Yolo Basin Foundation Graduate Student Fellowship Recipients
Thursday, December 1 – 7 p.m. https://www.yolobasin.org/flywaynights/
Brian Lee is a PhD student at UC Santa Barbara. Brian’s project utilizes ground-based weather radar and computer vision to identify bat signatures across space and time in California’s Central Valley. The goal of this project will involve recording when and where bats are present, and eventually quantify their effects on agriculture throughout the region. He is creating the computer vision model and designing the data pipeline necessary to process the large amounts of data required to train and implement such a model.
Stephen Gergeni is a graduate student studying for his MS in Biology (Ecology, Evolution and Conservation) at California State University, Sacramento. Stephen’s study focuses on increasing the understanding of how the giant garter snake and western pond turtle distribution changes and evolves during current climatic conditions in comparison to historical distribution data in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area. He is determining species distribution within the available aquatic habitats using environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling.
Mackenzie Miner has completed her graduate research at UC Davis and will be presenting more finalized data during this, her second presentation, at Flyway Nights. Mackenzie now works as Environmental Scientist for the California Department of Water Resources in the Yolo Bypass. Mackenzie will update us on her research seeking to characterize the process of salmon reestablishment in newly rehabilitated habitats furthering our understanding of salmon reconciliation ecology in Putah Creek and identifying ways to encourage biodiversity in urban ecosystems broadly.
