About me

I am a MSc. student in Forestry at the University of British Columbia. I am mostly interested in understanding physical controls on ecosystem processes and community structure within a stream context.

One of my current ongoing projects is evaluating the physical and biological factors involved in controlling riparian-stream coupling in a mid-order grassland stream. We are trying to evaluate the role of leaf morphology, wind, channel morphology, and discharge on the transport, retention, and breakdown of cottonwood leaf litter.

Currently, in my graduate studies I have started to look at tributary streams and how they influence the community structure and functioning at the intersection with the main stem river. There has been extensive research documenting the habitat heterogeneity that is formed at river junctions. Previous studies have suggested that these junctions are able to house remarkably diverse invertebrate communities, potentially creating biological hotspots. I am focusing my study towards evaluating the role of tributary stream power in changing the bed morphology and substrate in the receiving channel, and what the resulting impacts are on the local invertebrate communities. In understanding the physical mechanisms governing the community structure at these junctions, we may be able to gauge which tributaries are disproportionately valuable in maintaining biological or functional diversity hotspots along a receiving channel.

Previous work in my undergraduate degree has included GIS and remote sensing, Including analyzing the role of sea level pressure in the formation and steering of hurricanes, as well as applying laser altimetry to analyze the spatial distribution of snowpack accumulation.