Bill Welsh is a doctoral student in the Department of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  Before arriving at UNC-CH he received a B.S. (cum luade) in Telecommunications from Kutztown University, Pennsylvania, and an M.S. in Geography from Shippensburg University, also in Pennsylvania. Past experiences include internships at the U.S Department of Defense, Letterkenny Army Base (environmental management and land use planning), and the National Geographic Society (Committee for Research and Exploration).

Bill also worked for two years as GIS Coordinator for the North Carolina Division of Coastal Management, Strategic Land Use Planning Unit, where he helped develop and implement the Division's first geographic information system, with emphasis on wetlands functional modeling and cumulative impacts assessment.  As master's student at Shippensburg, Bill undertook a research project entitled "Economic and Environmental Effects of the Interstate 81 Corridor Upon the Rural Landscape of South Central Pennsylvania."  Two summer field seasons collecting data to support the research program on alpine treeline patterns and processes helped to expand and hone his skills as a physical geographer.  The first six months of 1997 were spent as a visiting lecturer at the Institute for Population and Social Research, Mahidol University, located in Bangkok, Thailand.  During this stay, Bill completed a field project aimed at linking social survey observations to specific geographic locations in Nang Rong district, Buriram province.  Subsequently, he returned to Nang Rong in December 1997 to collect extensive biophysical observations in support of land use/land cover (LULC) mapping from satellite imagery and aerial photography.  Bill's research interests include GIS, remote sensing, physical geography, and human-environment interactions.  The mapping of LULC and modeling of LULC change in relation to environmental gradients form the central core of his doctoral dissertaion research.