October 29th - Climate Change and the Patuxent
Dr. Kate McClure is a coastal climate specialist with the University of Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program. She is based at the Wye Research and Education Center in Queenstown, MD and serves coastal communities throughout the state. Kate works to assist residents and decision-makers with understanding and preparing for the effects of climate change, with a focus on flooding due to sea level rise, precipitation, and storm events. Her background also includes experience in informal science education, science policy, and marine ecology research. Kate holds a Ph.D. in Evolution, Ecology, and Marine Biology from Northeastern University and a B.S. from the College of William & Mary.
Dr. Jeremy Testa is an Assistant Professor at the UMCES Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. His interests reside within the field of coastal marine ecology, with an emphasis on the processes of eutrophication, nutrient cycling, and dissolved oxygen dynamics. His group is especially interested in the interactions between biological, chemical, and physical processes in coastal ecosystems. They use a combination of experimental efforts, historical data analysis, and coupled biogeochemical-hydrodynamic modeling studies to examine these aspects of estuarine and coastal aquatic science.
November 5th - The Importance of Wetlands in the Region
Dr. Patrick Megonigal is the Associate Director for Research and a Principal Investigator at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. He is an ecosystem ecologist with interests in carbon and greenhouse gas cycling in wetlands and forests, particularly as they relate to global change. Dr. Megonigal is the lead investigator of the Global Change Research Wetland, a world class facility dedicated to unraveling the complex ecological processes that confer stability on coastal marshes as they respond to global environmental change.
Dr. Karen Prestegaard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Maryland College Park, where she studies rivers, wetlands, watersheds, water quality, minerals, floods, and rainfall and watershed management. She has worked extensively on sediment and nutrient dynamics in Patuxent River wetlands.
November 12th - Stream Ecology and Restoration
Solange Filoso is an Associate Research Professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, where she has been a faculty member since 2008. Born and raised in Brazil, she received a BA in Biological Sciences from Sao Paulo State University in her native country (1985) before earning her Ph.D. in Aquatic Biology at the University of California Santa Barbara for her work on the importance of floodplain forests on nutrient cycling in Amazonian floodplain lakes. In Maryland, her research has been mainly focused on understanding the effectiveness of watershed management strategies such as stream and wetland restoration at mitigating the impacts of nutrient pollution and other human activities on streams and rivers draining into the Chesapeake Bay. The goal of her research is to contribute with scientific information that can help improve our ability to protect and restore the functional capacity of freshwater ecosystems and sustain aquatic life in the Bay region.
Erik Michelsen is currently the Acting Deputy Director of Anne Arundel County’s Bureau of Watershed Protection and Restoration and is charged with managing its restoration effort to clean up the County’s waterways and satisfy its Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) and Chesapeake Bay TMDL requirements.
November 19th - Outreach and Advocacy for River Health
Fred Tutman was born and raised along the Patuxent River as were seven generations of his ancestors before him. As the Patuxent Riverkeeper, an organization he founded in 2004, Fred is a grassroots community advocate for clean water in Maryland’s longest and deepest intrastate waterway. He is among the longest serving Waterkeepers in the Chesapeake region and the only African-American Waterkeeper in the nation. After a late life sojourn into law school, Fred is now an adjunct instructor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where he teaches an upper level course in Environmental Law and Policy
Trey Sherard, Outreach Coordinator- Anacostia Riverkeeper. Bio coming soon!
