Rich MacKenzie is an aquatic ecologist who works for the US Forest Service at the Institute of Pacific Islands Forestry in Hilo, Hawaii as well as with the International Programs office in Washington DC. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 2000, where he studied the interactions of aquatic invertebrate communities, sediments, and carbon in coastal wetlands around Lake Michigan. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve with Dr. Michele Dionne. There, he studied the interactions of fish communities, sediments, and carbon in salt marsh ecosystems in the Gulf of Maine. In 2003, he started to work with the USFS in Hilo, HI, where he has continued to study fish and invertebrate communities, sediments, and carbon in Pacific Island mangroves and streams. Working with USFS International Programs, he helps oversee the Sustainable Wetland and Adaptation Mitigation Program (SWAMP), a USAID funded program that conducts research in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Africa to better understand the role mangroves play in climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as developing methods to more effectively restore them. More recently, he has been helping implement the Pacific Island Forest Restoration Initiative (PIFRI) that restoring mangroves and terrestrial forests across the western Pacific. When he is not covered in mud, collecting sediment cores or sesarmid crabs, he enjoys making music, watercolor painting, trying to surf, and camping/canoeing/hiking.
Rich MacKenzie
