Last week Lauren traveled down to New Orleans to present results from her master's thesis at Restore America's Estuaries and The Coastal Society's 2016 National Summit. Her poster presentation (below) focused on the overlap, or lack thereof, of ecosystem service preferences between stakeholders and project managers involved in a living shoreline restoration project in Martha's Vineyard. The conference focused on sustainability and restoration in coastal zones, with highlights on innovations in living shoreline techniques, oyster restoration, building partnerships, and navigating the new presidential administration.
Lauren's favorite talks discussed methods of incorporating benefits to people into restoration management decisions during a session moderated by Heather Mannix of COMPASS and featuring David Yoskowitz of the Harte Research Institute and Bryan DeAngelis of The Nature Conservancy. Another great one featured the incredible work going on in the Gambia by University of Rhode Island's own Coastal Resources Center. Lauren also got to reconnect with EPA collaborators on the living shoreline project and old colleagues from her undergraduate research at Northeastern University.
While in NOLA, Lauren stayed with her close friend and science cousin Hollis Jones, current masters student at Louisiana State University working with one of Austin's former advisors Megan La Peyre. And of course, she couldn't fly back up to the 6 degree New England weather without a healthy dose of live music, gallery shows, giant oysters, shrimp po'boys, and other mouth-watering meals.
