Kyle Cavanaugh
Vice Director, Marine Center; Assistant Professor
UCLA Department of Geography
Bunche 1156
Los Angeles, CA 90095
Cavanaugh is an Assistant Professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the UCLA Geography Department.
Kyle Cavanaugh studies the drivers and consequences of changes in coastal foundation species such as giant kelp forests and mangroves. He is especially interested in what controls large-scale changes in the distribution and abundance of these species. Much of his research utilizes remote sensing (e.g. satellite, aerial, and UAV imagery) to document ecological change over large space and time scales.
He was a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, examining how coastal ecosystems respond to climate variability and direct human impacts. He likes to observe coastal ecosystems from a variety of perspectives: under the sea, waist deep in a mangrove swamp, or via a satellite orbiting 700 km above the earth.
Education
- PhD, Marine Science, University of California, Santa Barbara (2011)
- B.S., Geosciences, Trinity University (2003)
