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Caitlin Hackett

Caitlin Hackett is an Ecologist at the USGS Wetland and Aquatic Research Center. Caitlin’s research interests include ecology, conservation biology, animal behavior, and ecosystem restoration.

Before joining USGS, Caitlin was a wildlife biologist with the University of Florida where she primarily worked with long-term ecological monitoring of crocodiles and alligators throughout the Greater Everglades. She focused heavily on utilizing R-based methods for ecological monitoring and performed fieldwork in some of the most remote areas in Florida. Prior to her work in the Everglades, she worked on sea turtle ecology projects in North Florida.

 

Education and Certifications

  • B.S., Biology and Animal Behavior, Ecology & Conservation (double major) with minor in Zoo Biology, Canisius College, 2011

     

Science and Products

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Everglades sunset

Comparing EverForecast to the South Florida Water Management District’s Position Analysis

USGS will compare the EverForecast hydrologic forecast, the South Florida Water Management District's Position Analysis, and observed water level recordings from gages located across the Everglades landscape to examine which forecast performs better during the wet and dry seasons; wet, dry, or average years; or in different areas of the Everglades.
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center
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Comparing EverForecast to the South Florida Water Management District’s Position Analysis

USGS will compare the EverForecast hydrologic forecast, the South Florida Water Management District's Position Analysis, and observed water level recordings from gages located across the Everglades landscape to examine which forecast performs better during the wet and dry seasons; wet, dry, or average years; or in different areas of the Everglades.
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Wood storks in Greater Everglades

Ecological Modeling in Support of the Lake Okeechobee Water Management

The Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will be running a suite of ecological models to evaluate scenarios and provide insight into how alternative restorations plans compare, indicate whether alternatives could lead to unintended consequences, and determine effects of alternatives that could conflict with other goals.
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Land Management Research Program, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center
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Ecological Modeling in Support of the Lake Okeechobee Water Management

The Joint Ecosystem Modeling team will be running a suite of ecological models to evaluate scenarios and provide insight into how alternative restorations plans compare, indicate whether alternatives could lead to unintended consequences, and determine effects of alternatives that could conflict with other goals.
Learn More

Ecological model support for the Biscayne Bay and Southeastern Everglades Restoration (BBSEER) Project, Round 3

Ecological models facilitate evaluation of alternative approaches to restore the Greater Everglades ecosystem. However, the provision of useful and accessible models is a challenge because there is often a disconnect between model output and its use by decision makers. Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) meets this challenge by providing ecological model output tailored to management decisions; ecologi
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Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Ecological Model Support for the Western Everglades Restoration Project (WERP) Round Five, 2023

Ecological models facilitate evaluation of alternative approaches to restore the Greater Everglades ecosystem. However, the provision of useful and accessible models is a challenge because there is often a disconnect between model output and its use by decision makers. Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) meets this challenge by providing ecological model output tailored to management decisions. Ecologi
By
Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Updates to the Everglades Vulnerability Analysis (EVA) vegetation module

The Everglades Vulnerability Analysis (EVA) is a series of connected, modular Bayesian networks that predict the response of several Everglades indicators of ecosystem health to changes in hydrology, salinity, and the landscape. This release provides the code to update the vegetation module of EVA, validate the updated module, and provides the process and outputs of a sensitivity analysis of the m
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Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Everglades Vulnerability Analysis (EVA) modeling scripts and output

The Everglades Vulnerability Analysis (EVA) is a series of connected Bayesian networks that models the landscape-scale response of indicators of Everglades ecosystem health to changes in hydrology and salinity on the landscape. Using the uncertainty built into each network, it also produces surfaces of vulnerability in relation to user-defined ‘ideal’ outcomes. This dataset includes the code used
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Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Ecological modeling output for the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual iteration 3 (of 3), 2022

Ecological models facilitate the evaluation and assessment of alternative approaches to restore the Greater Everglades ecosystem. Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) provides ecological models tailored to address specific management issues. The multi-agency REstoration, COordination and VERification (RECOVER) science team uses ecological models (i.e., ecological planning tools) to evaluate the potentia
By
Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Ecological modeling output for the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual iterations 1 and 2 (of 3), 2021

Ecological models facilitate the evaluation and assessment of alternative approaches to restore the Greater Everglades ecosystem. Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) provides ecological models tailored to address specific management issues. The multi-agency REstoration, COordination and VERification (RECOVER) science team uses ecological models (i.e., ecological planning tools) to evaluate the potentia
By
Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Multiple Species Comparisons from EverForecast May 2021

These data are summaries and comparisons of the EverForecast outputs from May 2021. EverForecast is a near-term hydrologic forecasting application that provides daily water depth forecasts across the freshwater Everglades (Pearlstine et al. 2020); water depth forecasts are then used to run species models. Here, we examine the EverForecast outputs of five species models: (1) American alligator prod
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Wetland and Aquatic Research Center
No results found.

