The people who make LandPKS

Our Team

Laura Hamrick

Program Coordinator

Steve Francis

Project Director, Terraso and LandPKS

Lillian Tseng

Senior Product Manager

Jeff Herrick

Senior Advisor

Sarah McCord

Senior Advisor

Jonathan Maynard

Soil Scientist

Maximilian Contreras

Program Specialist

Sabina Maniak

Research Assistant

George Peacock

Rangeland Scientist

Christian Rocha

Student Assistant

David Kimiti

Technical Advisor

Terri Schulz

Advisor

Lilian Ndungu

RCMRD Liaison

Travis Nauman

Technical Advisor

Mobile App

Start with the LandPKS app on your mobile device. Record field data and access soil information. Download the app for free.

LandPKS at your Desk

Data Portal

View, edit, and download your data from your computer. Explore public soil information and data from LandPKS users worldwide.

Learn More

Laura Hamrick

Program Coordinator

Laura Hamrick is the Program Coordinator for LandPKS. The role includes training and communications, research, and product management. Laura is passionate about communicating complex and technical topics to non-experts in an understandable way. Laura has previously worked in digital accessibility and secondary education, and received a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Steve Francis

Project Director, Terraso and LandPKS

Steve is a senior executive and gifted product strategist with a 30-year career ranging from hands-on software engineer to public company CEO. He has substantial experience in organizing teams and attacking new opportunities and markets while ensuring a balance between specific tasks and the “bigger picture” of a successful outcome. After consulting for three years on various high-impact social good projects, he joined Tech Matters in late 2019. At Tech Matters, Steve is the project director for Terraso, an open source technology platform that helps local leaders practice Integrated Landscape Management. LandPKS is currently being rebuilt as part of the broader Terraso ecosystem of tools and services..

Lillian Tseng

Senior Product Manager

Lillian is the Product Manager for LandPKS with a decade of experience in the tech world. She works for Tech Matters, a tech-for-good non-profit organization that is spearheading the rebuild of LandPKS version 2.0. Prior to Tech Matters, she worked at mmhmm, PlayPosit, and Microsoft, and graduated from Olin College with a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering. In her free time, she aspires to bake the perfect loaf of sourdough bread and work up to running a 5k.

Jeff Herrick

Senior Advisor

Jeff is a soil scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Las Cruces, New Mexico and holds adjunct faculty appointments at New Mexico State University and the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on the factors that control the resistance and resilience of dryland ecosystems, and he has developed a number of inventory, assessment, monitoring and knowledge management tools that are applied at plot to national scales. He serves as an advisor to US government agencies on increasing return on investments in rangeland monitoring and assessment, is a member of the International Resources Panel, and is the US Government’s science representative to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). His international work also includes collaboration with scientists, land managers, and development organizations in over 20 countries spanning humid tropical to dry temperate ecosystems.

Sarah McCord

Senior Advisor

Sarah is an ecologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Las Cruces, New Mexico. She holds a Ph.D in Environmental Science and Engineering from the University of Texas-El Paso and a master's degree in Geography from New Mexico State University. Her research focuses on producing and using monitoring datasets to support rangeland management. Sarah's work emphasizes producing tools that support high quality data collection, standardizing the monitoring datasets so that they can be aggregated to produce landscape scale insights, and working with land managers to develop decisions support tools.

Jonathan Maynard

Soil Scientist

Jonathan is a research ecologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Las Cruces, NM. He holds a Ph.D. is Soils and Biogeochemistry and a M.S. in Soil Science from the University of California, Davis. Jonathan’s current research is focused on the use of remote sensing and spatial modeling techniques to quantify and predict patterns and processes of human-affected ecosystem change. His research strives to generate management relevant information and novel technologies to assist national land resource monitoring programs. Jonathan is currently working to develop new techniques for the synthesis and delivery of ecological site information for LPKS.

Maximilian Contreras

Program Specialist

Maximilian is a program specialist and local coordinator for LandPKS based in Las Cruces, NM. His main roles are coordinating team communication and projects, database management, providing administrative and user support, managing app development, and website maintenance. He holds a BA in Music and Theater, and a background in media library management.

