Seeing Earth from the Ground Up

Long before Cheryl Doughty ’12 MS was using satellite data to study coastal ecosystems at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, she was getting her feet wet in the field as a Villanova University graduate student.

Today, Doughty is an assistant research scientist in Goddard’s Biospheric Sciences Laboratory through a cooperative agreement with the University of Maryland’s Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center. She joined the lab in 2021 through a two-year NASA Postdoctoral Program fellowship.

Doughty combines field ecology with earth observation (EO) data to investigate how climate change is reshaping coastal wetlands, such as habitat distribution, ecosystem structure and carbon storage. By matching satellite observations with measurements collected directly in wetlands, she develops statistical and machine-learning models that help scientists track ecological change across landscapes.

“Observations of our Earth need to be grounded in reality, especially in coastal ecosystems where human influence is high and the impacts of climate change put the ecosystems we depend on at risk,” Doughty said. “By pairing ecology with satellite data, we have a better chance at understanding how.”

That approach has roots in her Villanova experience.

Doughty earned her master’s degree in Biology in 2012 studying wetland ecology with Professor of Biology Adam Langley, PhD, and Samantha Chapman, PhD, professor and codirector of the Center for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Stewardship and Gerald M. Lemole Endowed Chair in Integrative Biology.

Through coursework, fellowships and field research, Doughty gained hands-on experience while building relationships across disciplines.

“Sam Chapman as my committee chair was instrumental in each aspect of my growth as an ecologist and researcher, and in the connections I made to other scientists,” Doughty said.

Those connections became part of a network she continues to value.

“I attribute much of my success to this growing network of interdisciplinary people who are active in studying and protecting our valuable coastal ecosystems,” she said. “The experience in field ecology I gained while at Villanova will always be foundational to my science.”

Villanova also helped give Doughty the scientific question that propelled her forward. In the field, she saw fine-scale wetland changes that were not always captured accurately by global datasets using coarser satellite observations. The discovery inspired her to pursue a doctorate and add remote sensing to her scientific toolkit.

“I’m proud that my job allows me to continue to bridge the gap between wetland ecology and remote sensing,” she said.

Most recently, Doughty has helped track how climate change and coastal management complicate carbon uptake and emissions in the Everglades. Her research may now span vast landscapes from space, but the field experience, mentorship and curiosity she developed at Villanova remain central to how she studies a changing planet.