Ben Rubinoff, a rising Junior in the Environmental Science Honors Program, is an intern with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (located in Maryland along the Chesapeake Bay). Ben is working on the MarineGEO initiative, a global Smithsonian program to learn about marine ecosystems. His team will work to discover how differences in habitats in the Rhode River (a sub-estuary of the Chesapeake Bay) can change biodiversity among creatures at the bottom of the river, and how those patterns change over time. They will collect data to find out if certain factors, like habitat type or distance from the mouth of the river, affect the presence of certain species. Ideally, this data could help monitor biodiversity, and could also help with fishery management, clean water regulations, and other responses to the impacts of climate change. For more information on Ben’s experience at the Smithsonian, see article here.
