Virtual Workshop: Restoration in a Changing Climate

Saturday, December 19th, 10:30 am – 12:30 pm

In this wetland workshop, attendees will be given a brief overview and history of current restoration practices and reference ecosystems used. We will discuss and look at the influence of climate variability and change on the science and practice of restoration ecology and explore different ways that scientists and ecologists are coming together to tackle this complex problem and change the way we think of restoration today.

This event will feature Matt Distler from Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center and James Lee from University of Washington School of Marine & Environmental Affairs.

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Matt Distler is an ecologist with abiding interests in forests and wildlife, aquatic and wetland systems, stream ecology, and ecological restoration. He currently works with Oxbow Farm & Conservation Center, a regenerative agriculture and conservation non-profit located in the Snoqualmie River valley, where he works to restore healthy riparian forests and researches the impacts of land use, restoration, and habitat fragmentation on wildlife populations. His previous professional work has included urban open space restoration and monitoring, stream and riparian restoration with the Washington Conservation Corps, research on phytoplankton dynamics with the Marine Biological Laboratory, wetland restoration and paleoecological research on the Great Lakes, and creation of urban and rural land management plans in the Cascade Mountains. In his spare time, he enjoys reading, printmaking, and exploring nature with his wife and two daughters.

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James Lee is a master’s candidate in the University of Washington’s School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. He is a former Washington Sea Grant Science Communications Fellow and a a past research technician at San Francisco State University’s Estuary & Ocean Science Center, where he worked on salt marsh and eelgrass bed restoration projects. He’s passionate about shoreline restoration work for the value it brings to ecosystems and the connections it can foster between people and their waters. James worked with colleagues on a floating wetlands installation in the Lower Duwamish Waterway to see if it would provide critical ecosystem functions for juvenile out migrating salmon. He is also part of a team, brought together by the Ecology of Infectious Marine Disease Research Coordination Network, investigating changes in gene expression when eelgrass is exposed to a wasting disease.

Questions? Please contact DNDA’s Environmental Education Coordinator, Bri Castilleja.