Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program:
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

I am an aquatic biologist with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Department of Conservation and Recreation, Division of Water Supply Protection, monitoring water quality in a reservoir serving the Boston-metro area. This includes monitoring of the phytoplankton population on a (typically) weekly basis, a program that has been in place since the late 1980s. As a master's student in the Roy Lab, I am analyzing this long-term data set to identify primary drivers of the phytoplankton community on an intra- and inter-annual basis.