NOAA Digital Coast Fellow

Mary Schoell is the NOAA Digital Coast Fellow co-hosted by NERRA and the Narragansett Bay Reserve in Rhode Island. Mary is developing data tools on coastal wetland migration pathways and identifying what end-users need to protect these pathways.

 Mary grew up in the rural town of East Haddam, Connecticut, which shaped her love and appreciation for the natural world. After obtaining a bachelor’s degree at the University of Connecticut, she worked for three years on a salt marsh restoration project with the USEPA’s Atlantic Coastal Environmental Sciences Division in Narragansett.

She earned her Master’s in Environmental Science from the Yale School of the Environment last May. There she studied the effects of sea-level rise and storm surge on salt marsh migration into coastal forests along Long Island Sound. Through a forestry technique known as dendrochronology, she explored the timescale in which salt water inundation drives tree stress, tree death, and marsh migration. She is excited to act on the broader land use management implications of this research through her NOAA Digital Coast Fellowship.

Email: mary@nerra.org