File:Lukas Lamb-Wotton- taken by Amira Nour.
Lukas Lamb-Wotton is a PhD candidate (to finish Summer 2023) working within the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research network.
“My research experience has primarily been in the remote coastal marshes and mangroves of the Florida Everglades, where I have developed a broad range of technical capabilities including field-based measurements, to laboratory analysis, to remote sensing and spatial analysis with GIS and R” Wotton said to Egypt Today.
Wotton primarily focused on sea level rise and its impact on coastal marshes and the plants there.
“ I have various field sites, I go out and take measurements on the soils, the waters, the plants, and just assess how the plants are doing with respect to salinity. They're very stressed by certain hydrologic conditions that are brought out about by saltwater intrusion, which is driven by sea rise.”
Wotton explained that his research is all around the topic of saltwater intrusion and sea level rise and coastal sawgrass in the Everglades.
“ So through prior experiments that I performed before I was a graduate student, we found that sawgrass is only moderately salt.”
Wotton explained that the Everglades is extremely broad, low lying wetland landscape. The Everglades houses hundreds of thousands of acres of marshes, mangroves and different types of vegetation communities and they are really specialized to thrive in certain hydrologic conditions and certain levels of water and salinity.
“ In the past hundred years since Miami has been developed, the Everglades has been drained and has seen a significant reduction in the amount of fresh water across the entire wetland landscape. So this puts a lot of pressure on the plants and the communities there to continue to thrive and be productive and healthy” Wotton explained.
Be Social
Comments
Leave a Comment