About

Robin Martin is an associate professor of geography in the School of Ocean Futures and a faculty member in the Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science. Her research aims to better understand and quantify patterns in biodiversity and ecosystem function through the application of emerging technologies, including aircraft- and space-borne remote sensing and statistical modeling. She is currently interested in tropical forests and coral reefs where patterns are difficult to observe and interpret due to their high diversity and inaccessibility. Her approach integrates field and laboratory measurements of functional traits of trees and corals with observational data to understand the evolutionary, phylogenetic, and environmental controls on plant and coral biochemistry and physiological functioning of forests and reefs to aid in conservation and management decisions. Her main objective for teaching is to help students experience the vast biological diversity of our Earth and give them the knowledge and real-world skills needed to help manage and conserve it. She offers courses that are online with intensive field components and place-based projects, supporting a diverse range of students from traditional university attendees to those incorporating academic degrees into working life schedules.

Research topics

• Ecology
• Geography
• Biology
• Environmental science
• Geology
• Remote sensing
• Political Science
• Agroforestry
• Oceanography
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Science
• Cartography
• Forestry
• Earth science
• Marine engineering
• Environmental resource management
• Physics
• Engineering
• Climatology
• Paleontology
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Consistent Spectral Reflectance Signatures of Photosystem II Thermal Tolerance (T _crit ) in Contrasting Foundation Tree Species

  Journal of Geophysical Research Biogeosciences · 2026-02-27

  article

  Abstract Photosystem II (PSII) is among the most thermally sensitive components of photosynthesis, and emerging evidence suggests that plants in diverse biomes face an increasing risk of PSII damage under future climate change. However, uncertainties in the distribution and drivers of PSII thermal tolerance (T crit ) limit our ability to predict thermal risk in plant communities across spatial scales. Here, we evaluate whether intraspecific variation in T crit corresponds to leaf reflectance spectra (400–2,500 nm) to identify mechanisms associated with T crit in field conditions and assess the potential of its estimation using remote sensing platforms. We measured T crit using temperature response curves of minimal fluorescence ( F o ) along with corresponding leaf reflectance spectra in two foundation tree species: Populus fremontii (US Southwest) and Metrosideros polymorpha (Hawai'i). P. fremontii was sampled under both moderate (<40°C) and extreme (>45°C) heat. Consistent spectral signatures of T crit emerged across species and sampling conditions, with the strongest signatures in P. fremontii under extreme heat. In P. fremontii, spectra captured up to roughly half of T crit variation and allowed T crit estimation ( R 2 = 0.24–0.30; RMSE < 1.0°C) and classification of high‐versus low‐T crit (71%–77% accuracy). Across both species, T crit tended to increase with spectral indices reflecting higher chlorophyll content and lower carotenoids, nonphotochemical quenching, and leaf water content. These findings suggest that variation in PSII thermal tolerance is linked to fundamental biochemical properties of leaves, which are reflected in their optical traits. As climate extremes intensify, spectral screening and scaling of T crit via remote sensing may support improved conservation, management, and risk assessment in vulnerable ecosystems.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Remote sensing reveals inter‐ and intraspecific variation in riparian cottonwood (<i>Populus</i> spp) response to drought"

  2025-03-20

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Reflections: Spectral Investigation of Black Band Disease in Hawaiian Corals

  Remote Sensing · 2025-09-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Coral reefs are essential to the cultural, ecological, and economic well-being of Hawai‘i’s communities, yet they face increasing threats from environmental changes and localized stressors, including coral disease. Detecting coral disease often relies on the visible appearance of lesions; however, in the case of black-band disease (BBD), this visual cue appears too late, as disease progression can cause an average rate of tissue loss of up to 5.7 cm2 per day over two months, followed by partial or full colony mortality. Reflectance spectroscopy offers a promising tool for detecting subtle spectral changes associated with coral health before visible symptoms emerge, yet few studies have applied this method to coral disease. In situ spectroscopy was used to measure the spectral reflectance of health conditions in Montiporid corals at ‘Anini Reef, Kaua‘i, USA. Discriminant analysis revealed that visually identical tissue types—live tissue on colonies with BBD (liveD) and live tissue on colonies without BBD (liveL)—were spectrally distinct. In contrast, BBD lesions (disease) and adjacent tissue that appeared healthy (transition) exhibited similar spectral signatures. Analyses identified three spectrally distinct tissue health conditions with a misclassification rate of 12.8%. These findings highlight the potential of reflectance spectroscopy for early coral disease detection, which could improve response times and support more effective coral reef conservation efforts.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests

  JuSER Publikationsportal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access

  Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy. However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties. This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically. Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.

