Alena Wachmann
Msc Candidate in Geography, University of Victoria
BSc Honours Geography, University of Victoria
Contact
Spectral Lab Research:
Alena’s Master’s research focuses on mapping the long-term persistence and resilience of kelp forests on the West Coast of Vancouver Island (WCVI) in the face of ocean warming and marine heatwaves. As part of the British Columbia Kelp Resilience NSERC Alliance, and in collaboration with Indigenous Nations, government agencies, and local NGOs, she combines five decades of satellite imagery (ex., Landsat, SPOT, Sentinel-2, PlanetScope) with historical datasets from the 1800s, oceanographic records, and local ecological knowledge to understand how these ecosystems have responded to environmental change across a heterogeneous coastline.
Background:
Alena is a spatial ecologist with a passion for marine conservation and the application of remote sensing to inform management and support local knowledge. Raised in Horseshoe Bay, British Columbia, she has worked extensively with geospatial analysis, satellite data processing, and in-situ nearshore ecosystem monitoring. Her work supports evidence-based decision-making for marine protected areas, restoration strategies, and sustainable harvest management. She is happiest when out on the water mapping kelp beds, processing imagery in the lab, or climbing, hiking, and biking in BC’s coast mountains.
Expertise and Experience:
remote sensing of coastal ecosystems, GIS, collaborative fieldwork, drone surveys, kelp forest ecology, geospatial analysis, climate change resilience
Publications:
Gendall, L., Hessing-Lewis, M., Wachmann, A., Schroeder, S., Reshitnyk, L., Crawford, S., ... & Costa, M. (2025). From archives to satellites: uncovering loss and resilience in the kelp forests of Haida Gwaii. Frontiers in Marine Science, 12, 1504701.
Man, L., Barbosa, R. V., Reshitnyk, L. Y., Gendall, L., Wachmann, A., Dedeluk, N., ... & Costa, M. (2025). Canopy-forming kelp forests persist in the dynamic subregion of the Broughton Archipelago, British Columbia, Canada. Frontiers in Marine Science, 12, 1537498.
Mora-Soto, A., Schroeder, S., Gendall, L., Wachmann, A., Narayan, G., Read, S., ... & Costa, M. (2024). Back to the past: long-term persistence of bull kelp forests in the Strait of Georgia, Salish Sea, Canada. Frontiers in Marine Science, 11, 1446380.
Mora-Soto, A., Schroeder, S., Gendall, L., Wachmann, A., Narayan, G. R., Read, S., ... & Costa, M. (2024). Kelp dynamics and environmental drivers in the southern Salish Sea, British Columbia, Canada. Frontiers in Marine Science, 11, 1323448.
Wachmann, A., Starko, S., Neufeld, C. J., & Costa, M. (2024). Validating Landsat analysis ready data for nearshore sea surface temperature monitoring in the Northeast Pacific. Remote Sensing, 16(5), 920.