Germán Silva Email & Phone Number

About Me in few(er) words:PhD Candidate Studying Remote Sensing, Biogeochemistry, and Biophysical Processes of Coastal Wetland SystemsAbout Me: I'm a telmatologist/wetland geographer with a focus on spatial patterns of salt marsh vegetation responses to ecological disturbance and how remotely sensed and biogeochemical data informs our understanding of this pattern. I am currently pursuing my PhD in Geography at UC Santa Barbara. I obtained my BA in Geography and minor in Environment and Resource Studies from CSU Stanislaus, where I was a McNair Scholar working on research focused on mapping water stress in pickleweed dominated coastal wetlands during the 2011-2016 California drought. I received my MA in Geography from UCSB, where I focused on using remote sensing to assess the impact of a debris flow on coastal salt marsh vegetation landcover at Carpinteria Salt Marsh Reserve. My PhD work has been using remotely sensed data from the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab's SBG High Frequency Timeseries (SHIFT) campaign to assess the connections between wetland plant traits and soil salinity in recently restored and managed wetlands. This work largely focuses on wetland sites at UCSB's North Campus Open Space (NCOS) and the UC Nature Reserve Coal Oil Point (COPR).These sites capture the entirety of Deveraux Slough, an intermittently tidal estuarine marsh system. As an intermittently tidal system, the system is only tidally active for a portion of the year resulting in distinct environmental conditions and ecosystem dynamics related to mouth closure.My objective is to develop better understanding of the short timescale dynamics of intermittently tidal marshes that has applications to ecosystem modeling and management in the face of climate change.