Postdoctoral Aquatic Ecologist
Oak Ridge Institute for Science & Education (ORISE) c/o U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development., Pacific Ecological Systems Division
Luisa Riato is a quantitative aquatic ecologist. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pretoria developing and applying diatom-based indicators for river and wetland ecological assessments across Africa. She came to the EPA as an ORISE postdoc. She started by working with Scott Leibowitz on linkages between watershed status and stream ecosystem management and prioritization of restoration actions. After completing that work she started work with John Stoddard. With John her work focuses on developing an effective diatom indicator and approach to assess the ecological condition of rivers and streams across the US that addresses the problem of taxonomic inconsistencies in the EPA’s National Rivers and Streams Assessment diatom datasets.