Working Groups

Stuart Findlay has worked on the Hudson River for over 30 years. His research on sensitive wetlands, shoreline restoration, and environmental monitoring is helping to guide the river’s recovery.

Human activities can have positive and negative consequences on the environment. It is important to reinforce the positive through effective management, while rapidly detecting and mitigating the negative. Stuart aims to identify impending problems and devise suitable solutions in streams, wetlands, and the Hudson River.

Aquatic vegetation provides essential nutrients and habitat for small animals, yet these plants are threatened by human-induced habitat alterations, including climate change. To improve the management, protection, and restoration of aquatic systems, it is essential to know how environmental conditions influence these communities and what humans can do to support them.

Stuart works closely with the Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System (HRECOS) and directed the installation of a monitoring station that continually records the river’s salinity, dissolved oxygen, pH, turbidity, and water elevation — a key management tool to facilitate a quick response to threats such as harmful contaminants or floods. He also studies the impacts of shoreline modification and guides sustainable management practices to protect native species and their habitats.

Stuart is committed to carrying science from discovery to dissemination and is actively engaged with a wide array of management, outreach, and educational programs. He has been an advisor to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for more than 25 years and works with several other private, state, and federal organizations.

https://www.caryinstitute.org/science/our-scientists/dr-stuart-e-g-findlay

Anne Giblin is a biogeochemist and senior scientist at the Ecosystems Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory. Her major research interest is on the cycling of elements that drive ecologically important processes. Much of her work has been focused in soils and sediments where element cycling takes place under different conditions of oxidation and reduction. Anne is currently the lead PI on the NSF funded Plum Island Ecosystems Long-Term Ecological Research (PIE-LTER) site, where she is focusing on understanding how sea-level rise will impact salt marsh sustainability and how nitrogen inputs from wastewater and fertilizer are impacting coastal ecosystems. She also does research in the Arctic, investigating how climate change is altering high latitude lakes and collaborates on a project examining the impacts of the Deep Horizon oil spill on salt marshes in the Gulf of Mexico.

Anne E. Giblin (mbl.edu)

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Malcolm Scully is a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who works on a wide range of interdisciplinary topics related to coastal circulation and mixing. He is particularly interested in how the complex interactions between physics, biogeochemistry, climate change, and human activities impact water quality in estuaries and near-shore environments. For the last 15 years his research has provided fundamental insight into what controls low dissolved oxygen (hypoxia) in environments such as Chesapeake Bay and Cape Cod Bay. He has been studying the Hudson River for most of his career, including his recent focus on what control carbon fluxes and CO2 emissions from this important estuary that spans the crucial interface between the terrestrial and oceanic environments.

https://directory.whoi.edu/profile/mscully/

Isabelle Stinnette is the restoration manager at the New York - New Jersey Harbor & Estuary Program (HEP), where she runs the inter-agency restoration work group, tracks restoration progress in New Jersey and New York, and works with partner agencies to further habitat restoration efforts. Prior to joining HEP, she worked for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation as a restoration biologist as well as research technician expediting storm recovery and resiliency projects. Isabelle has a M.S. degree from the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at Stony Brook University and a B.A. from St. Lawrence University.

https://www.hudsonriver.org/about-us

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Thom Almendinger is the Director of Natural Resources and Agroecology for the Duke Farms Foundation. At Duke Farms, he has developed and continues to direct a large-scale landscape restoration program on the 2,740-acre property that includes a range of habitats fostering nearly 30 species of wildlife, listed as threatened and endangered in New Jersey. The Natural Resources Team hosts a number of applied research projects in partnership with research universities, institutions, private firms and other foundations.

Thom serves on the Technical Advisory Boards for the Rutgers University Eco Preserve, NJ Invasive Species Strike Team, the Hutcheson Memorial Forest at Rutgers University and is past vice-president of the NJ Wildlife Society. He is also a Certified Ecologist through the Ecological Society of America.

Thom and his team have been awarded numerous awards including ANJEE Environmental Education Award, Sustainable Raritan Award, Land Ethics Award, NJ DEP Environmental Stewardship Award and the US EPA Environmental Quality Award. His research interests include plant-herbivore interactions, particularly between overabundant white-tailed deer and invasive plants, restoration of degraded habitats, conservation of threatened/endangered species, and sustainable agriculture as it relates to habitat and ecosystem services.