  PublisherDOI

• Author response for "Remote sensing reveals inter‐ and intraspecific variation in riparian cottonwood (<i>Populus</i> spp) response to drought"

  2025-02-19

  peer-review
  PublisherDOI

• Mapping distribution patterns of invasive alien species in the Santa Monica Mountains using airborne imaging spectroscopy and line-point transect data

  GIScience & Remote Sensing · 2025-06-10

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area (SMMNRA) is a region of ecological importance, vulnerable to ecosystem degradation due to climate change and the spread of invasive plant species (IPS). Despite wide recognition of the presence and rapid expansion of invasive species in the SMMNRA, few studies have quantified the proportion and distribution of IPS in the region. A combination of high-resolution airborne imaging spectroscopy data and line-point transect data was used to model the distributions of five target IPS. A support vector machine model was applied to the imaging spectroscopy data and achieved an overall accuracy of 93.1%±2.2% over 10 iterations. Additionally, spatial autocorrelation was used to delineate clustering patterns of the five species in both datasets. The species distribution maps and cluster maps derived from both the transects and remote sensing data were compared and contrasted to determine the effectiveness of both approaches for identifying regions of concentrated cover and small cover fractions of the five target IPS. Both datasets revealed species from the Poaceae family were most abundantly distributed in the SMMNRA, followed by Brassicaceae and Asteraceae, though species-level abundance rankings differed. Areas of expansive IPS cover were consistently identified in both the transect and imaging spectroscopy datasets, however, results diverged in heterogeneous landscapes. Transect-based clusters indicated low IPS dominance, while imaging spectroscopy more effectively captured spatial heterogeneity. These results emphasize the value of fine-spatial and spectral resolution data for detecting IPS patterns in complex environments and demonstrate how combining airborne imaging spectroscopy with field-based methods can inform IPS management.

  PublisherDOI

• Remote sensing reveals inter- and intraspecific variation in riparian cottonwood ( <i>Populus</i> spp) response to drought

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-02-19 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Understanding how vegetation responds to drought is fundamental for understanding the broader implications of climate change on foundation tree species that support high biodiversity. Leveraging remote sensing technology provides a unique vantage point to explore these responses across and within species. We investigated interspecific drought responses of two Populus species ( P . fremontii , P . angustifolia ) and their naturally occurring hybrids using leaf-level visible through shortwave infrared (VSWIR; 400-2500 nm) reflectance. As F 1 hybrids backcross with either species, resulting in a range of backcross genotypes, we heretofore refer to the two species and their hybrids collectively as “cross types.” We additionally explored intraspecific variation in P. fremontii drought response at the leaf and canopy levels using reflectance data and thermal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imagery. We employed several analyses to assess genotype-by-environment (GxE) interactions concerning drought, including principal component analysis, support vector machine, and spectral similarity index. Five key findings emerged: (1) Spectra of all three cross types shifted significantly in response to drought. The magnitude of these reaction norms can be ranked from hybrids&gt; P. fremontii &gt; P. angustifolia, suggesting differential variation in response to drought; (2) Spectral space among cross types constricted under drought, indicating spectral—and phenotypic—convergence; (3) Experimentally, populations of P. fremontii from cool regions had different responses to drought than populations from warm regions, with source population mean annual temperature driving the magnitude and direction of change in VSWIR reflectance. (4) UAV thermal imagery revealed that watered, warm-adapted populations maintained lower leaf temperatures and retained more leaves than cool-adapted populations, but differences in leaf retention decreased when droughted. (5) These findings are consistent with patterns of local adaptation to drought and temperature stress, demonstrating the ability of leaf spectra to detect ecological and evolutionary responses to drought as a function of adaptation to different environments. Synthesis. Leaf-level spectroscopy and canopy-level UAV thermal data captured inter- and intraspecific responses to water stress in cottonwoods, which are widely distributed in arid environments. This study demonstrates the potential of remote sensing to monitor and predict the impacts of drought on scales varying from leaves to landscapes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Persistent Geographic Patterns of Coral Recruitment in Hawaiʻi

