Jamie Womble is a biologist with the National Park Service and her research is focused on the behavioral ecology of upper-trophic level marine predators, primarily pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), in the nearshore marine ecosystems of the North Pacific Ocean. She acquires a variety of field- lab- and remote sensing data sets and applies analytical tools including image processing, geospatial modeling (GIS), and multivariate statistics, to study the habitat availability and preferences of pinnipeds. Other related research interesteds are listed on her website. You can contact Dr. Womble at at jamie_womble@nps.gov.

Anupma Prakash is a professor in geophysics at the Geophysical Institute (GI) and at UAF's Department of Geosciences (GEOS). Her research interest is in using multisensor remote sensing data for mapping surface composition and change in Arctic and sub-Arctic Alaska. She has lead several projects on remote sensing based habitat mapping. She heads the efforts in airborne and ground-based hyperspectral imaging in Alaska (Hylab) and also teaches courses in remote sensing and GIS at UAF. For more information visit www.gi.alaska.edu/~prakash or contact her at aprakash@alaska.edu.

Rudiger Gens is a Remote Sensing Scientist at the Alaska Satellite Facility (ASF) at UAF and specializes in processing and applications of Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data. He teaches courses on the principles and applications of SAR and InSAR. His interest is also in tools development for processing multisensor data, especially SAR data. Dr. Gens is leading the data processing efforts for several diverse projects including but not limited to remote sensing based mapping of sea ice, earthquake liquefaction, wetlands, and permafrost features. For more information on his research and teaching visit www.gi.alaska.edu/~rgens or contact him at rgens@alaska.edu.

Robert (Bob) McNabb is a post-doctoral fellow in the remote sensing group at the the Geophysical Institute (GI) where he is using object-oriented image analysis techniques to extract and quantify ice habitat availability in the Glacier Bay Fjords (AK) for Harbor seals. He is a glaciologist who is interested in understanding glacial retreat and calving in tide-water glaciers. His doctoral research focused on the retreat of Columbia Glacier, Alaska, ca. 1980 to present. He also ran simulations to model the future retreat of this glacier. You can reach Bob at robertmcnabb@gmail.com.

Jay Ver hoef is a statistician with the Polar Ecosystems Program based out of Fairbanks, Alaska. He provides statistical expertise to NMML and continues his research interests in spatial and ecological statistics. His current research activities include trend and abundance estimation from plot-based counts, animal movement models, spatial models for stream networks, computational methods for binary time series, and spatial and temporal design issues for long-term monitoring of environmental data. Jay is an author or coauthor of over 50 peer-reviewed publications, one book, and many book chapters and technical reports. You can contact Jay at jay.verhoef@gmail.com

Christian Haselwimmer is a remote sensing scientist with interests in the applications of remote sensing to energy and geological resource studies including for exploration, assessment, and environmental monitoring. He currently works with the Chevron Energy Technology Companies Environmental Unit. Prior to this job, he was a postdoc at the Geophysical Institute, where besides this project on harbor seal habitat mapping he was involved with projects on geothermal exploration at Pilgrim Hot Springs, chinook habitat mapping in the Togiak wildlife refuge, and UAFs HyLab. You can contact him at christian.haselwimmer@googlemail.com

Pilot and seal counters: This research greatly benefitted from a strong supportive team. Special thanks to

- Avery Gast, our pilot who conducted the airborne surveys
- Evelina Augustsson, from the University of Karlstad, Sweden for counting seals
- Melissa Senac, from NPS for counting seals
- Lou Taylor-Thomas, from NPS for counting seals