Research

During my Master’s degree at the University of Maryland’s Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science I conducted research under the advisorship of Dr. Jacob Wenegrat (UMD) and Dr. Veronica Lance (NOAA Coastwatch). In this work we were looking at the spatial distribution of marine heatwaves, events of unusually high water temperature, in the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay is the largest and one of the most productive estuaries in the contiguous United States. In Maryland alone the Chesapeake Bay and its surrounding waters contribute over $600 million of economic activity from the seafood industry. While previous work has looked at marine heatwave patterns at isolated locations, this was the first study using satellite sea surface temperature to look at the spatial distribution of marine heatwaves across the Bay. Check out the press releases from the University of Maryland, Mirage News, and Environment Coastal & Offshore.

In my reseach it is important to me to practice principles of open science. In addition to the published journal article you can find the paper’s code base on Github as well as the source data and output data in the SEANOE data repository.

Wegener, R., Wenegrat, J., Lance, V.P. et al. Spatial Variability of Marine Heatwaves in the Chesapeake Bay. Estuaries and Coasts 48, 113 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-025-01546-9

Awards Associated with this Work