maps for a series of projects looking at the effects of climate change across the Great Basin, Colorado River basin, and Upper Missouri River basin.
Investigating the existence of cartographic standards for academic journals and their consistency in applying them. ESRI Proceedings paper
Providing spatial analysis and maps in support of a project examining the effects of climate change on dairy production
Developing maps for a GTR on climate change adaptation on the Olympic National Forest and Olympic National Park
Developing maps for
Developing the maps for a CIG report on Hydrologic Climate Change Scenarios for the PNW
Developing the maps for a new book, The Landscape Ecology of Fire
Creating the maps for the Washington Climate Change Impacts Assessment report (42 total), journal articles, and presentations
Landscape fire analysis for the DoE Savannah River Site
Fuel treatment analysis of the Tripod fire
Developing the maps for Rhythms of Change, a book forthcoming from the Climate Impacts Group
Using VBA programming to create almost 300 watershed reference maps for the Columbia Basin Climate Change Scenarios Project (CBCCSP) website.
Outreach to potential meterological obervers in the CoCoRaHS program

Past Projects

I researched the quality of digital elevation models produced by LIDAR and INSAR airborne technologies (link to paper)
I performed software testing and support for the Fire Emissions Production Simulator software.
I developed a series of climate anomaly maps derived from the VIC model for display on a website.

Maps, spatial analysis, remote sensing, and field work for projects and publications:

Modelling Fire Return Interval for the Columbia River Basin
Tropospheric Ozone at Mt. Rainier National Park
Tropospheric Ozone in Western Washington
Subalpine conifer growth in the North Cascades
Soil properties of subalpine parklands of the North Cascades
Treatment effects of high elevation clearcuts
Landscape patterns of the western Olympic Peninsula
Spatial and temporal variablity of tree growth/fire/vegetation change/climate relationsships
Effects of fuel treatments on fire severity
Assessing spatial structure of fire regimes
Analyzing impacts of sea-level rise
Analysis of watershed initiatives
Downscaling simulations of future global climate
Climate change and watershed planning
Climate-driven variability and trends in mountain snowpack

Technical Assistance for National Parks:

Mapping Vegetation and Fuels for San Juan Island National Historical Park
Social impacts of military overflights
Traditional uses of cabins in Denali National Park
Metadata for North Cascades National Park's geospatial and research data
Metadata for geospatial data for small parks in the National Park Service Pacific West Region
Metadata for Cabrillo National Monument's geospatial data

FGDC and NBII funded projects:

Initial development of NBII Pacific Northwest Information Node (PNWIN)
Initial cataloguing of datasets for PNWIN
First and second versions of on-line mapping application for PNWIN developed with ArcIMS
Metadata for Olympic Natural Resources Center
Metadata for Graduate Student and Post-Doc projects

Background:

For more background details, see my resume and my publications.

Education:

M.A., August 1996, University of Washington Department of Geography
Winner of the 1997 Edward L. Ullman prize for Masters Thesis, awarded by the department each year.
B.S. magna cum laude, May 1984, Tufts University. Double major in Economics and Computer Science.
Queen Mary College, University of London, coordinated by Interstudy, Spring Semester 1983.
New Trier East High School
And even my elementary/junior high school is on the web.

Professional Memberships:

Some places I used to work:

Data Resources Inc. (DRI) Transportation Service (Then a part of McGraw-Hill, now a part of IHS Global Insight)
Lotus Development Corp.
Microsoft Corp.
UW Geography Department Computer Lab
Mt. Rainier National Park

Masters Thesis:

My thesis examined two geographic datasets that were put together at about the same time that map old growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. The first is the dataset put together by Pacific Meridian Resources for the USDA Forest Service. The second was put together by The Wilderness Society . Not suprisingly, the two datasets disagree. The amount of disagreement is surprising, however, considering that the datasets ostensibly map the same thing. I examined the differences in techniques and definitions the two organizations used, as well as looking into the agendas of the two institutions to see how the differing outlooks may have contributed to the way the datasets were put together.

I have finally managed to get a publication from my thesis published in a journal: How institutional context affects results: Comparing two old growth forest mapping projects. Cartographica 38:3/4

This page has some information about my thesis, including an abstract, results, references, maps, and more.

Committee:

Contact Information:

Email address: norheim@u.washington.edu
Web: http://purl.oclc.org/net/norheim/.
Office Phone: 206 616-6865
Office Address:
Climate Impacts Group
University of Washington
Box 355674
3737 Brooklyn Ave NE
Seattle, WA 98195-4235
Here's a link to my personal/family web pages.