Kaylee Griffith Email & Phone Number

Ventura, Ca, Us

Ventura, Ca, Us

Rancho Cordova, California, United States

I lead permitting for habitat restoration projects in the northern Sierra and lower Sacramento Valley as a member of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife Cutting the Green Tape (CGT) program. The CGT program's mission is to increase the pace and scale of ecological restoration through coordination of granting and permitting activities and developing new tools that reduce time and costs spent in the planning process.As the North Central Region's CGT Environmental Scientist, I consult and guide habitat restoration practitioners on efficient permitting pathways (including new low-cost or no-cost tools such as the CEQA Statutory Exemption for Restoration Projects, Restoration Management Permit, and Restoration CESA Consistency Determinations), review, develop, and manage grants for restoration projects, and contribute to program visioning and development.

Sacramento, California Area

In this role I developed expertise in the science-to-policy pipeline as an Environmental Scientist in the Planning Division. Highlights include refining new and existing ecosystem restoration and protection policies and organizing internal processes in the revisions to Delta Plan Chapter 4 (Protect, Restore, and Enhance the Delta Ecosystem) and its CEQA process; serving as a major author and contributor to a Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment and its GIS datasets. Scientific and technical writing tasks included planning and policy documents, staff reports, scientific syntheses, technical memoranda on ecosystem restoration, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, risk management, land use, species recovery, and feedbacks between science, policy, and management. I developed regulatory policies by reviewing best available science, considering policies from other agencies, technical reports, and comments from legal counsel and stakeholders. I participated in regulatory review, which included early consultation, analyzing projects for consistency with regulatory policies, and analyzing evidence in the record in response to Appeals.I provided Geographic Information System (GIS) analysis and visualization support on land use, environmental impact analysis, and climate change by developing, QAQC, and stewarding datasets for cross-project and interagency use.Additionally, I served as deputy project manager for major projects and contracts, coordinated communication among staff, managers, legal counsel, and contractors, tracked progress and reviewed accuracy of deliverables, proactively monitored schedules and recommended corrective actions to Management. I supported inter-institutional coordination through existing forums, collaborative projects with university researchers and institutions such as the San Francisco Estuary Institute, and coordinated meetings between Program Managers of the Council and its sister agencies.

San Diego, Ca

I study the influence of patch edge type on epifaunal communities in restored eelgrass beds. Seagrass beds have long been a model system to test landscape ecology theories in seascapes, but the idea that neighboring patch identity may drive the magnitude and directionality of edge effects has been rarely considered. The push to restore eelgrass and other coastal habitats (e.g. native oysters) for their ecosystem services to humans is also an excellent platform to investigate understudied ecological concepts. This work is conducted on the Upper Newport Bay Living Shorelines project in collaboration with Orange County Coastkeeper and researchers at CSU Fullerton and CSU Long Beach.Beyond my thesis project, I communicate science to San Diego communities via SDSU's Marine Ecology and Biology Student Association (Co-Chair 2017-18) and the Surfrider Foundation San Diego chapter, and in a future career aim to connect science to policy and management of marine resources. To help fund my graduate studies, I earned grants from the CSU COAST Graduate Student Research Award, PADI Foundation, and several SDSU scholarships.

Greater San Diego Area

I led biology majors and non-majors through biology lab concepts, activities, and projects in two courses: General Biology Lab (Bio 100L) and Organismal Biology Lab (Bio 204L).

Bodega Bay, Ca

Assisted PhD candidates Jillian Bible and Brian Cheng with studies on multiple climate stressors, local adaptation to invasive species, and thermotolerance: Duties and acquired skills include setup and maintenance of experiments, phytoplankton (Isochrysis spp.) and Olympia Oyster (Ostrea lurida) culturing, data entry and analysis with ImageJ. Projects are associated with both dissertation studies and studies for NERR (National Estuarine Research Reserve System) within San Francisco Bay.Assisted PhD candidate Daniel Swezey with studies on the consequences of ocean acidification, temperature variations, and food availability on the growth, calcification, and skeleton components of bryozoans (Membranipora tuberculata, Membranipora serrilamella, and Celleporella cornuta).Managed a short study on the consequences of different diets on juvenile Pisaster ochraceus growth under the direction of Dr. Eric Sanford.Assisted with the takedown and data analysis of PhD candidate Jessica Abbott's Zostera marina research: Relating genetic diversity and trait variation to ecosystem functioning, including sediment ammonification/nutrient analysis with Dr. Susan Williams.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Both as a research assistant for existing studies and projects being run by graduate students and as a collaborator for more independent studies, I mainly gained experience with marine macrophytes and marine community ecology field/lab work in California estuarine, eelgrass (Zostera marina), and kelp forest (Macrocystis pyrifera) systems.Topics and experience including: Interalgal competition between opportunistic green algae and varying nutrient inputs in dynamic estuarine environments, under Dr. Peggy Fong and now PhD student Caitlin Fong (UC Santa Barbara)Field and lab work on a large-scale eelgrass (Zostera marina) and varying densities of macroalgae and its effects on seagrass and epiphyte growth, epifaunal diversity and abundance, and sediment composition, under PhD candidate Sarah Bittick in Dr. Fong's lab.Short-term colonization of understory algae (Dictyopteris undulata) in relation to MPA reserve status and proximity to kelp forest. This project included 35 AAUS dives for collection, plot implementation and retrieval, and numerous fish surveys, and was conducted by myself and fellow undergraduate researchers Valerie Burkholder and Eric Green, with advising and implementation assistance from Dr. Patricia Halpin and Dr. Sara Kappus.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Master'S Degree, Ecology

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Marine Biology, Conservation Biology

Activities and Societies: AAUS Research Diving, UCLA Bruin Marching Band, Tau Beta Sigma, UCLA Quidditch, Starcraft club