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Philip Heilman
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Phil Heilman/ARSUserFiles/2424/Phil.JPG
Research Leader

Southwest Watershed Research Center
USDA-Agricultural Research Service
2000 E. Allen Road
Tucson, AZ  85719
Email: phil.heilman@usda.gov

Research Interests

My primary interest is to reduce the cost and improve the quality of scientific information used by action agencies and watershed groups for watershed management across the West. There is a nascent field of ecohydrology that links the ecology and management of forests and rangelands with semiarid hydrology. Information technology now allows for much greater collaboration across large areas and diverse specialties to address ecohydrologic questions, but we have not yet adopted the standards and fostered specialization to really take advantage of this opportunity. I am also interested in ensuring that the West get as much value as possible from investments in experimental watersheds.

Current Projects

Education and Background

I earned a BS in Economics from Allegheny College and a master’s in philosophy from the St John’s College Graduate Institute, then served three years in the Peace Corps in West Africa. While working with a Belgian organization that helped build small dams, and after seeing the human toll of large-scale land degradation, I decided to pursue a career working against desertification. Returning to graduate school, I got a master’s in management at the American Graduate School of International Management in Glendale, Arizona and then a Ph.D. in Watershed Management at the University of Arizona, with minors in Agricultural Economics and Management Information Systems. While a graduate student I started work at the Southwest Watershed Research Center in 1991. After finishing my degree in 1995 I abandoned plans for international work and began working for the ARS, becoming SWRC Research Leader in 2011.

Recent Publications

(more can be found by searching here: https://www.tucson.ars.ag.gov/unit/publications)

Ponce-Campos, G.E., Heilman, P., Norton, C.L., Gao, S., Crimmins, M., McClaran, M. 2025. Integrating unoccupied aerial systems and satellite data to map the patchiness of bare ground at a landscape scale. Landscape Ecology. 40. Article 217.

Polyakov, V.O., Williams, C.J., Johnson, J., Phelps, E., Chavez, R., Heilman, P., Rutherford, W.A., Al-Hamdan, O., Nouwakpo, S.K., Jia, H., Spaeth, K., Anderson, S.R. 2025. Runoff and soil erosion on woodland-encroached sagebrush rangeland under simulated rainfall and concentrated flow conditions. Catena. 262. Article 109684.

Heilman, P., Archer, S. R., Williams, C. J., Scott, R. L., Goodrich, D. C., Collins, C. H., Naito, A. T., & Ponce-Campos, G. E. (2024). The LTAR Grazing Land Common Experiment at Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed. Journal of Environmental Quality, 53, 1037–1047.

Archer, S.R., Naito, A., Heilman, P., Vivoni, E.,R., Scott, R.L. 2023. Prosopis velutina response to aerial herbicide application. Rangeland Ecology and Management. 88: 129-134.

Ponce-Campos, G.E., McClaran, M., Heilman, P., Gillan, J.K. 2023. UAV and satellite-based sensing to map ecological sites at the landscape scale. Open Journal of Ecology. 13:560-596.

Meles, M., DeMaria, E.M.C., Heilman, P., Goodrich, D.C., Kautz, M.A., Armendariz, G.A., Unkrich, C.L., Wei, H., Thiyagaraja Perumal, A. 2022. Curating 62 years of Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed dataset: Improving QAQC methods of rainfall and runoff measurements. Water. 14. Article 2198.

Johnson, J., Williams, C.J., Guertin, D.P., Archer, S.R., Heilman, P., Pierson Jr., F.B., Wei, H. 2021. Restoration of a shrub-encroached semiarid grassland: implications for structural, hydrologic, and sediment connectivity. Ecohydrology. 14(4).

Goodrich, D.C., Heilman, P., Anderson, M.C., Baffaut, C., Bonta, J.V., Bosch, D.D., Bryant, R.B., Cosh, M.H., Endale, D.M., Havens, S.C., Hedrick, A., Kleinman, P.J., Langendoen, E.J., Marks, D.G., Rigby Jr., J.R., Schomberg, H.H., Starks, P.J., Steiner, J., Strickland, T.C., Veith, T. L. 2020. The USDA-ARS experimental watershed network: Evolution, lessons learned, societal benefits, and moving forward. Water Resources Research 57(2): e2019WR026473.

Goodrich, D.C., Wei, H., Burns, I.S., Guertin, D.P., Spaeth, K., Hernandez, M., Holifield-Collins, C., Kautz, M., Heilman, P., Levick, L.R., Ponce-Campos, G., Carrillo, E., Tiller, R. 2020. Evaluation of Conservation Effects Assessment Project Grazing Lands conservation practices on the Cienega Creek Watershed in southeast Arizona with RHEM/KINERSO2/AGWA modeling tools. Journal of Soil and Water Conservation. 75(3): 304-318.

Meles, M., Goodrich, D.C., Demaria, E., Heilman, P., Nichols, M.H., Levick, L.R., Unkrich, C.L., Kautz, M. 2019. Multiparameter regression modeling for improving quality of measured rainfall and runoff data in densely instrumented watersheds. Journal of Hydrologic Engineering. 24(10): 04019036

Gillan, J.K., McClaran, M.P., Swetnam, T.L., Heilman, P. 2019. Estimating forage utilization with drone-based photogrammetric point clouds. Rangeland Ecology and Management. 72: 575-585.

Swetnam, T.L., Gillan, J.K., Sankey, T.T., McClaran, M.P., Nichols, M.H., Heilman, P., McVay, J. 2018. Considerations for achieving cross-platform point cloud data fusion across different dryland ecosystem structural states. Frontiers in Plant Science. 8:2144. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2017.02144

Sankey, T.T., McVay, J., Swetnam, T.L., McClaran, M., Heilman, P., Nichols, M.H. 2017. UAV hyperspectral and lidar data and their fusion for arid and semi-arid land vegetation monitoring. Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation. doi:10.1002/rse2.44

Moran, M.S., Heilman, P., Peters, D.P.., Holifield Collins, C. 2016. Agroecosystem research with big data and a modified scientific method using machine learning concepts. Ecosphere. 7(10):e01493. 10.1002/ecs2.1493

Williams, C. J., Pierson, F.B., Spaeth, K.E., Brown, J.R., Al-Hamdan, O.Z., Weltz, M.A., Nearing, M.A., Herrick J.E., Boll, J., Robichaud, P.R., Goodrich, D.C., Heilman, P., Guertin, D.P., Hernandez, M., Wei. H., Hardegree, S.P., Strand, E.K., Bates, J.D., Metz. L.J., Nichols, M.H. 2016. Incorporating hydrologic data and ecohydrologic relationships into ecological site descriptions. Rangeland Ecology and Management. 69: 4-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rama.2015.10.001.