We are an undergraduate-driven research lab based at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Located on the St. Mary’s River, an estuarine tributary of the Chesapeake Bay, we have a rich living laboratory right in our backyard. We specialize in ecosystem ecology, which emphasizes holistic analysis of our environment. It involves integrated investigation of living and nonliving components of ecosystems, how those components interact, and how those interactions affect ecosystem structure and function.

Broadly, we study the dynamics of shallow coastal systems. We aim to understand why ecosystems change and how those changes affect nutrient and carbon cycling in estuaries. We mostly focus on seagrass and submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV), but we also dabble in oyster reefs and salt marshes.