  Oceans · 2025-12-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Coral life cycle dynamics are poorly understood in most reefs, especially at the large geographic scales commensurate with ocean transport, genetic flow, and other synoptic scale processes. We present a spatially explicit, large-scale, and multi-temporal study of coral settlement along a 30 km long reef system in the Southwest portion of Hawaiʻi Island. Here, we focused on interannual variability in coral recruitment from 2021 to 2024, a period without a major marine heatwave. We used stratified random site selection to place 320 coral settlement tiles at 32 sites (10 tiles per site) at 10 ± 3 m water depth annually to monitor recruitment of the three most common coral genera found in the region (Montipora, Pocillopora, Porites). Site-level interannual variability in coral recruitment was high yet the overall geographic distribution of recruits was consistent through time. This occurred despite a decrease in benthic temperature and recruitment rates during the study period. Persistent geographic patterns in coral recruitment strengthen our understanding of mechanisms and conditions that drive reef resilience. They also strongly suggest a need to protect areas of high recruitment while studying drivers of low recruitment in contrasting habitats. This approach will further increase support of coral production in an era of climate- and coastal pollution-driven declines in coral reefs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Canopy functional trait variation across Earth’s tropical forests

  Nature · 2025-03-05 · 21 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Tropical forest canopies are the biosphere’s most concentrated atmospheric interface for carbon, water and energy 1,2 . However, in most Earth System Models, the diverse and heterogeneous tropical forest biome is represented as a largely uniform ecosystem with either a singular or a small number of fixed canopy ecophysiological properties 3 . This situation arises, in part, from a lack of understanding about how and why the functional properties of tropical forest canopies vary geographically 4 . Here, by combining field-collected data from more than 1,800 vegetation plots and tree traits with satellite remote-sensing, terrain, climate and soil data, we predict variation across 13 morphological, structural and chemical functional traits of trees, and use this to compute and map the functional diversity of tropical forests. Our findings reveal that the tropical Americas, Africa and Asia tend to occupy different portions of the total functional trait space available across tropical forests. Tropical American forests are predicted to have 40% greater functional richness than tropical African and Asian forests. Meanwhile, African forests have the highest functional divergence—32% and 7% higher than that of tropical American and Asian forests, respectively. An uncertainty analysis highlights priority regions for further data collection, which would refine and improve these maps. Our predictions represent a ground-based and remotely enabled global analysis of how and why the functional traits of tropical forest canopies vary across space.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Variability in contamination of submarine groundwater discharge into West Hawai‘i coral reefs

  Frontiers in Marine Science · 2025-08-26

  articleOpen access

  Sewage pollution is a global threat to coastal ecosystems and amplifies the negative effects of climate change on coral reefs. Submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) is a major transport pathway for land-based pollution, but underlying drivers of SGD water quality are poorly understood, especially in nearshore coral reef ecosystems. We combined airborne mapping, field sampling, and statistical modeling to identify locations along the West Hawai‘i Island coastline where SGD is contaminated with sewage. Water samples collected from 47 distributed shoreline SGD locations were assayed for fecal indicator bacteria. A geostatistical model was used scale from field to regional levels at more than 1000 mapped SGD point locations to derive a geographic understanding of areas highly susceptible to contamination. We estimate that SGD delivers sewage-contaminated groundwater to at least 42% of reefs in West Hawaiʻi. Subsequent analyses indicate that contaminated points are associated with infrastructural build-up near the shoreline and an abundance of inland on-site sewage disposal systems. Mitigation of sewage pollution will require the prevention of numerous point sources from cesspools, septic leach fields, and similar sources.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Gregory P. Asner

  University of Hawaii at Hilo

  219 shared

• David Knapp

  Applied Materials (United States)

  56 shared

• Nicholas R. Vaughn

  Arizona State University

  46 shared

• Sandra Dı́az

  41 shared

• Norma Salinas

  Pontifical Catholic University of Peru

  31 shared

• Christopher B. Anderson

  Planet Biotechnology (United States)

  28 shared

• Brian J. Enquist

  Santa Fe Institute

  27 shared

• Yadvinder Malhi

  26 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Biochemistry and Remote Sensing

  University of Colorado

  2003

• M.A., Rangeland Ecosystem Science

  Colorado State University

  1996

• B.A., Population and Organismic Biology

  University of Colorado

  1993