Sara Sayedi

Biography

Sara is a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with GRI-AidData and VIMS. Sara holds a Ph.D. in Wildlife and Wildland Conservation from Brigham Young University, an M.S. in Environmental Management from the University of Tehran, Iran, and a B.Sc. in Environmental Science from Isfahan University of Technology, Iran. Her primary research interests encompass climate change, geospatial analysis, water security, and decision-making under uncertainty.

Across both her academic and professional trajectories, Sara engages in interdisciplinary research, delving into the connections between different disciplines to unravel the interactions between ecosystems and human activities. Her doctoral research specifically centered on assessing risks across diverse Earth systems, specifically the permafrost carbon feedback and global fire regimes. By utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing techniques, Sara has contributed her expertise to a range of environmental projects. 

Her involvement spans various topics, such as water quality assessment, vegetation degradation, and air pollution. Moreover, Sara has conducted research on water security within the context of ecosystem services, exploring the dynamics between land management practices and the influence of climate change on water resources.

At GRI, Sara's research will focus on water resources in Nepal. Her work revolves around conducting geospatial analyses for the Nepal Water Initiative (NWI), which aims to assess environmental threats to water resources in Nepal due to climate change and to empower conservation leaders to champion community-based conservation efforts. Sara will work on developing a time-series database of land and water resources and quantifying different water-related risks in the major river basins of Nepal using geospatial tools and machine learning.