Citadel Grad Student Recognized For Bird Studies

Pamela Corwin is drawing a lot of attention for her research on how seasons affect bird species. The Goose Creek resident is a student in the Citadel Graduate College and a staff member with the state's Department of Natural Resources.

Corwin recently won the Best Student Poster award at the S.C. Water Resources Commission annual conference for her work on bird responses to the seasons along Cooper River. Last spring she offered the Best Student Presentation by the Southeast branch of the American Fisheries Society.

Corwin's hard work is inspiring, said research advisor Paul Nolan, associate professor of biology. 

"For example, she took a standard writing assignment from my graduate Ornithology course and turned it into a peer-reviewed article published by the Cornell University Lab of Ornithology's 'Neotropical Birds Online' series," Nolan said in a Citadel release.

The Post and Courier's Bo Petersen wrote a feature on Corwin over the weekend, focusing on her unique research work at Berkeley County's Bonneau Ferry Rice Fields.

"You experience so much. It's so quiet," she told the paper. "The number of species, the biodiversity for that small an area, and how it changes throughout the seasons, it was amazing."

Read more of the Post and Courier feature.

Abandoned rice fields provide valuable ecological services, according to Nolan, such as recharging oxygen levels in the river, providing nursery sites for fish and temporarily storing storm water surges.

"Yet, we know very little about how they work across seasons and through the years," he said. "Pamela's work is some of the first that attempts to understand one part of that puzzle."