Dar Roberts is a Professor in the Department of Geography at UCSB. He earned a double major in Environmental Biology and Geology from UCSB in 1981, earned a MS in Applied Earth Science from Stanford in 1986 and a PhD from the University of Washington in Geological Sciences in 1991. After serving as a postdoc at UW, he joined UCSB Geography in 1994. He served his first term as departmental chair from 2009 to 2014, and began a second term in 2025. He is the author of 274 refereed publications, 27 books/book chapters and over 110 abstracts and non-refereed articles. Research interests include imaging spectrometry, remote sensing of vegetation, spectroscopy (urban and natural cover), remote sensing of wildland fire, land-use/land-cover change, canopy structure with lidar, drought impacts, urban remote sensing and trace gas mapping (mostly methane). Courses he teaches include Land, Water and Life, Historical Geography, Spatial Environmental Modeling, Measuring our Environment, Environmental Optics, and Passive and Active Advanced Remote Sensing. He is member of several editorial boards including Remote Sensing of Environment. He was awarded the Academic Senate Outstanding Mentor Award in 2008, made a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2016 and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2023.