I graduated from the University of Connecticut with a B.S. in Environmental Science. The Environmental Science degree consists of a collection of upper level and introductory science courses from many departments throughout the University. You also pick a concentration in one department where you take a core group of courses. My concentration was Natural Resources Management & Engineering This degree is a great way to gather a wide range of experience compared to typical undergraduate degrees.

I am still at UConn working on a M.S. Degree in Natural Resources Land Air and Water. I do research in water resources and hydrologic modeling.

Work

I currently am the Hydrologist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Connecticut. It is a federal agency under the Department of Agriculture (USDA). I currently work on projects such as flood modeling, stream bank stabilization, and dam breach analysis

I also count my research at school as work. If any of you ever go back for a research based masters, you will understand why.

I recently worked at the Map and Geographic Information Center (MAGIC) at the UConn Homer Babbage Library. It is a great place and helped me keep my GIS skills sharp. If you like maps then you should definately check it out. I was able to do a lot of work with historic maps and aerial photography. Most of my projects are online now here A statewide digital mosaic of the 1934 CT aerial photographs was recently added.

Research

A lot has changed in my research work. Originally I did a lot of field work gathering hydrologic data. Then I started into hydrologic modeling with existing rainfall/runoff models such as HEC-1. I am currently developing a model which is much more complicated than many existing models but will also have a smaller range of use. I am using STELLA as a framework to model a soil profile during a single rainstorm. It is physically based but somewhat simplified compared to actual processes. The goal is to determine the effect of different soil and soil water parameter distributions within a runoff model. Hopefully I can someday apply this model to small drainage basins but for now it is a simple 1 meter square box.

Classes

Much of my classwork has involved the use of GPS equipment, both for locating positions in our study areas, and for creating a high resolution digital elevation model of one small basin. To view a 3D picture of the DEM for our Weaver Road drainage basin model click here.  The following is a list of the courses I have taken for my graduate degree. 

*The class links may not work.  UConn sometimes changes them.

Activities