Samuel Pecoraro is an Ecologist at the USGS Great Lakes Science Center’s (GLSC) Lake Michigan Ecological Research Station, located within the Indiana Dunes National Park.
Sam has worked with USGS since 2016, on landscape ecology and spatial data analyses at scales ranging from metapopulation to continental. He has experience with acoustic technology first to model Great Lakes substrates by repurposing the GLSC’s historic fishery sonar data, and more recently to survey and model fish spawning habitat with multibeam data. Sam has worked on mapping the federally threatened Pitcher’s thistle (Cirsium pitcheri), which is endemic to The Great Lakes. While with USGS, he has been able to study the migration of the iconic monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in collaboration with partners. Sam is interested in the ways technology can help solve the great ecological challenges; he has been involved in the development of the GLSC’s computer vision program, which was created to help meet objectives laid out by the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement and Lakebed 2030.
