Julie Fortin is a PhD student working on the Bright Spots project with a focus on India.
Her research experience thus far has included using machine learning to track deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon during her B.Sc., and using repeat photography to study changing landscapes and biodiversity in the Canadian Rocky Mountains for her M.Sc. More recently, she was a part of the Land Use and Global Environment lab at UBC and worked on projects examining climate impacts on agriculture in Canada, flooding of agricultural land due to sea level rise, mapping global cropland and pasture, and more.
With Bright Spots, she is most interested in understanding why some places are more sustainable than others. For this, she will first map bright spots across India. Then she plans on searching for data about drivers of sustainability to overlay with the bright spots. The end goal is to do a causal analysis of what leads to bright spots in what contexts.
