Students in the 2018 Healthy Streams, Healthy Coasts REU Program
Past Projects
Healthy Streams, Healthy Coasts Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program:
The REU program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette) provided ~10 students each summer the opportunity to participate in research on topics in watershed and coastal processes and resources within the southern Louisiana environments. We completed three in-person (and 1 virtual) summers between 2018 and 2021. This project was supported by NSF.
Envisioning the future of eDNA: Through ACT, we worked with experts in environmental, or "eDNA," from within NOAA (including MBON and others) and from the research, management, and technology communities to envision the future of eDNA sampling and sample processing. We held two virtual workshops on this theme in June and September 2020. The workshop report is available on the ACT website and presentations from developers of eDNA solutions can be accessed at this link.
Nitrogen use by estuarine phytoplankton: We have collaborated with the NSF-funded TIDE project in Plum Island Estuary, MA, to quantify nitrogen use by different size classes of phytoplankton over diurnal and spring/neap tidal cycles. This work was part of Jaylyn Babitch's Masters thesis and published in Estuaries & Coasts in 2020 (see Publications page).
Technology Innovation for Cleaner Water: With partners in federal agencies, academia, and industry, we are continuing to tackle the important issue of nutrient pollution in watersheds and coastal ecosystems through a combination of open innovation tools, technology development, and investments in social and behavioral change across stakeholder communities. We are continuing our work with the Nutrient Sensor Challenge, an effort to accelerate the development and use of affordable nutrient sensors for use in water and am also engaged in projects focusing on watershed-scale monitoring and management. As a partner in the Alliance for Coastal Technologies, the Stauffer Lab will be participating in the upcoming Challenge Summit and Beta Testing at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, MD.
Phytoplankton community composition in the southeastern Bering Sea: Polar regions of our world's oceans are under significant climatic pressure as climate continues to change, resulting in increased sea surface temperatures, reduced sea ice extent, and earlier retreat of sea ice each year. The Bering Sea is home to significant fisheries for the U.S. and other countries, and changes in the phytoplankton and zooplankton communities in this region have the potential for great impact on the food webs and fishery stocks. As a postdoctoral fellow, I participated in cruises and analyzed mooring-based datasets to show high degrees of interannual variability in the phytoplankton community response to climatic drivers and decoupling of primary and secondary producers from climatic and hydrographic conditions in warmer years. I also blogged from the 2012 cruise, which you can check out here!
Ecological observing in nearshore marine & estuarine ecosystems: King Harbor, the primary field site for my PhD work, experienced a massive fish kill in March 2011 at a time when I led in situ sensor and discrete sampling programs in the harbor. By augmenting those existing efforts with boat- and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)-based tools, we were able to correlate the fill kill with upwelling-driven hypoxia and an influx of a large population of sardine. We were also able to show that the mortality event was not driven by a HAB event within the harbor, as was originally assumed. However, a dense bloom of Pseudonitzschia spp. offshore at the time of the mortality event and significant concentrations of domoic acid detected in fish stomachs raised questions about potentially non-lethal impacts of this neurotoxin on fish behavior.
Healthy Streams, Healthy Coasts Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program:
The REU program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL Lafayette) provided ~10 students each summer the opportunity to participate in research on topics in watershed and coastal processes and resources within the southern Louisiana environments. We completed three in-person (and 1 virtual) summers between 2018 and 2021. This project was supported by NSF.
Envisioning the future of eDNA: Through ACT, we worked with experts in environmental, or "eDNA," from within NOAA (including MBON and others) and from the research, management, and technology communities to envision the future of eDNA sampling and sample processing. We held two virtual workshops on this theme in June and September 2020. The workshop report is available on the ACT website and presentations from developers of eDNA solutions can be accessed at this link.
Nitrogen use by estuarine phytoplankton: We have collaborated with the NSF-funded TIDE project in Plum Island Estuary, MA, to quantify nitrogen use by different size classes of phytoplankton over diurnal and spring/neap tidal cycles. This work was part of Jaylyn Babitch's Masters thesis and published in Estuaries & Coasts in 2020 (see Publications page).
Technology Innovation for Cleaner Water: With partners in federal agencies, academia, and industry, we are continuing to tackle the important issue of nutrient pollution in watersheds and coastal ecosystems through a combination of open innovation tools, technology development, and investments in social and behavioral change across stakeholder communities. We are continuing our work with the Nutrient Sensor Challenge, an effort to accelerate the development and use of affordable nutrient sensors for use in water and am also engaged in projects focusing on watershed-scale monitoring and management. As a partner in the Alliance for Coastal Technologies, the Stauffer Lab will be participating in the upcoming Challenge Summit and Beta Testing at the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Solomons, MD.
Phytoplankton community composition in the southeastern Bering Sea: Polar regions of our world's oceans are under significant climatic pressure as climate continues to change, resulting in increased sea surface temperatures, reduced sea ice extent, and earlier retreat of sea ice each year. The Bering Sea is home to significant fisheries for the U.S. and other countries, and changes in the phytoplankton and zooplankton communities in this region have the potential for great impact on the food webs and fishery stocks. As a postdoctoral fellow, I participated in cruises and analyzed mooring-based datasets to show high degrees of interannual variability in the phytoplankton community response to climatic drivers and decoupling of primary and secondary producers from climatic and hydrographic conditions in warmer years. I also blogged from the 2012 cruise, which you can check out here!
Ecological observing in nearshore marine & estuarine ecosystems: King Harbor, the primary field site for my PhD work, experienced a massive fish kill in March 2011 at a time when I led in situ sensor and discrete sampling programs in the harbor. By augmenting those existing efforts with boat- and autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV)-based tools, we were able to correlate the fill kill with upwelling-driven hypoxia and an influx of a large population of sardine. We were also able to show that the mortality event was not driven by a HAB event within the harbor, as was originally assumed. However, a dense bloom of Pseudonitzschia spp. offshore at the time of the mortality event and significant concentrations of domoic acid detected in fish stomachs raised questions about potentially non-lethal impacts of this neurotoxin on fish behavior.