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Dennis
Reinhardt
Storyteller, Ecological Solution Advisor
and Public Relations
[email protected]
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Spanning nearly four decades, Dennis began his career
with an eclectic mix of naturalist, mountaineer, explorer,
student, and nature photographer. Early geospatial
experiences launched him firmly into the dynamic and
awakening disciplines of ecology and systems modeling.
In his early career he became ecologist, teacher,
aerial photographer, and interdisciplinary student
of geography and its technological successor - geographic
information systems (GIS). He saw the complementarity
between Earth sciences and emergent developments in
remote sensing, and he pursued applications derived
from whole systems approaches as the underlying theoretical
framework for all ecological and environmental sciences.
Toward the close of his formal graduate education
in the mid-seventies, he emerged by choice from the
limits and constraints of traditional science and
proceeded to build an alliance with the leading American
practitioners in regional ecological planning, landscape
architecture, and environmental design – first
as a PhD candidate enmeshed in the real world as administrator
of several pioneer foundation and NSF funded environmental
programs at UC Davis and Berkeley, then as a member
of the core faculty of the Graduate School of Design
at Harvard, and a decade later, at the Center for
Remote Sensing at Boston University.
From these academic posts, he devised methodologies
for integrating ecological theory and complex systems
methodologies into the solution of design and planning
challenges he encountered as Senior Ecologist at Sasaki
Associates, as owner of Cambridge Solar Enterprises,
and as Senior Scientist at Earth Satellite Corporation.
In these varied professional roles, he was able to
infuse "real world" issues into the classroom as case
studies and in solution focused research and professional
practice. Since the mid-nineties, first at Risk Management
Solutions and more recently at Sand Hill Enterprises
Dennis has continued his involvement in planet restoration
by laying the groundwork for reversing the destructive
policies that adversely affect ecological landscapes
and the human environment. Dennis founded Sand Hill
Enterprises in 2000, to provide satellite imagery
for risk and disaster response, but also to support
mitigation design, environmental monitoring and assessment,
archaeology, and ecological planning. His most recent
explorations have been to bring Ian McHarg's regional
scale environmental planning approaches into the framework
of the technology of twenty-first century GIS. In
addition to his involvement with Sand Hill Enterprises,
in which he assists environmentally based companies
in funding their endeavors, Dennis has become affiliated
with Green Fuse Energy Company LLC as Chief Ecology
and GIS Officer, where he engages complex geospatial
concepts at the institutional scale. He has also recently
become the ecological solutions advisor to oneVillage
Foundation (www.onevillage.biz) in a major initiative
to introduce ICT (information communications technology)
into Africa to facilitate solutions to the AIDS crisis.
Raised on a California vineyard, where the daily
influences of nature combined with the nurturing voices
of mentors and sometime heroes with names like Carson,
Meadows, Hessmeyer, Leopold, Unsoeld, Hadsell, Teilhard
de Chardin, Brower, Churchman, Treichel, Marsh, Johnson,
Adams, Wilson, Dasmann, Sears, and McHarg; these "companions"
in life and literature "sang" an accompaniment to
a thousand books. Signposts pointing to an inclusive
and integrated Nature-Spiritual-Humanist philosophy
that has become an eclectic tapestry defining his
goals and recent initiatives have marked his life.
Dennis was one of the first of the now abundant "chroniclers"
of Aldo Leopold and the land ethic, and was a member
of the forward looking team of forest ecologists that
lit the match for the first "prescribed burn" in Yosemite
in the early sixties; he was a local organizer and
speaker on the First Earth Day, and he conducted the
first workshops leading to institutionalization of
the now ubiquitous environmental impact statements
as the "red flags" of the National Environmental Policy
Act of 1969. As President of the Oregon State Mountain
Club in 1973, his biggest disappointment was that
as a standby member of the Everest West Ridge Expedition,
and not a member of the summit teams of Unsoeld, Hornbein,
Whittaker, Gombu, Bishop, and Jerstad, he did not
reach the summit of Everest.
However, during the winters of the early to mid-seventies,
he climbed all of the major volcanic peaks of the
Oregon Cascades, and stood atop St. Helens several
years before the mountain exploded in a cataclysmic
demonstration of the dynamic power of earth processes.
During the summers, he was the naturalist at Emerald
Bay and DL Bliss State Parks at Lake Tahoe, where
he repeatedly called for the cessation of road building
in the remote areas of the National Forests and where
he was the first to identify both the presence of
inversion smog at South Lake Tahoe as well as investigate
the link between Lake basin development and eutrophication
of its pristine waters. Dennis was an ecologist before
the word had entered the popular lexicon. During the
decade before the launch of the first Landsat satellite,
he recognized the importance of viewing the Earth
from space, and as pilot of his Cessna 172, he personally
acquired one of the largest private collections of
aerial images of California – a collection now
destined for Harvard. He also piloted his University
extension students on numerous interpretive missions
over the San Francisco Bay Region as the "field trip"
for his popular extension course, 'Ecology of the
Land – an aerial perspective'. Dennis is also
one of only a few individuals outside of Russia with
access to the sub-meter global satellite archives
of the Russian Defense Ministry.
Now entering the next phase of a career that has
been quietly rewarding, he is committed to assisting
in a successful launch of Green Fuse Energy, a company
that is being built on the holistic philosophy of
Ian McHarg, in his landmark book, "Design with Nature",
and on the hope filled insights of E O Wilson, expressed
in his newest book, "The Future of Life". As he heads
down the home stretch, Dennis intends to spend much
of his time writing on various subjects, but all in
one way or another focusing on the future of humanity.
Dennis resides in Palo Alto, California, with his
wife, Geraldine, archaeologist and independent scholar
specializing in the cultures of Central Asia and the
former Soviet Union. Daughter, Katrinka resides in
Berkeley, is a geologist/archaeologist specializing
in Chinese Bronze Age cultures and is currently a
PhD candidate at Stanford University, with a dissertation
on stratification in the Shang period at the ancient
site of Anyang. As a family, Katrinka, Geraldine,
and Dennis have participated in archaeological reconnaissance
together in Egypt, Yucatan, Morocco, Kenya, and Tanzania,
as well as traveling to India in connection with his
assignment to establish remote sensing capabilities
at the RMS subsidiary in New Delhi.
Contact Information
Dennis Reinhardt
PO Box 7192
Menlo Park, CA 94026
650-799-3234 mobile
[email protected]
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