Welcome to my webpage!
I am a first year Ph.D.
student at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook
University. My reasearch interest is in tidal marshes. I am working with Dr. Kirk Cochran and I am preliminarily
looking into nutrient fluxes from marshes to their adjacent marine environments. I
am primarily trying to connect die-back wetlands to nutrient fluxes.
Tidal wetlands or marshes have been widely studied, yet there is still so much
to explore about the interactions of these rich coastal environments with
other neighboring environments.
In addition to being a Ph.D.
student, I also work for the Department of Environment and Energy of
Suffolk County, NY, where I am involved with several projects and programs
related to the local environment, such as restoration of shellfish
populations, tidal marshes, and control of invasive species.
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Contact Information:
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Current projects and programs I am involved with:
Suffolk County Wetlands Stewardship Program
picture courtesy from Tom Iwanejko, SCDPW. Vector Control.
| The Wetlands Stewardship Program (WSP) is an ongoing project administered
and funded by Suffolk County. This project intends to design an
assessment method for local marshes, utilizing parameters such as marsh
vegetation cover, invasive species density, extension of open water, and hydrology
of marshes. The picture on the left shows a marsh from Long
Island's south shore. Notice a die-back condition in the middle and a
dense patch of Phragmites in the back. 
Aerial view of a south shore marsh. picture courtesy from Tom Iwanejko, SCDPW. Vector Control. | Suffolk County Lakes
picture courtesy from Sara Dasilva. | This porject is a feasibility study to eradicate aquatic invasive/nuisance species
from three highly prized lakes in the Town of Brookhaven: Canaan Lake on the
Patchogue River, and Upper and Lower Lakes on the Carmans River. The Study also
includes the evaluation of options to restore fish passage at the Upper and
Lower Lakes.
Yaphank Lake. Notice the high density of invasive aquatic plants in the water.
picture courtesy from Sara Dasilva. |
Indian Island Tidal Restoration
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picture courtesy from Tom Iwanejko, SCDPW. Vector Control.
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This project is in the planning
stage and it is the result of a grant from the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). The
project proposes to restore/re-create
a high functioning acre tidal wetland system, re-gradeing
the area to match similar local reference high and low marsh
elevations with
particular focus to allow for marsh migration and vegetation shifts in
response
to sea level rise. Internal ponds and creeks are part of the design to
allow for an appropriate tidal circulation. Replicate
Surface Elevation Benchmarks/Tables (SETs) will be also installed in both High
Marsh
and Intertidal Marsh habitats to measure how these restored habitat elevations
change relative to local sea level rise. The
picture on the left shows the proposed area for restoration which is located near Terry's Creek (at the bottom of the photo) and the Peconic Estuary
(at the top). | Program related to shellish restoration:
Great South Bay Hard Clams Restoration Project | The main purpose of this project is to find the means to reestablish and protect reproductive populations of hard clams in the Great South Bay, Long Island that are
necessary to support ecological, economic, cultural, and recreational
values. |
A little bit more about me
I am Colombian. I
graduated from the Universidad del Tolima, Colombia with an undergraduate degree in
Biology. My thesis was a research project on spatial and temporal
distribution of phytoplankton in a reservoir. Once in the United States, I attained a Master of Science from C.W. Post, Long Island
University and completed an internship with the Long Island Botaical Society working with invasive plant species in Long Island and Dr. Jessica Gurevitch's lab from the Ecology and Evolution Department Stony Brook University with pine barrens demography.
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