Graduate Research
Cathilyn McIntosh
Cathi is a first-year graduate student. Her research focuses on how tidal flow restrictions in salt marsh habitats influence methane gas emissions. She will observe how changes in soil conditions influence the microbial communities that drive methane emissions in wetlands by observing soil condition data, microbial activity, and measuring overall methane gas fluxes.
Morgan Mack
Morgan is a second-year graduate student and is interested in how coastal ecosystems respond to nutrient enrichment. She is studying the responses of mangroves when enriched with excess nitrogen within the marsh-mangrove ecotone in Northeastern Florida.
Jocelyn Bravo
Jocelyn is a second-year graduate student at Villanova University, who is interested in salt marsh plant species and their responses to anthropogenic disturbances and global drivers.
Justin Robbins
Justin is researching the advancement of mangroves into saltmarsh areas in northeast Florida. There is a good understanding of how climate change is instigating this spread (fewer freeze events), but not how this plays out differently across sites. He is quantifying and comparing mangrove expansion across the ecotone, as well as trying to explain those differences.
Damir Creecy
Damir recently defended his Master’s thesis project which focused on defining the ideal range of elevations suitable for the establishment and growth of young mangroves in the saltmarsh-mangrove ecotone of Northeastern Florida. His thesis experiment combines field experimentation, graphical, and mathematical modeling to obtain estimates of locations where new mangroves have the highest probability of establishing as they encroach northward into previously uncolonized saltmarsh.
Nicole Spanier
Nicole recently defended her Master’s thesis project which investigated whether fiddler crab bioturbation (burrowing) affects soil dynamics and mangrove productivity. Using a structural equation model (SEM), she will discover the most important mechanisms through which fiddler crabs affect mangrove growth. In addition, she is using an SEM to identify the mechanisms that influence mangrove productivity the most in the WETFEET project.