I am in the QERM (Quantitative Ecology
and Resource Management) program at the University of Washington in Seattle. I am interested in exploring various aspects of movement, survival and behavior of aquatic organims. The great question to me is: how do they manage to pull it off? - expecially in view of the variabity, both in space and time, of the aquatic environment.
I have spent some time quantifying the dispersal, migration and survival rates of freshwater fish in streams, in particular Pacific salmon populations, trying to infer from travel time data how heterogeneous the population is, how susceptible to predation they are, how various environmental factors (temperature, flow, turbidity) interact.
More recently, I have been interested in rethinking some ways researchers quantify animal movement data, and am hoping to apply some ideas to salmon and sturgeon in the Columbia river, marine mammals in the North Pacific, dugongs in Western Australia. The ultimate goal is to develop an objective way to infer behavioral switches and relate these to environmental covariates.
I am also actively involved in a joint American Russian project on Steller Sea Lion ecology, population dynamics and behavior in the Russian Far East (Kamchatka, Kuril Islands, Bering Sea, Sea of Okhotsk). Here is an site about our work ... unfortunately, to date, it is only in Russian.
My advisor is
Jim Anderson, a faculty member in the School
of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences.
In the fall I sometimes wish I studied
mushrooms instead.
Recent Projects
A presentation and accompanying animations detailing
some methods of incorporating population-level heterogeneity in analyses of animal dispersal and migration.
Here is a report and a presentation on analyzing movement data and relating it to
behavior and environment with a case study of dugongs in Australia as an example.
Here is a poster presented at the 16th Biennial Conference
on
the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego, 2005, on differences in attendance patterns and foraging
behavior observed amond Steller sea lions on the Kuril Islands.
This is a presentation I gave at the
School of Fisheries Quantitative Seminar on mathematical and
simulation modeling of predator-prey encounters.
Here is a term paper presenting a stochastic model of random selection and genetic drift with possible relevance to population genetics in salmon.
Here is the title page to a book on Siberian sturgeon Acipenser baeri Brandt I translated from Russian for the USGS in summer 2003.
Teaching
See the wiki-page for the Winter 2007 QERM 600 course (tentatively called: Accelerated Introductory Applied Statistics and Modeling with an Ecological and Resource Management Flavor (Relying Heavily on R) , or AIASMERMF(RHR) for short, which I will be co-coordinating with colleague Mike Keim
Students taking QERM 598 in the Winter quarter, there will be an updated website coming up very soon!
Field Work
SUMMER 2007: This year, I was in the north Sea of Okhotsk on Matykil Island . Hopefully, info is pending. One photograph of a nuclear sealion family (made by myself) is available on the web here
SPRING 2006: I had the very very special opportunity to participate in a
joint Russian-American walrus survey on the Bering Sea ice in March. Some photos are posted, with far too little
text.
FALL 2005: I'm back again from the Kuril islands. This time I was on a different one called Raykoke. Here's more pictures and
less text.
FALL 2004: I'm back from the Kuril islands. Here's some pictures and
text.
SPRING 2004: I am going far, far away to the remote island of Antsiferov
in the Kuril Island chain to observe
Steller sea lions which has nothing
to do with anything I've been doing. Still, I am looking forward to observing animal behavior
closely, gaining the trust of the one-ton males, and infiltrating their society. Also, the sunsets
on the steel-grey waters of the Sea of Okhotsk are said to be superlative.
Politics
OCTOBER 2003 (later early-middle): In the most recent development, I was unanimously elected to serve as senator for QERM.
The only glitch in this meteoric rise to power was some minor rumbling of dissent from
Bert Loosmore, who is on
record as saying
"Can't anyone else do it???? Okay, I guess I'll approve." This will be remembered.
OCTOBER 2003 (early-middle): I was recently nominated to represent QERM in the Graduate and Professional Student Senate at the
University of Washington and have formulated a platform (9/31/2003).
My Sketchy Past
Brief stint measuring
Ecological Footprints at a sustainablity think-tank called Redefining Progress in Oakland, CA (2002).
D.E.A. (equivalent to M.S.) in Environmental Geosciences from the
Centre
d'Education et de Récherche en Géosciences de
l'Environnement in Marseille, France
(2000).
B.S. in Physics and a B.A. in French, German and Comparative
Literature at Case Western Reserve University
in Cleveland, Ohio (1998).
Pictures
Links
