Research
I am a scientist/engineer currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physical Geography at Stockholms Universitet with Fernando Jaramillo. I got my Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley, where I worked with the U.S. Geological Survey on hydrodynamics and sediment transport in shallow bays and marshlands together with Mark Stacey and Jessie Lacy. I then did a short postdoc, also at Berkeley, in Laurel Larsen’s Environmental Systems Dynamics Group. My bachelors is in Applied Mathematics from Brown University.
My scholarship focuses on the following:
- environmental fluid mechanics and physical oceanography of wetlands, estuaries, and bays
- the transport and fate of matter in these environments: sediment, carbon, plastics, etc.
- how hydrodynamics are co-produced with geomorphic change and ecological shifts
- novel techniques for observing, quantifying, and representing environmental systems of interest
- applying the above to effective management and restoration of wetlands and coastal margins
I work primarily as a field scientist, using in-situ observations and sensors to capture information from the landscape. To extend the application of these findings, I connect this work to larger spatiotemporal scales using remote sensing techniques and occasionally numerical models.
Outside of technical questions, I am energized by cultural theory and historical ecology around bodies of water, environmental stewardship, and infrastructure. I aim to think interdisciplinarily and humanistically! Increasingly, I am interested in institutional organization and how this impacts action towards habitat restoration. I collect and organize lots of information from my life at are.na/lukas-w.
(email me if you want anything!)
(photos by Nate Zack)