Lauren Brisley is a PhD candidate in the Coastal Ecosystems Dynamics group of ESSIE, Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure and Environment, at the University of Florida. Prior to pursuing graduate school, Lauren received her BS in Marine Science from the University of South Carolina in 2015. Following the completion of her undergraduate work, she went on to work as Project Coordinator focusing on wetland restoration and conservation at Environmental Consulting & Design, Inc., in Gainesville, Florida.
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​Utilizing camera systems to monitor coastal change is Lauren’s main dissertation objective and she has had the opportunity to deploy three different camera systems to monitor boater and wildlife activity in coastal ecosystems. She is currently studying boat traffic in the highly traversed Intracoastal Waterway through the use of dual camera monitoring systems paired with hydrodynamic instruments to understand the interactions between boat wakes and coastal ecosystems.

​The imagery provided by Lauren’s camera system allows her to identify the composition of boat traffic on the ICW that can exacerbate shoreline erosion of salt marsh ecosystems. This is part of a collaborative effort with graduate student Carola Forlini to quantify boat wakes using hydrodynamic instruments with the boat that created the wakes from the imagery.

​Lauren has worked with the Naval Research Laboratory previously to explore image analysis with the goal of creating a machine learning framework to automate her video analysis. Lauren's work is currently located at the Guana Tolomata Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve (GTMNERR) near St. Augustine, Florida.

Lauren with her 2019 camera deployment in at the GTMNERR

Dual camera system deployment to quantify boat traffic on the Intracoastal Waterway. 

Citizenship Scientists Volunteers getting trained on Lauren's camera system in 2019. The volunteers sign-up through the GTMNERR to support field research efforts.