Zachary Leibowitz, M.S.

Summary

Zachary Leibowitz received his Master of Science Degree in Tropical Biome Ecology from the Federal University of Ouro Preto (Brazil) through a scholarship from the Organization of American States. Mr. Leibowitz’s area of study involved paleoenvironmental reconstruction accompanied by sediment geochemistry analysis in isolated wetlands.  His interests focus on analyzing historical changes at the catchment scale to set accurate and actionable restoration targets.

Mr. Leibowitz specializes in water quality data collection, database management, modeling and statistical, ecological, and spatial analyses. Mr. Leibowitz has learned many of his organizational and technical skills while working as an Environmental Specialist III at Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP), focusing on analyzing and modeling impaired waterbodies and writing Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) reports for the State of Florida.  He has extended his skills into water quality analysis by attending the EPA Water Quality Standards Academy, the FDEP Herichy One Standards Academy and being the principal technical reviewer for Mixing Zones, SSACs and WQBELs. He also has extensive coring and gas/nutrient flux experience from his Master’s work, attending the Drilling and Coring Summer Institute offered by LacCore and CSDCO, publishing in scientific journals regarding CO₂ effluxes and being the FDEP Field Lead for Sediment Oxygen Demand and Nutrient Flux studies across the state.

Mr. Leibowitz is involved in various water quality monitoring projects such as the groundwater monitoring for the City of Oak Hill, the county-wide groundwater monitoring project for Brevard County, surface water quality and vegetation monitoring near Lake Washington for Brevard County, and most recently the Micco Sewer Line Extension Project. All of the aforementioned projects follow the strict standard operating procedures (SOPs) established by FDEP.

Highlighted skills include: Data collection, structuring, and statistical analysis; R; water quality standards; stakeholder outreach; groundwater and surface water sampling and modeling; aquatic ecology and Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) monitoring; drilling and coring, biogeochemistry, surface soil collection; ArcGIS mapping.