The Everglades vulnerability analysis: Linking ecological models to support ecosystem restoration

Understanding of the Everglades’ ecological vulnerabilities and restoration needs has advanced over the past decade but has not been applied in an integrated manner. To address this need, we developed the Everglades Vulnerability Analysis (EVA), a decision support tool that uses modular Bayesian networks to predict the ecological outcomes of a subset of the ecosystem’s health indicators. This tool
Authors
Laura D'Acunto, Leonard G. Pearlstine, Saira Haider, Caitlin E. Hackett, Dilip Shinde, Stephanie Romanach
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Hematology and biochemistry reference intervals for American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) in South Florida, USA

We calculated reference intervals for 48 blood parameters from 120 wild American alligators (Alligator mississippiensis) in South Florida, US. Although previously reported by others, this study includes additional parameters not yet reported in wild populations. Most previously reported blood parameter values were similar to ours and fell within our reference intervals.
Authors
Laura A. Brandt, Nicole D. Jennings, Michiko A. Squires, Caitlin E. Hackett, Christopher D. Smith, Frank J. Mazzotti
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Managing multiple species with conflicting needs in the Greater Everglades

Given limited funding, natural resources decision making is riddled with tradeoffs, including which species or landscapes to prioritize for management action. Florida’s Everglades wetland is home to numerous indicator species, some of which are endangered. But with a multitude of species comes differing hydrologic requirements to yield appropriate foraging and breeding conditions for each. The Eve
Authors
Stephanie Romanach, Saira Haider, Caitlin E. Hackett, Mark McKelvy, Leonard G. Pearlstine
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Hierarchical models improve the use of alligator abundance as an indicator

Indicator species are species which can be monitored as an index to measure the overall health of an ecosystem. Crocodylians have been shown to be good indicators of wetland condition as they respond to changes in hydrology, can be efficiently monitored, and are a key part of ecosystem trophic relationships. Eye shine surveys at night are a standard method used to sample alligators, but because so
Authors
Seth C. Farris, Hardin Waddle, Caitlin E. Hackett, Laura A. Brandt, Frank J. Mazzotti
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

The Everglades vulnerability analysis—Integrating ecological models and addressing uncertainty

The Everglades vulnerability analysis (EVA) is a project led by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the National Park Service and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to accomplish one of the science goals of Restoration Coordination & Verification (RECOVER), a multiagency group responsible for providing scientific and technical evaluations and assessments for improving the ability of the Compr
Authors
Laura E. D’Acunto, Stephanie S. Romañach, Saira M. Haider, Caitlin E. Hackett, Jennifer H. Nestler, Dilip Shinde, Leonard G. Pearlstine
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Influence of salinity on relative density of American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) in Everglades National Park: Implications for restoration of Everglades ecosystems

The status of the American crocodile (Crocodylus acutus) has long been a matter of concern in Everglades National Park (ENP) due to its classification as a federal and state listed species, its recognition as a flagship species, and its function as an ecosystem indicator. Survival and recovery of American crocodiles has been linked with regional hydrological conditions, especially freshwater flow
Authors
Frank J. Mazzotti, Brian Smith, Michiko Squires, Michael S. Cherkiss, Seth C Farris, Caitlin Hackett, Kristen M. Hart, Venetia Briggs-Gonzalez, Laura A. Brandt
By
Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Home range and habitat use of juvenile green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in the northern Gulf of Mexico

Background: For imperiled marine turtles, use of satellite telemetry has proven to be an effective method in determining long distance movements. However, the large size of the tag, relatively high cost and low spatial resolution of this method make it more difficult to examine fine-scale movements of individuals, particularly at foraging grounds where animals are frequently submerged. Acoustic te
Authors
Margaret M. Lamont, Ikuko Fujisaki, Brail S. Stephens, Caitlin Hackett
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Ecosystems Mission Area, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center , Gulf of Mexico

Non-USGS Publications**

Drumheller, S.K., Nestler, J.H., Farris, C.E.H., Farris, S.C. and Mazzotti, F.J., 2020. Crocodylus acutus (American crocodile) bite marks on a nest data logger. PeerJ, 8, p.e8577.

**Disclaimer: The views expressed in Non-USGS publications are those of the author and do not represent the views of the USGS, Department of the Interior, or the U.S. Government.

ever4cast

The Everglades Forecasting application (EverForecast) is a hydrologic and multi-species management tool. Designed to support natural resource managers, the tool simulates near future water levels across the Florida Everglades and models the likely impacts on the habitats and populations of numerous species. EverForecast is part of the Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) suite of tools. The scripts in t
By
Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM) Restoration Runs R Library

restoration_runs is a library of R-language scripts used to summarize/post-process output of Joint Ecosystem Modeling (JEM; https://jem.gov/) models used in Everglades restoration planning for projects such as the Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual (LOSOM) and the Western Everglades Restoration Project (WERP). The scripts summarize model output and create graphs and maps for each model.
By
Wetland and Aquatic Research Center

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