Fringe in the Fallout: Monitoring Nine Years of Hurricane Responses in Puerto Rican Mangrove Reserves

2026, Lewis & Clark College

Evironment Studies Honors Capstone & Independent Research (Land Lab)

Self-led, faculty-supervised remote sensing study comparing how Puerto Rican mangrove ecosystems handled the fallout of the intense 2017 Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Quantifying annual changes in land/seascape integrity and vegetation condition to explore resilience through two time scales: short-term resistance to damage and long-term regeneration.

I also received a grant from Lewis & Clark's Student Academic Affairs Board to travel to Puerto Rico and conduct ground-truthing fieldwork within the study sites. These observations helped validate the remote sensing analysis and allowed direct engagement with reserve managers.

Ultimately, this project has become a comprehensive written capstone exploring the data and how it relates to broader discussions of how we approach and nurture Nature-based Solutions. I also built an ArcGIS Experience webpage and multilingually-accessible Story Maps to interactively share the results and resources.