Ellen Bartow-Gillies is Texas' First NOAA Coastal Management Fellow

CSL’s Ellen Bartow-Gillies, graduating on August 10 with her M.S. in Geography, was recently awarded a prestigious two-year NOAA Coastal Management fellowship. Ellen is the first ever recipient of this highly competitive award from the state of Texas and Texas Sea Grant, and she is one of only nine nation-wide recipients of this fellowship. Congratulations on this fantastic achievement!

Ellen was matched with the Maine Costal Program, part of the State of Maine’s Department of Marine Resources. Her focus over the next two years will be on coastal restoration: when coastal wetlands are bisected by roadways, tidal exchange is disrupted. This impacts the basic functions of wetlands—maintaining healthy fish and wildlife habitat, sequestering carbon, and regulating coastal flooding and storm surge. Based in Boothbay Harbor, ME, Ellen will be developing new standards and best practices based on data collection, data analysis, and hydrodynamic modeling. She will ultimately develop a pilot program for road crossing guidance and training, to not only improve the crossings’ longevity, cost effectiveness, and resiliency to threats like sea level rise, but also to restore the tidal wetlands’ full range of ecosystem functions and services.

We wish Ellen the best of luck with her new position in Maine and lots of snow, probably starting in a couple of weeks!

Tidal Salt Marsh at the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge in Wells, Maine (source: Captain-tucker/Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge).