After completing his PhD in 1971, Westman participated in the American Political Science Association Congressional Fellowship Programme in Washington DC, during which time he helped draft amendments to the 1972 Water Pollution Control Act. In 1984, Westman left UCLA and joined the Office of Ecosystem Science and Technology at the NASA/Ames Research Center, San Francisco, as a research scientist. Through this appointment, he helped pioneer the use of remote sensing into the study of plant communities. His transdisciplinary approach to coastal ecosystems drew together human and physical geography techniques, culminating in the influential book
Ecology, Impact Assessment, and Environmental Planning, which integrated theoretical and applied ecology with impact assessment and policy development. In addition to his interest in plant ecology, Westman was influential in the field of
environmental policy. In addition to his book, he produced articles such as "How much are Nature's services worth?", which advised on the environmental policies of the
US government at the time. Westman left academia for a period of five years before his death in 1991, in order to focus on advisory roles and activism. However, he continued to work in science as a staff scientist in Ecology and Environmental Policy at the
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, where he continued to apply remote sensing techniques to detect tropical deforestation and vegetation stress, and work on
ecological restoration. == Activism ==