SWISLR Seminars:

Join the SWISLR team on the first Friday of every month for our monthly virtual seminars during the academic year where we will talk through current efforts and studies all related to SWISLR. Each seminar will consist of an RCN update, a short lecture on the topic, and a discussion curated by the speaker. 
Contact us to receive the seminar invite and the zoom link for each future event. 
Missed some of the seminars? get caught up through our blog or by watching the videos posted below.

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023 introduced SWISLR and the 6 themes of our SWISLR RCN. 

Fall 2023 - Spring 2024 revisits each SWISLR RCN theme with updates from the projects pitched at the year 1 All-Hands meeting. 

​Fall 2024 - Spring 2025 focuses on what SWISLR research has accomplished and what the future of SWISLR research could ​be.

Fall 2022 - Spring 2023

SWISLR Seminar Webinar Recordings:

SWISLR Kick-off seminar has Dr.'s Emily Bernhardt, Xi Yang, and Kiera O'Donnell introducing the SWISLR RCN. Dr. Bernhardt starts us off with introducing how we think about SWISLR, Dr. Yang continues the conversation by introducing how he is studying the current extent of SWISLR, and Dr. O'Donnell finishes off the webinar by talking about how we hope to grow this RCN. We finish off  this webinar with a group discussion about what we can do next to study SWISLR. You can find more information about the discussion in the post webinar blog. 
SWISLR webinar # 2 talks about the first question in the DISES grant - Who is engaged in decisions about climate risk prevention, climate adaptation and SWISLR mitigation and who is excluded. We start off by taking account of who has joined for this seminar and discussion. Dr. Ryan Emanuel talks about the importance of including marginalized voices. He continues to introduce the theory of environmental justice and how including the theories, questions, and methods of community members is necessary to create inclusive solutions for climate change impacts. You can find more information about the webinar in the blog.
SWISLR webinar # 3 talks about the second question in the DISES grant - What proportion of the NACP has recently undergone and is currently vulnerable to significant ecosystem transitions as a result of SWISLR? Dr. Elliott White shares his work on just this! He explores shifting ecosystems through field work and remote sensing methods. Through these methods he has found an increase in ghost forests throughout the NACP. You can find more information about the webinar in the blog. 
For the 4th SWISLR webinar, RCN members were asked to bring photos that help explain how water moves in their area. These shared images are an insight into what members of the RCN are studying and how water is moving in the areas they work. You can find some more information and some more links from this webinar in the blog.
The 5th SWISLR webinar started with a Wright Lab showcase. Justin Wright and Aeran Coughlin introduce their work on plant and microbial community change in the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge. A discussion about what people are measuring throughout the NACP followed. The summaries from each discussion group are reported out at the end of the video. You can find more information from this webinar in the blog. 
The 6th SWISLR webinar covered the consequences of SWISLR for farms and coastal fisheries. It is fairly well known that climate change is impacting agriculture growth and production, specifically SWISLR brings too much water and salt onto fields. There are a lot of potential strategies people can do to stop water, and adaptation is a choice that land owners make based on what issue they are facing and their economic ability. When estimating SWISLR impacts, and specifically agriculture outcomes, the adaptations that are taken must be taken into account. 
The 7th SWISLR webinar was a panel discussing communities, policies, and economics within SWISLR research.  Dr.’s Bill Shobe, Rebecca Epanchin-Niell, and Amy Lesen discuss how coastal communities are responding to SWISLR, participatory strategies for SWISLR work, and the equity of information. 
A commonality that we all share is data - working with data has introduced the need for some guiding principles in order to protect sensitive data and allow access to everyone equitably. In the 8th SWISLR webinar Dr. Anna Braswell talks about fair data practices and her effort to make a community around data. She is creating a site where people can create posts about data they use and post questions they have about data availability and useability!
Fall 2023 - Spring 2024

​SWISLR Seminar Webinar Recordings:

