David is a Research Associate in Global Nature Watch (GNW). He focuses on the geospatial monitoring of land-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon removals (sequestration), and carbon storage across a range of spatial scales. He is currently developing an Earth observation-based monitoring system for GHG emissions and removals on all land globally. He has created global maps of forest carbon emissions and removals at 30-m resolution, worked with cities around the world to develop methods for incorporating forests and trees into their GHG inventories, and helped develop methods for agricultural companies to estimate land-use change emissions from their supply chains. David has also contributed to the Forest Declaration Assessment annual progress report—which tracks global efforts to stop deforestation—since 2018.

Previously, David was a research fellow at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in Washington, D.C., where he worked on national and sub-national climate change adaptation, ecology, and water resource management projects. Prior to that, he was an environmental scientist at the environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech in Atlanta, GA, where he assisted various levels of government with watershed management and modeling.

David received his Bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University and his Master’s degree in Ecology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, focusing on the ecology of coral reefs in Fiji. In the year between college and graduate school, he was a research assistant for a coral reef ecology and conservation project in the Comoros Islands.

His favorite activities include fencing (foil), collecting money from countries that don’t exist anymore, and writing short stories.