I am currently in the second year of my PhD program with Dr. Jack Stanford at the University of Montana and am based out of the Flathead Lake Biological Station during the winter and spring.  I am interested in the conservation and sustainability of salmon populations and my PhD research is focusing on the effects of beaver habitat modification on production of juvenile salmonids within their complex freshwater rearing habitat. .  Salmon are declining worldwide and are endangered in many places.  Understanding the causes of declines, and what must be done to recover populations, will allow salmon subsistence fisheries to continue and is extremely important for maintaining healthy freshwater systems. 

One of the most critical life stages of salmon populations is the juvenile stage.  In Alaska, some of the most important rearing habitat can be found in spring brooks within large river floodplains, but in many of these systems large landscape level changes to habitat result from the activities of beaver (Castor canadensis). I am conducting my field research in western Alaska, on the Kwethluk River, a tributary of the Kuskokwim.  This is an ideal place to study the impacts of beaver on salmon as it is an unregulated river, with a plethora of beaver, that is largely unmodified by humans due to its inclusion within the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. 

I completed my first field season between May and October 2009.  It was five months full of adventure and trials, the highlights of which include Grizzly bear encounters, camping on the side of the river overnight as our boat broke down and how the bugs got so bad that we actually thought a boat was coming upriver because of the loud whine, but it was actually hundreds or thousands of mosquitoes... and perhaps the most intense was our entire camp burning down due to an electrical problem in the battery bank that powered our camp.  The good news is that despite all of this we had a productive first field season, came home with data on almost 33,000 juvenile coho, Chinook, sockeye and chum salmon, and learned enough to plan for less hectic future field seasons.  I plan to return to the Kwethluk in May 2010 to continue studying the movement and habitat use of juvenile salmonids in the floodplain as well as conduct a mark-recapture study to determine habitat specific growth rates and production of salmon in different habitats.