Rosenberg Institute Seminar Series - Sam Bashevkin

Leveraging old monitoring programs for new insights into San Francisco Estuary dynamics

Sam Bashevkin, Senior Environmental Scientist at the Delta Science Program, Delta Stewardship Council

The San Francisco Estuary has a rich history of ecological monitoring, with ongoing surveys dating back to the 1950s. Combining data from these surveys results in powerful datasets with extensive spatio temporal coverage that can be used to ask big questions about estuarine dynamics and smaller questions about basic ecology. In this talk, I will demonstrate how statistical modeling of integrated monitoring datasets can be used to derive new insights through two case studies. In the first, I assess water temperature trends over the past 50 years, the relationship between water temperature and estuarine inflow, and the spatio-seasonal variability in both. In the second, I describe long-term trends in the abundance and seasonality of three understudied zooplankton taxa. These analyses have implications for water management,endangered species,restoration planning, and food web modeling, and highlight the value of long-term monitoring data.

Sam Bashevkin is a Senior Environmental Scientist in the Delta Science Program, Delta Stewardship Council. Sam works to leverage long-term monitoring data for new management-informing insights while making these datasets more accessible through data integration and science communication. He applies data science, statistics, and interagency collaborations to diverse topics including water quality, zooplankton, fishes, and monitoring survey design. Sam completed his Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis, studying the adaptive defenses of larval crabs against predation and ultraviolet radiation.