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I often compare streams and rivers to the veins in the human body - streams and rivers connect ecosystems and transport nutrients across the landscape much like veins in the human body connect organs and distribute nourishment. I have had the luck to work in streams systems across the Southeast where we can find some of the greatest freshwater biodiversity in the world. The scenery, the biodiversity, and the people I have met and worked with have all awakened in me a love for all-things stream related.

Mainly, I enjoy studying how our actions change stream habitat quality and availability, which ultimately drive changes in species occupancy and distribution. I also enjoy studying stream restoration approaches and how to improve stream habitat through better land management. Below are a few projects that highlight my research interests.

Freshwater Mussel Die-offs

The United States has the highest number of freshwater mussels in the world, with most of the biodiversity concentrated in the Southeast. However, freshwater mussels are the most threatened group with nearly 70% of all mussels species in North America currently classified as endangered, threatened, or of special concern. Some have been declared extinct in the last decade like the Tennessee Riffleshell (E. propinqua). Population declines has been associated with habitat degradation through dams and point-source pollution, along with other factors such as the introduction of invasive species. However, populations across the United States have been experiencing mass-mortality events that are not associated with any specific environmental factors.

I am part of an interdisciplinary group of researchers studying freshwater mussel declines in the Clinch River located in the Upper Tennessee River Basin of Virginia and Tennessee, USA. My research focuses on assessing how disease and climate change may play a role in mussel mass mortality events, especially through disease associated with changes in water temperature and hydrological patterns.

Improving Aquatic Habitat for At Risk Species in Eastern Tennessee

In 2020 I was part of the incredible team who spearheaded the effort to write a proposal for the Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership grant, in partnership with seventeen agencies and organizations across Tennessee. Ours was one of the eight funded projects which awarded NRCS and the Forest Service over $5 million over a three year period. The money is meant to provide financial assistance for private landowners implementing best management practices that will improve aquatic habitat for at risk species in eastern Tennessee.

Southeastern Hellbender Conservation Initiative (SEHCI)

Hellbenders are large, fully-aquatic, long-lived salamanders that inhabit streams and rivers of the eastern United States. Similar to other aquatic fauna, Hellbenders have been experiencing population declines across the range for the past four decades. The Southeastern Hellbender Conservation Initiative (SEHCI), a collaboration between Defenders of Wildlife, NRCS, and other conservation partners, helps restore hellbender habitat through implementation of best management practices (BMPs) on private lands through USDA's Conservation Programs. These management practices focus on improving aquatic systems through in-stream habitat restoration and augmentation, channel stabilization, riparian buffer conservation, and erosion control. From 2019 - 2021 I was the Tennessee coordinator for SEHCI responsible for implementing the initiative across Middle and East Tennessee.

Hellbender Ecology and Distribution in Tennessee

At the Wildlife Ecology Lab at Tennessee State University we evaluated differences in habitat requirements across Hellbender life-stages and used a three-step framework to evaluate the distribution of the species in Tennessee. We used the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) algorithm to develop a habitat suitability model to guide sampling, environmental DNA (eDNA) surveys to ground truth the habitat suitability model, and multi-level occupancy modeling to assess species presence, while accounting for eDNA detection errors. Our results have been published in journals Herpetologica and Biological Conservation.

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