Happy 2023! This year is off to a wonderful start as two highly collaborative efforts I was a part of have just been published. First, the ASLO Early Career Committee has put out a piece in Limnology & Oceanography Bulletin describing the challenges unique to early career aquatic scientists and solicits input from the larger community ahead of our new Voices in Mental Health webinar series launching in March 2023. Also, a manuscript based on the outcomes of a virtual workshop hosted by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis and focused on identifying future directions for ecological synthesis efforts was just released in Ecosphere. Both articles are available open access!!

I am excited to announce that as of this fall, I am officially a member of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography's Early Career Committee! The purpose of this committee is to support and create a sense of community for early career researchers in the aquatic sciences across the globe. One of our current programs is the Amplifying Voices seminar series, which highlights research from underrepresented groups in the aquatic sciences. More information about the webinar series (hosted monthly) can be found here, and if you would like to nominate yourself or a colleague to speak as part of the series, the application form to present can be found here. We will also be hosting a range of events at the upcoming ASLO meeting in Palma, Spain in June 2023, so stay tuned for more information about those programs!

This week I had the opportunity to present at the 3rd annual Incorporating Data Science and Open Science in Aquatic Research summit as part of their session focused on data intensive models. I was so excited to be invited to present, and the organizers did a fabulous job of making the virtual space accessible and welcoming for all of the participants. If you are interested, a recording of my talk can be accessed on YouTube at the link below:
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I'm excited to announce that not one, but two publications I was a part of while working at the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project were recently published! The first manuscript develops prioritization tools for the management of California watersheds using StreamCat, environmental justice, and bioassessment datasets and presents their application at a number of pilot sites throughout the state. The second manuscript presents a newly developed interactive database - the Toxicity of Microplastics Explorer (ToMEx) - for helping synthesize the recent explosion in microplastics toxicity data. Both the aquatic organism and human health effect versions of the dashboard are live and publicly available!

It's hard to believe a year has already passed here at UNR! Here are a few photos from my local exploring with the Blaszczak lab, friends, and family.

Check out our new paper in Oikos! We examined changes in giant kelp tissue nutritional content over the past 19 years using an existing Santa Barbara Coastal Long Term Ecological Research site dataset. Our results suggest that the nutritional content of giant kelp has declined, and that this decline is correlated with increasing seawater temperatures. A  big thank you to my fantastic co-authors, Kyle, Jenny, and Bob! Click on the buttons below to see and hear news coverage about this work: