Katie Lankowicz

Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted

Really hard to overstate the massive anxiety among environmental scientists right now. I don't know how I'm supposed to build a career when the backdrop is so grim.

www.science.org/content/arti...

born too late to get a two Western blot Nature paper, born too early to be a science TikTokker, born just in time to start a postdoc during a global pandemic and look for faculty positions during a historic hiring freeze

Governments should have no means of affecting bodily autonomy. And trans people deserve peace and happiness.

The breakneck pace of discriminatory and harmful executive orders is a strategy to beat us into submission. I refuse to submit.

Is offshore wind driving whales ‘crazy?’ Science says no Just hours after his inauguration on Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting new federal leases for offshore wind projects. He cited, as one reason, the impact offshore wind m...

Critical to be aware where we're being misled & what is real “There are no known links between large whale deaths and ongoing offshore wind activities”. Climate crisis & subsequently warming waters impact food sources to force whales to new (unprotected) areas www.capeandislands.org/local-news/2...

Spatial density and habitat associations of Atlantic Cod on the Northeastern US Continental Shelf The spatial distribution of the Atlantic cod ( Gadus morhua ) stock is shaped in part by several habitat and oceanographic variables. In this study, Vector Autoregressive Spatio-Temporal (VAST) models...

If this thread was interesting to you, reach out! Otherwise, check out a preprint of this full study on bioRxiv!

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Successful management efforts must consider the potential negative effects of reduced patch size and overall suitability of the Northeast US continental shelf under warming conditions to cod recruitment and survival. Developing temperature-based strata for survey methods may be useful here.

Climate signals should be included in population assessment methods. VAST outputs indicate that a consequence of warming waters will be a condensed spatial distribution of cod into increasingly smaller patches of suitable habitat. Transboundary management may become more complicated as a result.

Spatial location of abundance-weighted stock centers of gravity within the modeled domain. Stock area boundaries are represented by black lines. Results are separated by size class (columns) and seasons (rows). The southern portion of the Southern New England biological stock area is not represented so that more detail can be seen in the center of gravity shifts. Darker, more saturated colors represent stock centers of gravity earlier in the time series and lighter, less saturated colors represent stock centers of gravity later in the time series. Red gradients represent the Eastern Gulf of Maine (EGOM), greens represent Georges Bank (GBK), blues represent Southern New England (SNE), and purples represent the Western Gulf of Maine (WGOM).

Bottom water temperatures across the Northeast US continental shelf have been warming, with changes in regional currents since ~2008 rapidly intensifying this trend. In the time since, cod stock centers of gravity have moved northeast and cod spatial ranges have condensed, especially for large cod.

Conditional effect of bottom temperature and depth (columns) on the presence/ absence of small, medium, and large cod (rows).

Model results indicated strong relationships between cod presence/absence and depth and bottom temperature. While the spatial strata underpinning design-based indices of abundance are often defined to have relatively homogeneous depths, they do not yet consider bottom temperature.

There's a long history of speculation into environmental characteristics that shape cod spatiotemporal distribution. For my model, I explored using depth, bottom temperature, sea surface temperature, sediment characteristics, rugosity, and climate indices (NAO, AMO) as potential density covariates.

A description of Atlantic cod VAST models setup. There are separate models for distinct size classes of cod. Across all size classes, modeled temporal domain is 1982-2021 and cod density is assessed at seasonal (spring and fall) time steps.

I've been developing these models for three size classes of cod (small: under 40 cm TL; medium: 40-70 cm TL; large: over 70 cm TL) at seasonal time steps (Spring: March-August; Fall: September-February) 1982-2021. I'm mostly interested in size-specific habitat associations and distribution shifts.

Spatiotemporal density at any time [1...n] can be modeled as a relationship between catch and static (e.g., depth) and dynamic (e.g., bottom temperature) conditions, allowing for the estimation of habitat associations and spatially explicit abundance.

The approach--Vector Autoregressive SpatioTemporal (VAST) modeling--has the advantage of integrating these data to estimate density in areas with limited observations. Knowing both density and spatial area, you can then derive indices of relative abundance.

Atlantic cod biological stock spatial strata within the US Northeast continental shelf large marine ecosystem (EGOM: Eastern Gulf of Maine; GBK: Georges Bank; SNE: Southern New England; WGOM: Western Gulf of Maine). Areas with year-round groundfishing closures are filled with crosshatches. Lines indicate the 50, 100, and 200 m isobaths, with darker lines representing deeper isobaths. Ecologically important regions are annotated on the map.

Improved knowledge of Atlantic cod biological stock structure in US and adjacent Canadian waters has led to a new spatial management framework. Recently, I've been working on spatiotemporal models of cod distribution built on a suite of fishery-independent surveys and environmental covariates.

Applications for Quahog Bay Conservancy's undergraduate summer internships are open. This is a fantastic program that guides students through hands-on development of field, lab, and academic skills. Students also receive course credits through UMaine. Apply now! quahogbay.org/wp-content/u...

A triumphant return to form, both for Fall Out Boy and my listening habits

Howdy. I'm an early career researcher interested in the spatial dynamics, population dynamics, and habitat utilization of marine and estuarine fishes. I do a ton of spatiotemporal modeling in R and spend my summers teaching undergrads field, lab, data handling, and scientific communication skills.