Chesapeake Bay Expertise Database

CBED allows scientists, managers, research funders, and other interested parties to identify experts at CRC member institutions and other CBP partner institutions through searches by scientific discipline, management area, research interests, or institution. Please see the sidebar to learn more.

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To become part of the CBED, simply register your own expertise data here. The application process is form driven and usually takes under 5 minutes. Your application will be processed within 2 weeks.

Following search, click on name to see email address & website (if allowed by registrant).

Dr. Eric Walters

Institution : Old Dominion University (ODU) | Department : Biological Sciences | Position : Associate Professor | Expertise : Ecology, Forests, Wildlife Ecology
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Land Conservation | Research interests : Migrant bird ecology along the Eastern Shore

Dr. Zhiwu (Drew) Wang

Institution : Virginia Tech (VT) | Department : Civil & Environmental Engineering | Expertise : Agricultural BMPs, Agricultural Runoff, Alternative Energy, Environmental Engineering, Nutrient Pollution, Water Quality, Water Treatment
Chesapeake Management Areas : Water Quality, Toxic Contaminants | Research interests : stormwater treatment; nutrient removal; bioenergy production; water purification

Dr. Denice Wardrop

Institution : Penn State University (PSU) | Department : Geography | Expertise : Biogeochemistry, Climate/Weather Impact Analysis (biochemistry and living resources), Ecology, Methane Cycling, Nutrient Cycling, Wetlands
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Water Quality, Healthy Watersheds, Climate Resiliency | Research interests : Most of my time at Penn State has been spent as a research scientist at Riparia, a center dedicated to providing science that informs policy and practice. My research has centered on ecological responses to human disturbance and climate change in freshwater wetlands, their neighboring headwater streams, and coastal marshes. My experience as both an ecologist and an educator led me down the path of exploring the responsibility of Higher Education in the pursuit of a sustainable world; I served as the founding Director of Penn State’s Sustainability Institute, dedicated to leading and supporting the University’s integration of sustainability into all of its functions, which is closing in on its five year anniversary. I have just returned to my faculty position in the Department of Geography, building an Office of Engaged Scholarship in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and pursuing the vision of humans and aquatic ecosystems bringing out the best in each other. Current research is in carbon sequestration and cycling in Mid-Atlantic freshwater wetlands and in the high altitude peatlands and tropical marshes of Peru; relative vulnerability of freshwater wetlands to climate change impacts via high-resolution hydrologic modelling; assessment of restoration progress in the Everglades; and the role of monitoring and assessment (including ecologic indices) in adaptive management in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Dr. Donald Weller

Institution : Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) | Expertise : Biogeochemistry, Coastal/Estuarine Sampling and Monitoring, Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Land Use, Nutrient Cycling, Nutrient Pollution, Seagrass, Stream Health, Water Quality
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Water Quality, Healthy Watersheds | Research interests : I use the quantitative tools of spatial analysis, mathematical modeling, and statistics to explore ecological questions in four general areas: the factors controlling nutrient discharges from watersheds; the role of wetlands in moderating nutrient transport; the relationships between watershed characteristics and the ecological health of wetlands, streams, and estuaries; and carbon storage in coastal wetlands.

Dr. Shannon Wells

Institution : Old Dominion University (ODU) | Department : Ocean, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences | Expertise : Crabs, Ecology, Fisheries, Oceanography
Chesapeake Management Areas : Sustainable Fisheries | Research interests : Blue crab reproduction

Dr. Dennis Whigham

Institution : Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) | Expertise : Ecology, Forests, Invasive Species, Nutrient Cycling, Wetlands
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Healthy Watersheds | Research interests : The ecology of plants has been Dennis Whigham’s primary interest and his research has resulted in journeys through forests, fields and wetlands around the world. Explorations have lead to studies of woodland herbs – including orchids, vines, wetland species, invasive species and studies of forests in the tropics, temperate and boreal zones. In recent years, studies of interactions between orchids and fungi have lead in new and exciting directions. Whigham’s current focus is on wetlands, including the role of wetlands associated with juvenile salmon habitat in Alaska; the rarest terrestrial orchid in eastern North America; and invasive species. His current passion is to establish the North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC), an initiative of the Smithsonian and the United States Botanic Garden. NAOCC will be based on continentally focused public-private collaborations that will result in the conservation of the genetic diversity of native orchids, initially in the U.S. and Canada.

Dr. Chris Williams

Institution : University of Delaware | Department : Entomology and Wildlife Ecology | Expertise : Ecology, Environmental Education, Sea Level Rise, Seagrass, Wildlife Ecology, Environmental Education
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Healthy Watersheds, Climate Resiliency | Research interests : I oversee the University of Delaware Waterfowl and Upland Gamebird Program. I research all aspects of waterfowl ecology including habitat use, food preference, population ecology, and bioenergetic modeling. We further study the impacts of anthropogenic disturbance and sea level rise affects habitat and food availability and thus waterfowl population success.

Ms. Jennifer Williams

Institution : Penn State University (PSU) | Department : Geosciences, Earth & Environmental Systems Institute | Expertise : Geochemistry
Chesapeake Management Areas : Water Quality | Research interests : Impacts of energy exploration on water quality; outreach with citizen scientists and high school students

Dr. John Wolfe

Institution : US Geological Survey (USGS) | Department : Eastern Geographic Science Center | Expertise : GIS
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Water Quality, Healthy Watersheds, Land Conservation, Public Access | Research interests : Data visualization

Dr. Hong Wu

Institution : Penn State University (PSU) | Department : Landscape Architecture | Position : Assistant Professor | Expertise : Land Use, Stream Health, landscape planning and design
Chesapeake Management Areas : Vital Habitats, Water Quality, Healthy Watersheds, Land Conservation, Public Access, Environmental Literacy, Stewardship, Climate Resiliency | Research interests : Innovative stormwater management planning and design

Instructions for CBED

1 - On-line searching of this database is by one field only. For more complex searches, see “2” below.

2 - For CBED registrants and other approved users having good cause, the CRC can conduct more complex searches on request and provide output to users as a list of names, institutions, and email addresses.

3 - Controlled vocabulary is currently in place for Chesapeake Bay Management Area and some Institutions. For other fields, you may wish to conduct multiple searches – e.g., for a search of experts on fish and fisheries under “expertise”, you might wish to conduct separate searches for “fish”, “living resources”, “pelagic”, etc. (Each of these searches will capture a different set of returns.)

4 - Searches by shortened words will generate a longer list of “hits”. For example, a search by “expertise” for “fish” will find experts who have listed “fisheries.”

5 - Please note that CBED is self-registering and therefore is not comprehensive. In this regard, we ask users to please help us spread the word and encourage expert registration among colleagues. All applications for registration will be reviewed and “vetted” by the CRC prior to inclusion in the database.

6 - If you are a registered expert and would like to change any of your information, simply e-mail your desired changes to us at: CRC-CBED@chesapeake.org. Alternatively, you can RE-REGISTER (here) and send an email to CRC-CBED@chesapeake.org to let us know that you have done so. (You only need to enter your name and the new data for whatever "field" is being changed. It is not necessary to re-complete any fields that are already correct.)

Expertise (CBED)