Thom’s educational background includes A.A.S. in Forestry from SUNY-College of Environmental Science and Forestry; B.S. in Ecology and Natural Resources from Cook College of Rutgers University; M.S. in Ecology and Evolution from School of Environmental and Biological Sciences-Rutgers University.

https://dukefarms.org/about/staff/

Jeff Arnold is farm manager of Hudson Valley Farm Hub. He has been working on and managing organic vegetable farms in the Hudson Valley since 2011. Prior to that, he worked as a field researcher and organic farmer at the Colorado State University Horticulture Research Farm. He has a B.S. in Horticulture and Organic Agriculture from Colorado State University in Fort Collins, where he headed up the Sustainable Development Community Garden to promote food justice throughout the region. He also holds a degree in Arboriculture from Paul Smith’s College. He was born and raised in Rochester, NY, and currently resides in Olivebridge.

https://hvfarmhub.org/about/team/

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Andrew Casner joined Hudson Valley Farm Hub’s Field Crops team in 2021 from the organization’s farmer training program, where he focused on equipment operation, organic no-till, cover crops, and compost. His passion for soil and food started in New York City, where he installed and managed farms with Project EATS, a neighborhood-based art and urban agriculture non-profit. Andrew has a bachelor’s in fine arts from the Rhode Island School of Design. Outside of the farm, he loves spending time with his family in the mountains, on the creek, or in the forest garden he is cultivating at home in Hurley.

https://hvfarmhub.org/about/team/

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Elijah Goodwin is the ecology & GIS manager at Stone Barns Center. He first joined the organization in 2019, monitoring bird populations on the pastured grasslands managed through the Conservation Action Plan with Rockefeller State Park Preserve, after conducting a four-year study on the wood thrush populations within the park preserve. Since starting an expanded role with the organization in 2020, he has been working to build out the ecological monitoring program and create and implement an ArcGIS-based database system to collect, manage, synthesize, and present the vast array of monitoring and management data being collected across the farm and the Center.

Elijah has been working as a research scientist and/or science educator for over 25 years. While his primary training is as an ornithologist, he has experience working with soil, plant communities, and DNA technology as well. His scientific experience ranges from banding hawks and owls during migration in New Jersey and surveying beaver activity and bird populations in the Adirondacks to studying bird song learning all over the Eastern Seaboard and Mexico. He holds a B.S. in Wildlife Biology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an M.S.T in Biology Education from Boston College, and a Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, also from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Away from work, Elijah enjoys time spent in the outdoors with his wife Katherine and child Spirit. He is an award-winning nature and night/light painting photographer and owns a small photography, education, and ecological consulting business, Whimbrel Nature. He has served as president and a board member for the Color Camera Club of Westchester and is a science advisor for ⅔ For The Birds.

https://www.stonebarnscenter.org/staff/elijah-goodwin/

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Shane Hardy is ecology director at Stone Barns Center. He grew up across the river in Nyack, N.Y., and has worked on farms in New York’s Finger Lakes region, Orange County and Rockland County. He is thrilled to be working here at home in the southern Hudson Valley and pursuing his passion for building soil, increasing resilience and biodiversity in agriculture and finding creative solutions to meeting our humans needs from the land as healthy partners in the natural system we live in.

At Stone Barns Center, Shane works with the organic materials that flow through the center—manure, leaves, food scraps and more—to create compost teeming with life to feed to the soil, while exploring other intermediate and complementary uses for these materials. He provides technical and mechanical support for the rest of the farm team and works on technological and biological innovations for resilient farming.

On the side: When not at work, Shane likes gardening, cooking, preserving and fermenting foods, hiking, hanging out with his loved ones, reading, watching movies and seeing theater in New York City.

Photo by Ben Hider

https://www.stonebarnscenter.org/staff/shane-hardy/

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Dave Llewellyn develops and leads farmer training efforts at the Glynwood Center for Food and Farming, including its Apprentice Program and Hudson Valley Farm Business Incubator. He also plays a key role in connecting regional farmers to land access opportunities and has long served as an organizer of the Mid-Hudson Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training (MH CRAFT).

Working closely with the farm team, Dave ensures Glynwood’s farming efforts reflect the highest standards in resilient, sustainable practices and maintains Glynwood’s position as a leader among national efforts to train beginning farmers. Dave oversees the process of testing innovative techniques and sharing information with regional farmers on the efficacy and outcomes of these initiatives.

Dave apprenticed at the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s Drumlin Farm and managed organic vegetable gardens for Heifer International’s Overlook Farm. He holds a B.A. degree in Political Science from Susquehanna University and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Purchase College.

https://www.glynwood.org/who-we-are/our-team/title/dave-llewellyn

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