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Cara Campbell
Graduate Student

Degree Program: MEES, Ph.D.
 
Advisor: Dr. Robert Hilderbrand
 

Phone: 301.689.7161

Fax: 301.689.7200

Email:

 

Dissertation Title
   
  Discovery of remnant populations of the endangered dwarf wedgemussel using GIS habitat analysis.

 
Cara is working with the endangered dwarf wedgemussel (DWM), which is a federally endangered freshwater mussel. Historically present at 70 locations within 15 major drainages from New Brunswick to North Carolina, roughly two dozen populations remain. As conservation efforts are hampered by difficulties in locating populations using standard visual search methods, Cara’s project seeks to predict potential DWM distributions through statistical modeling. Biological and physical data from the Maryland Biological Stream Survey database are being used to develop a prototype model of common traits of streams presently containing the species. These traits will then be used for GIS analyses in National Park drainages to identify those streams most likely and least likely to contain DWM. Snorkel surveys will be conducted to ground truth model predictions. Discovery of remnant DWM populations using these techniques could potentially lead to downlisting the species and better focus future surveys.