The first webinar of this school year was a chance for SWISLR RCN members to share their projects that were created during the SWISLR all-hands meeting over the summer. Project members updated the rest of the RCN and took part in discussion groups focused on each project. Future webinars will highlight individual projects and give RCN members a chance to dive deeper into the active projects taking place within our RCN. 
Spencer Rhea and Alex Smith talk about their SWISLR projects in this months SWISLR webinar. Spencer Rhea is a Ph.D. student at Duke University looking at how soils interact with SWISLR. He is interested in understanding soils in various locations and under various conditions. Using this soil knowledge will help to determine the resilience or vulnerability of soils, and in turn vegetation, to the changing coastal conditions.
Alex Smith is a postdoctoral researcher at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). After receiving his Ph.D. at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, he is working on ecosystem modeling projects at SERC. Alex aims to understand the current state of ecosystem modeling, what models we as scientists are using, and what the limitations of these models are. 
You can read a more detailed summary the blog post about this event.
Henry Yeung and Dr. Justin Wright talk about their SWISLR projects about ghost forests. Henry Yeung is a Ph.D. student at University of Virginia, studying plants and climate change using remote sensing. We know that ghost forests are emerging because of SWISLR, but we still don't know exactly where they are at a larger scale. To push our understanding of ghost forests further Henry has been able to create a model that can predict where dead trees are located along the U.S. East coast using spectral imagery. 
Dr. Justin Wright is a professor at Duke University. He is a plant ecologist interested in uncovering the causes of ecosystem patterns - like the growing amount of ghost forests along the U.S. east coast. Instead of looking at the ghost forests we see now to understand their causes and consequences, Justin's team is looking to the past. 
​You can read a more detailed summary in the blog post about this event. 
Torry Bend and Kiera O'Donnell talk about their SWISLR project Stories of Change. Kiera introduces the original project idea, how it has changed and taken shape over the past year, and the literature review being completed to support the changes the project is taking. Torry then talks about the future of this project and all the work she has done to co-create puppet shows and connect artists with researchers through coastal North Carolina. You can read a more detailed summary in the blog post about this event. You can share your own version of your ideal future through a live and anonymous google form. 
The Theme 3 project team is creating a prospective piece called "Over, Under, and Through: Salt, Hydrologic Connectivity, and the Future of the Coast." Dr. Ashley Helton describe the need to integrate our understanding of saltwater intrusion over (via flooding and storm surge), under (via groundwater), and through (via surface water channels) the landscape in order to accurately predict spatiotemporal patterns of saltwater intrusion. We then hear about case studies from co-authors on how saltwater is moving through these different pathways. You can read a more detailed summary in the blog post about this event. 
There are a few SWISLR projects that are focused on curating a public database to help future projects, planners, or practitioners. Dr.'s Jeri Parrent and Keryn Gedan present their Coastal Database of Edaphic Plant Transitions (aka. Coastal DEPoT). This project is an effort to create a public plant database. Dr. Anna Braswell presented on her Center for Coastal Future project, focused on curating information needed for people to visualize and make informed decisions about their future. 
We heard about the SWISLR project "Agriculture land tenure and paths of SWISLR adaptation" in this months SWISLR webinar. Grace Molino from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science tells us how this project is trying to understand the patterns of land use and adaptation of farmers in Maryland. This project will inform outreach efforts to different agricultural groups and identify barriers or different incentives for adaptation. This project can also be applied to other regions of farmers being impacted by SWISLR and can offer a comparison across adaptation strategies available for farmers. 
Fall 2024 - Spring 2025
Meg Perry and Karen McGlathery discuss how their projects working with coastal communities have taught them valuable lessons for future efforts of SWISLR related research and outreach. Meg Perry is a facilitator and stakeholder engagement specialist with SWCA Environmental Consultants and Dr. Karen McGlathery is an environmental science professor at the University of Virginia and is the Principal Investigator for the Climate Equity Project. Together they share their experiences and challenges faced while engaging in efforts to build coastal resilience capacity.