Guest speaker, Dr. Bianca Charbonneau, Founder of Eco Branch LLC, will be discussing “Weathering the Storms: Coastal Ecology in the Face of Climate Change.”
ABSTRACT:
Shaped by wind, waves, and interacting biological and geomorphological processes, barrier island habitats sit at the dynamic interface of land and sea. The habitats within these mosaics —including dunes and marshes — are ever changing, reshaped daily and episodically by disturbance. The effects of climate change stand to add to uncertainty regarding their stochasticity, development, recovery, and persistence. Plants act as ecosystem engineers in these habitats. They shape them and facilitate recovery post-disturbance through ecogeomorphic feedbacks between organisms and physical processes operating across varying spatial and temporal scales. Together, ecological and geomorphic processes drive topographic development and impact localized erosion, ultimately affecting how these coastal habitats respond to storms and other episodic or chronic stressors. From the aboveground morphology of individual plants to the interconnected root, rhizome, and mycorrhizal system hidden beneath the sand, seemingly small biological differences can have landscape-scale consequences for dune formation and storm erosion. Understanding these relationships brings together multiple academic disciplines, linking fundamental questions about ecosystem and landscape change with applied implications for habitat conservation, management, and recreation. Using coastal dunes as the primary lens, this seminar will explore how biological processes shape topography, influence storm response and erosion, and inform coastal conservation and restoration efforts.
BIO:
Dr. Bianca Charbonneau is a field ecologist specializing in coastal dune plant ecology. Known informally as “Dr. Dune Goon” or “the Dune Goon,” she has studied coastal dunes and their responses to storms since Hurricane Sandy in 2012. She is an affiliated scientist in the School of Marine Science and Policy within the University of Delaware’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment and runs her own ecological consulting firm, Eco Branch LLC. She earned her PhD in Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019, where she was a National Defense Science and Engineering Fellow. She earned a Master of Science in Biology from Villanova University and completed undergraduate studies in ecology, evolutionary biology, and environmental studies at Princeton University. She has led and contributed to interdisciplinary research endeavors bringing together local coastal practitioners and researchers across disciplines, universities, and sectors, including as a postdoctoral ORISE Fellow in multiple laboratories within the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. She believes that innovative science is inherently creative and brings that spirit to her research and outreach endeavors.
https://www.ecobranchllc.com/