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Hello! I am Joe Buckwalter, a Research Associate and PhD candidate in Fish and Wildlife Conservation at Virginia Tech (Advisor: Paul Angermeier), specializing in stream fish ecology and land use effects. My work spans field-intensive data collection, ecological data analysis in R, and collaborative research across institutional partnerships. Current projects include a USGS-funded investigation of agricultural conservation practices and land use effects on stream fish communities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, a methods comparison of eDNA metabarcoding and electrofishing for fish community assessment, and a soil hydrology study of Virginia solar farms. Past research covers a broad range of freshwater and wetland systems: wetland characterization (vegetation, microtopography, groundwater hydrology, livestock grazing effects); water quality and flow dynamics in Appalachian coalfield streams; distribution modeling, DNA barcoding, and morphometrics of larval darters in the upper Roanoke River; long-term range-size trends of New River fishes; and fish and habitat inventories in Alaskan freshwaters. 

For more details, see my publications, talks, and teaching pages.