Parsa Saffarinia
Postdoc researcherView all Carlson Lab, Current Lab Members, Ruhi Lab

My research interests lie primarily in aquatic ecology with an emphasis on investigating the role disturbance plays in structuring communities and food webs. My projects tend to employ a bottom-up approach to investigating the persistence of taxa (such as diatoms, insects, and fish) in human-dominated landscapes. As the drivers of global change continue to alter the fundamental processes (namely, flow) sustaining our food webs, my collaborators and I develop innovative empirical and data-driven approaches with the goal of increasing the persistence of imperiled species.
I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow mentored by Albert Ruhi and Stephanie Carlson at ESPM, and James Hobbs at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. As a Delta Science Fellow, I am supported by California Sea Grant, the Delta Stewardship Council, and the California State Water Contractors. My project is focused on investigating the time-varying effects of flow variation and food availability on longfin smelt population dynamics, via advanced modeling of a diverse set of environmental and ecological monitoring time series.