Sabina Maniak

Research Assistant

Sabina is a graduate student in CU Boulder’s Masters of the Environment program, studying Resilience and Sustainability. Her capstone work focuses on equity and community resilience research in wind energy development with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Her career interests center around equitable resilience and adaptation development in the context of anthropogenic climate change. Before starting at CU, she worked in app design and development, and ran a nonprofit focused on advocacy and accessibility work in international climate policy, attending several UNFCCC meetings internationally. She holds a BA in Linguistics from Washington University in St. Louis.

George Peacock

Rangeland Scientist

George has Master of Science in Range Science from Texas Tech University and a Bachelor of Science in Range Management from Sul Ross State University. He has worked as a rangeland management specialist for USDA-NRCS at the field, area, state, and national level. George has experience in natural resource databases, requirements analysis, design and testing of web services for several resource conservation projects. He is currently working on development of a land capability classification module for LandPKS.

David Kimiti

Technical Advisor

David has a PhD from New Mexico State University and his dissertation looks at the utility of LandPKS in rangeland restoration and management in Eastern Africa. He also holds a Master of Science degree in Range Ecology and a Bachelors of Science degree in Range Management from the University of Nairobi in Kenya. David is broadly experienced in natural resource management in Eastern African rangelands and spent three years working at Mpala Research Center and Wildlife Foundation in Laikipia, Kenya. His experiences include rangeland health assessment and monitoring, rangeland restoration, and elephant conservation. David’s area of focus was on use of land-potential knowledge for the restoration of degraded rangelands, with special consideration to developing and evaluating methods that reduce bare ground cover and promote conservation of resources in a cost effective manner.

Terri Schulz

Advisor

Terri Schulz is a Senior Conservation Ecologist for the Colorado Nature Conservancy. She is working on integrating biodiversity habitat information into LandPKS. Terri is a science leader in conservation land management in Colorado and works with ranchers on improved management and conservation outcomes. She also leads large-scale conservation planning efforts and has trained Nature Conservancy, students, and partner staff in the Rocky Mountains as well as in Thailand, Kenya, Mongolia, China and India. Terri also is a conservation coach serving on the executive board for the Conservation Coaches Network and Conservation Measures Partnership. Terri earned a B.S. in Wildlife Biology and a M.S. in Range Ecology from Colorado State University.

Lilian Ndungu

RCMRD Liaison

Lilian has a Masters of Science in Geographic Information Systems and a Bachelors of Science in Business Information Technology. Based in Kenya, her role is to liaise with local, national and regional organizations in Kenya and Namibia to obtain datasets that will help populate LandPKS global inputs.

Travis Nauman

Technical Advisor

Travis is a soil scientist with the US Geological survey in Moab, Utah with a PhD in Plant and Soil Science from West Virginia University and M.S. from University of Arizona in Soil and Water Science. His work generally encompasses the role of soils in ecosystem responses to different drivers of change. He has pioneered new methods to improve soil surveys using remote sensing and spatial modeling to meet needs of land management decision support systems. He has also worked in development and interpretation of natural resources inventory and monitoring programs with a wide variety of public, private, non-profit, and academic entities to help integrate data-driven research into land management frameworks emphasizing soil processes, site potential frameworks, and erosion mitigation. Travis has worked across the southwestern United States, Appalachian Mountains, and in parts of China to integrate field assessments of soil and vegetation into agricultural, rangeland, and forest management plans.

The people who make LandPKS

Our Team

Laura Hamrick

Steve Francis

Lillian Tseng

Jeff Herrick

Sarah McCord

Jonathan Maynard

Maximilian Contreras

Sabina Maniak

George Peacock

Christian Rocha

David Kimiti

Terri Schulz

Lilian Ndungu

Travis Nauman

LandPKS in the Field

Mobile App

LandPKS at your Desk

Data Portal

Get News and Updates

Laura Hamrick

Program Coordinator

Steve Francis

Project Director, Terraso and LandPKS

Lillian Tseng

Senior Product Manager

Jeff Herrick

Senior Advisor

Sarah McCord

Senior Advisor

Jonathan Maynard

Soil Scientist

Maximilian Contreras

Program Specialist

Sabina Maniak

Research Assistant

George Peacock

Rangeland Scientist

David Kimiti

Technical Advisor

Terri Schulz

Advisor

Lilian Ndungu

RCMRD Liaison

Travis Nauman

Technical Advisor