Kasondra Rubalcava

NOAA-EPP LMRCSC Doctoral Fellow 
Ph.D., Marine, Estuarine & Environmental Science, Graduated May 2023
University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Kasondra was a Ph.D. student in the Marine Estuarine Environmental Science Program at UMES and was advised by Dr. Paulinus Chigbu. Her research involved ecosystem modeling in the Maryland Coastal Bays. Specifically, she studied the influence of variations in climatic factors on biomass distributions of fish and macroinvertebrate species, food web linkages, and ecosystem structure using Ecopath with Ecosim software. She is an alumna of the REU in Marine and Estuarine Science at UMES, which she participated in during the summer of 2014. Kasondra received her bachelor’s degree in marine biology with a minor in applied mathematics from Humboldt State University in Northern California in 2015.

Kasondra now works at the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP) within NOAA doing program management support with Integrated Systems Solutions, Inc. (ISS).

NERTO Project Title:  Development of a Maryland Coastal Bays Ecosystem Model to Assess the Influence of Climatic Factors on Biomass Distributions of Fish and Macroinvertebrates, Food Web Linkages and Community Structure

NOAA Mentor: Dr. Howard Townsend, NOAA NOS Cooperative Oxford Lab, MD

Academic Advisor: Dr. Paulinus Chigbu

Publications/Presentations

  1. Rubalcava, K. (2021). Mentee Testimonial. Presented at NEFSC-LMRCSC Leadership Initiative for Networking and Collaboration (LINC) Virtual Conference, April 2021.
  2. Rubalcava, K. (2020). Development of a Maryland Coastal Bays Ecosystem Model to Assess the Influence of Climatic Factors on Biomass Distributions of Fish and Macroinvertebrates, Food Web Linkages and Community Structure. Presented at NOAA EPP/MSI -CSC Education Webinar Series: NOAA Experiential Research & Training Opportunities (NERTO) Success Stories, June 2020
  3. Rubalcava, K. & Chigbu, P. (2019). Influence of Environmental Factors on the Abundance and Growth of Spot (Leiostomus xanthurus), in the Maryland Coastal Bays. Oral presentation at the American Fisheries Society Tidewater Chapter Meeting, Salisbury University, February 2019.
  4. Rubalcava, K., Malagon, H., Grainger, C. & Chigbu, P. (2019). Recruitment and Density-dependent growth of Spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) in the Maryland Coastal Bays. Presented at the Annual LMRCSC Meeting June 2019, Silver Spring, MD, 2019. 3MT Presentation
  5. Rubalcava, K. (2019). Development of a Maryland Coastal Bays Ecosystem Model to Assess the Influence of Climatic Factors on Biomass Distributions of Fish and Macroinvertebrates, Food Web Linkages and Community Structure. Presented at LMRCSC Graduate Seminar Series, November 2019.
  6. Rubalcava, K. & Chigbu, P. (2019). Recruitment and Density-dependent growth of Spot (Leiostomus xanthurus) in the Maryland Coastal Bays.  Oral presentation at the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography annual meeting 2019, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2019.

Scroll to Top