​I am originally from the Netherlands, a country known for its unique relationship with water. Mostly because there's lots of it. It falls from the sky almost constantly, the country is at the downstream end of some of Europe's largest rivers (the Rhine, the Meuse and the Schelde), and to top it all off - there's the sea reminding us that a large part of the country is actually below sea level. As a delta country, the Dutch have a working relationship with water: many areas have been "dried" ("drooggelegd" in Dutch) by man, and work is neverending to keep it that way, while also putting this water to work for the Dutch in mills. Rivers function as major transport routes, while the Dutch also have to guard their livelihoods when spring time brings large amounts of meltwater from Central Europe down those same rivers. Along the coast, harbors such as those in Rotterdam are among the largest in the world, but in the mean time the Dutch also work hard to keep their countrymen safe with dunes, dykes and "Delta works". Almost every town and city has countless canals and ditches which form drainage networks, but also natural habitats, parks and, in winter time, ice skating ranks. The Dutch joke that their kids learn to swim (and bike) before they learn to walk...

So no wonder my interests lies in everything water-related! I have worked on a variety of thing: I urge you to check out my "Work" and "Research" pages for more information. In short, I have a Master's degree in water management and worked on ecological flow modeling in Australia, an erosion project in Fiji and a water quality project in South Africa. I then ended up working in South Africa for a number of years, first in water services (supply and sanitation) and later in catchment management work, both in South Africa and other countries in Southern Africa.
I currently live in Gainesville, Florida (USA), where I work as a Biological Scientist, and I just finalized my PhD at the University of Florida (UF). I worked for the Suwannee River Water Management District for a year; as their statistician I assessed groundwater model results, made hindcasting models for springs discharge, evaluated Minimum Flows and Levels, and worked on base flow calculations. At UF, I focus on computational modeling and statistical analyses of (socio-)ecological variables and phenomena. At previous work (Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences), I worked on a project assessing population dynamics of bonefish in Florida Bay, and I am still collaborating on another analysis of horseshoe crab data. For my PhD research (Agricultural and Biological Engineering), I researched vegetation dynamics in an area in the Amazon (Brazil/Peru/Bolivia) that was impacted by the paving of a highway. Using a remote sensing vegetation index and a dataset of socio-economic and biophysical variables, I applied statistical analyses to find drivers and causal mechanisms across a gradient of disturbance. I successfully defended my dissertation on 2 November 2017.

Click here for my academic CV

LINKS

My Google Scholar page
Github
My page at Agricultural and Biological Engineering (University of Florida)
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