06/28/2022
Congrats, Courtney (aka Merlin's Mom)!!!
Welcome to the Midwest Fisheries Center, Courtney!
Hello everyone! My name is Courtney Baker, and I am one of the temp Biological Science Technicians with the Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) branch of the La Crosse Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office out of the Midwest Fisheries Center in Onalaska, WI. I am from Reedsburg, WI, but have been living in La Crosse now for eight years. I completed my bachelor's degree at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse with a major in Environmental Biology and a minor in Chemistry. During my undergrad, one of my professors and I started a project looking at microplastics in water samples from the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) in relation to the location of the wastewater treatment plant effluent tube that drains into the river. At the time, I was also working as a Water Quality Lab Technician at the USGS - UMESC campus on French Island, where I analyzed water samples as a part of the Long Term Monitoring Program (LTRM). This led into a Water Resources Management Specialist position with the Wisconsin DNR in La Crosse collecting said LTRM water samples on the UMR and its tributaries. While working for the WDNR, I decided to transition directly into my master's degree in Biology with an Aquatic Science concentration at the University of Wisconsin - La Crosse. This allowed me to continue working with me undergrad research advisor and to build off the microplastics work I had started previously. My thesis has now evolved to be focused on examining the gut contents of Gizzard Shad collected from the six LTRM field stations along the Upper Mississippi and the Illinois River. We hope to be able to give insight into the density of microplastics that Gizzard Shad consume as it relates to their body mass and standard length. We also expect to see differences among the six field stations due to the vastly different land use practices in each of the river’s pools.
I am not from the typical fish-focused background that most people in this position have because I have mainly been trained in the areas of water quality data collection and analysis, so I hope that my different perspective on things can bring new insight into the projects that I assist with. In turn, I am excited to gain knowledge in electrofishing and eDNA sampling and to develop my overall skills in fisheries!
In the future, I would like to pursue my PhD in Fluvial Geomorphology looking at the physical processes and characteristics that shape rivers, such as velocity and substrate, and the factors that can alter them, like land use type and the amount of bank hardening.
