What is your current occupation? 

I am the manager of ecological restoration and mitigation projects at Resource Environmental Solutions (RES), the largest nature-based solution company in the U.S.

Please tell us a little bit about yourself. 

I was born and raised, and still live in Richmond, Virginia. We are 100 miles from the ocean, 100 miles from the mountains, and within the Chesapeake Bay watershed. So, we have the opportunity fish and hike and visit all kinds of great places. 

What is your area of expertise? 

Aquatic ecology applied to the restoration of streams and wetlands, including water quality, hydrology, and stream ecology. 

What is your primary motivation for doing the work that you do?

The satisfaction of seeing a restored wetland or stream improve over time, as the vegetation matures and the wildlife returns.

What would you say is your greatest accomplishment? 

I had the privilege of working on one of the largest mitigation projects in U.S. history, for the Bois D’Arc Reservoir in Texas, where RES restored the 15,000 acres of Riverby Ranch from cattle pasture and cropland to wetlands, streams, forest, and prairie. 

What do you strive to achieve in the future?

My goal is to continue to help drive the modernization of restoration & mitigation monitoring through the adoption of technology, including real-time sensors, drone imagery, and biological sampling. 

Have you ever thought about the name HOBO and what it might mean? 

Never.  What does it mean? 

What HOBO monitoring products do you use on a regular basis? 

For all wetland and stream mitigation projects, RES is required to install monitoring wells and stream gages to monitor hydrology. Traditionally we’ve used HOBO data loggers, like the HOBO U20 Water Level Logger, installing as many as a 1,000 per year on our projects across the U.S. We are currently in the process of transitioning to using Onset’s real-time transducers for all our mitigation monitoring, as well as for other types of restoration projects. 

Please describe a specific project where HOBO data loggers played a key role. 

RES recently partnered with Onset to accelerate the development of its real-time water level transducer, the key component of the HOBOnet Remote Water Level Monitoring System. RES had been independently pursuing a real-time transducer for five years, investing in several start-ups, and funding university research. The technology is very complex, and we finally realized that we should be building upon our existing relationship with Onset, since we were already buying about 1,000 HOBO data loggers per year. We had several collaborative meetings, provided market research, and tested some prototypes. The real-time water level transducer became available in late 2023, and RES is deploying them across the U.S. We believe this system will result in RES saving as much as 75% on our monitoring labor and travel costs, allowing us to re-allocate staff to the more productive work of analyzing data, instead of collecting it. 

What HOBO features do you consider most important? 

Given my involvement with the real-time water level monitoring system, that is forefront in my mind.  However, I would not be using HOBO products if I did not trust them to be reliable. I’ve used other products and seen transducers fail at a high rate. Reliable data is crucial to maintaining the trust of the regulatory agencies that run the wetland and stream mitigation programs. We can’t afford to break that trust with failed transducers or unreliable data. 

Do you think accurate data can help you build a better tomorrow? 

The real-time data that RES is collecting with HOBOnet remote systems allows us to be proactive in our management of restoration projects. Real-time data also reduces our need to travel to remote sites to download data, reducing our carbon footprint for monitoring by 75%, which is good news for a more sustainable future!  

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