Group Members
Current members
Associate Professor
Email: kirwan@vims.edu
Education
B.S., College of William and Mary (Geology and Mathematics)
Ph.D., Duke University (Earth and Ocean Sciences)
In many environments exhibiting rapid geomorphic change, landscapes evolve by a combination of physical, biological, and anthropogenic forces. In my research, I aim to better understand how these coupled processes influence the
formation and survival of large scale landscapes, and how they respond to climate change. Most of my work takes place in salt marshes and other coastal environments, where knowledge of these “eco-geomorphic” feedbacks is often
important for human welfare and ecosystem management. This work currently focuses on applying concepts of eco-geomorphology to better predict: 1) how coasts respond to sea level rise, 2) carbon-climate feedbacks, and 3) coastal resilience.
Lab & Field Manager and M.S. Student
Email: tcmesserschmidt@vims.edu
Intersts: Camping, Concerts, Drone Photography, and water sports.
Ph.D. Student
Email: gdmolino@vims.edu
Advisor: Dr. Matthew Kirwan
Education
B.S., Geology, Brown University.
My interdisciplinary research interests center on the current and future drivers of coastal land use change with sea level rise. I have several active projects which use a combination of geospatial analyses and field methods to assess drivers of and barriers to coastal land use change. One of my current studies uses large-scale, high-resolution datasets to tease out physical and ecological drivers that are most influential in controlling the transition of uplands into marsh
across the Chesapeake Bay. I am also working on a project which combines field work and machine learning to examine the influence of people on coastal land use by quantifying the effectiveness of actions landowners have taken to protect private property from inundation. These studies build off of my completed project which predicted future marsh migration areas in the Chesapeake region under different sea level rise scenarios (see citation in Publications section). I strive to make my research useful for a range of stakeholders who are working to address the impacts of sea level rise on coastal communities and manage future land use changes within the coastal zone.
Ph.D. Student
Email: mbarksdale@vims.edu
Advisors: Dr. Chris Hein and Dr. Matt Kirwan
Education
B.A., Bowdoin College
MAT, University of Mississippi
My research broadly focuses on how processes related to sea-level rise drive changes in coastal ecosystem functioning. To answer questions related to these interests, I currently employ stratigraphic, geochemical, GIS, and modeling tools. Specifically, my first project quantifies carbon erosion along a migrating barrier island system in an attempt to
understand how landward migration of barrier islands due to sea-level rise influences the carbon storage capacity of the system. My second project involves a numerical transect model that tracks ecogeomorphological change of a salt marsh experiencing sea-level rise acceleration. The addition of model components that simulate commonly-used marsh restoration strategies allows us to assess the effectiveness of those restoration strategies on various metrics of marsh health and resiliency over time.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Email: sswittyngham@vims.edu
Personal Website: https://www.serinawittyngham.com/
Education
B.S., Marine Biology, Environmental Studies, Florida International University
M.S., Marine Science, San Francisco State University
Ph.D., Marine Science, Virginia Institute of Marine Science at William & Mary
I am broadly interested in understanding how anthropogenic and climate-driven variables influence wetlands on the individual plant, ecosystem, and landscape scales. Specifically, my research examines 1) how abiotic and biotic factor
influence plant functional traits (chemical, morphological, and/or physical features), 2) how changes in these traits relate to coastal ecosystem resilience to climate change and anthropogenic disturbance, and how we can use plant functional traits to assess management efficacy and enhance restoration success. Currently, I have two active projects. The first examines the effects of burrowing, herbivorous crabs on salt marsh carbon stocks and the second evaluates how prescribed fire, herbicide, and salt application affect the traits of the invasive common reed, Phragmites australis, and influence its distribution at the marsh-forest boundary in coastal Maryland.
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Email: nebruns@vims.edu
Education
B.A., Public Policy Analysis, Duke University
M.E., Computer Science, Cornell University
Ph.D., Ecology, Duke University
I am studying the impacts of pant-soil feedbacks on future carbon accumulation in salt marsh under elevated temperature, CO2, and sea level by integrating 1) simple dynamic models, 2) complex dynamic models, and 3) experimental data. The simple models are theory-based, mechanistic models of plant physiology and soil
biogeochemistry. The complex models forecast carbon accumulation in marsh and capture elevation-dependent, or eco-geomorphic, feedbacks. The data are from an ongoing marsh manipulation experiment at the Smithsonian Institute of Environmental Research where temperature and CO2 conditions have been actively elevated in a salt marsh. I am generally interested in how different modeling approaches produce different insights into how ecosystems function and much enjoy conversations about modeling philosophy and the histories of ecosystem ecology and geomorphology. My PhD was in river ecosystem ecology, investigating the consequences of phytoplankton “growth-in-motion” during river transit on the spatial structure and function of river ecosystems. Before that, I worked as a professional data scientist on problems in avian informatics as part of the eBird team at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. There, I developed novel modeling approaches enabled by machine learning for 1) continent-scale species distribution modeling and 2) acoustic detection.
Undergraduate Students
Lexy Bodor
Kristin Eittreim
Matthew Watts
Anna Wilkinson
Trinity Meredith
Alumni
Orencio Duran Vinent
Assistant Professor
Texas A&M University
Amy Langston
Assistant Research Professor
Desert Research Institute
Kendall Valentine
Assistant Professor
University of Washington Seattle
Ellen Herbet
Senior Scientist
Ducks Unlimited
Daniel Coleman
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Georgia
David Walters
Researcher, USGS Patuxent
Wildlife Research Center
Nathalie Jung
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Texas A&M University
Anthony Rietl
Sr. Environmental Scientist
CA Dept of Fish and Wildlife
Alexander Smith
Postdoctoral Fellow Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Yaping Chen
Assistant Professor, Sun Yat-sen University, China
Former William & Mary Thesis Students
Josh Himmelstein
David Nicks
Megan Gillen
Emily Hall