Environmental Informatics Consulting
Jeffrey D. Campbell, Ph.D.
Home About Jeff Campbell Services Community Involvement Workshops
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Environmental Informatics Consulting Jeffrey D. Campbell, Ph.D. Home About Jeff Campbell Services Community Involvement Workshops |
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Scientific Advisory Board member, Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. Additional volunteer time with fish surveys, macro invertebrate monitoring, wild rice and vernal pool research, bio blitz, public programs (home school, teens, college students, adults) and other activities. Volunteer time in the last three years is over 650 hours. His profile appears on NOAA's estuaries.gov website.
Chair, Information Management Committee, Maryland Water Monitoring Council
Participant, Patapsco/Back Rivers Tributary Strategy Team
Local Watershed Committee, appointed representative
Jeff has assisted with a number of field research projects at various levels. Understanding the realities of field research has given him a better understanding of requirements for systems used to collect and analyze such data. The field work has often resulted in development of databases and other computer systems to support the project.
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He assisted with vernal pool survey to identify and quantify amphibian larvae and egg masses. His suggested enhancements to the technique for measuring the size of the main vernal pool were implemented for this study at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. See the Research Design portion of the Analysis page for later work redesigning the study. |
He identified toads and frogs by their calls at a nearby storm water detention pond. He made over 95 observations in three seasons substantially exceeding the expected minimum number. He developed a database of personal observations which led to obtaining county-wide data and developing a GIS-based system to display spatial and temporal patterns of amphibian calling activity. He recruited a UMBC student group to monitor another pond. In 2008, he lead the orientation presentation for new volunteers in the county. The 2008 Frogwatch Annual Summary report listed him as one of the 50 most active observers in the country in the last ten years.
He has been an active participant in the Jug Bay long term monitoring of fish. He has collected fish with seine and hand nets and identified them. He developed a database to support analysis of the survey data. He was substantially involved in the revision of the fish identification key - obtaining color illustrations/photographs, reformatting the document for greatly enhanced ease of use in the field and assisting with revising the textual description of the species found at the four sites surveyed.
Stream macro invertebratesHe followed protocols to collect samples of benthic macro invertebrates as part of water quality evaluation programs by the county, the volunteer component of the Maryland Biological Stream Survey (Maryland Department of Natural Resources) and at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary. The MBSS protocol preserved the sample for professional analysis while the others involved order-level identification of the invertebrates collected and then released. He completed the Spring 2009 MBSS training program. |
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He assisted with sorting, counting and elastomer tagging of small crabs as part of a research study tracking their movement and survival.
See description in Research Design
He has some minor experience with identifying submerged aquatic vegetation in the Patuxent River and tributaries.
HydrologyHe provided field support for geophysical testing and a stream tracer test with the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education at UMBC. This involved collected manual water samples, monitoring automated samplers and performing a Wolman pebble count at five locations. For the eddy covariance flux measurement project, he was responsible for data communication back to the lab. He also provided assistance troubleshooting wiring and data logger programming problems. He designed and built equipment to determine the azimuth of the sonic anemometer when electromagnetic fields at the research site made compass bearings unreliable. Details will be provided soon. He also provided implementation advice and circuit debugging help for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates student building an infiltrometer. He also volunteered time for field and lab repair of peristaltic pumps critical for several graduate student field projects. |
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As a volunteer helping with a variety of restoration projects, he has helped maintain restored wetlands and planted native grasses in a newly restored area as a member of the National Aquarium in Baltimore's Aquarium Conservation Team. An article in the Spring 2009 issue of the National Aquarium's Watermarks magazine includes an interview with him which is available here with their permission. To learn about the region and environmental conditions, he has helped with other, smaller projects with a dozen watershed groups. Removal of invasive purple loosestrife with a state Department of Natural Resources project was another small project. H has assisted with various stages of several oyster restoration projects. He was a member of the volunteer staff for the NOAA Restoration Day at Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary in June 2007. The "railroad pier" fish sampling was one of his key roles. Some of the photos taken by him that day are posted on the NOAA Restoration Day web site. In 2008, he assisted the Chesapeake National Estuarine Research Reserve - Maryland with two programs for the National Aquarium in Baltimore's summer internship program for undergraduates from under represented groups. For one of these projects, he gave the introduction on purple loosestrife and worked on it's removal. For the second, he explained how to gather GPS data on the location of invasive plants and later mapped the results from the day's research.
Jeff regularly documents research in progress and monitoring projects with photographs. Photographing fish for the Fish Guide proved to be most challenging since they do not pose. Wild rice is much easier to photograph, as long as the tide is right.
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| Male mummichog, Fundulus heteroclitus | Illustration of seining procedure | Wild Rice (Zizannia aquatica) research - black line points to area that has been artificially cut |
