Bio

Dr. Porter holds a joint administration / faculty appointment with the Arnold School of Public Health (ASPH) and the Baruch Institute for Marine and Coastal Sciences at the University of South Carolina. Within ASPH, Dr. Porter is the Associate Chair and Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Environmental Health Sciences (ENHS).  Dr. Porter is also a faculty member in the Marine Science Program and the School of the Earth, Ocean and the Environment, and administers the Geographic Information Processing Laboratory housed in the Baruch Institute. Dr. Porter also directs the activities of the NOAA National Estuarine Research Reserves System’s Centralized Data Management Office (CDMO) located in Georgetown, SC. 

Specialization

• Climate Change
  
• Coastal Processes
  
• Earth Systems
  
• Environmental Risks & Hazards
  
• Society, Policy & Environment
  
• Sustainability
  
• Water Resources & Hydrology

Research

Dr. Porter’s research interests include exploring and expanding the increasingly important roles that technology and technological innovations play in monitoring, assessing, modeling and managing our coastal environmental resources and associated environmental and public health issues. Dr. Porter focuses on the use of the tools of Geographic Information Sciences (GISciences) to develop and apply spatial models to study the impacts of anthropogenic and physiographic influences to coastal resources. Dr. Porter has directed /directs several federally-funded multi-disciplinary projects focusing on land use and land cover patterns and how changes in land-use activities impact estuarine health and associated human health concerns.