Research

I specialize in aquatic system analysis, geospatial tools, and stakeholder engagement for environmental management. I started my career as a wildlife biologist but quickly became frustrated with how all my work seemed to catalogue problems that stemmed from human behavior. I have increasingly turned my career towards understanding the behavior and drivers that affect ecosystem dynamics, with the goal of developing more informed conservation and management practices to build resilient systems.

Featured Projects

EPA Geospatial Research

US EPA Geospatial Research

2020-2022

I worked for the US EPA as a geospatial research analyst, leveraging my graduate certificate in GIS. I used mapping and analysis to explore how large cellular mobility datasets could help us understand visitation in National Parks - who visited which parks and why?

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Scientific Audience
Masters Research

Social Resilience of Drinking Water Systems

Masters Research, 2018-2020

I worked on an interdisciplinary team to increase social and ecological resilience of a drinking water reservoir in Roanoke, VA. I focused on the social perceptions of drinking water to determine if new water forecasting technology (developed to help with algae blooms and climate change adaptation) increased public trust.

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Scientific Audience General Audience
PhD Research Australia

Integrating Social Science into Water Management

PhD Research, 2022-Present

I left the EPA in 2022 to start a PhD in Australia trying to develop better ways of integrating social science into water management and modelling. This work builds on my previous research to bridge the gap between stakeholder values and management decisions in complex aquatic systems.

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Scientific Audience

Field Studies Timeline

An interactive journey through my field research experiences across North America and beyond. Click each marker to learn more.

Location #1

Publications

Kosovac, A., & Grupper, M. (2025). Gender, migration, and drought: an exploratory study of women's roles in Mallee farming communities. Geoscience Communication, 8(4), 285–295. https://doi.org/10.5194/gc-8-285-2025

Grupper, M. A., Horne, A. C., Webb, J. A., & Olden, J. (2025). Identifying and Approaching Barriers to Environmental Flow Implementation Using Social–Ecological Systems Thinking. WIREs Water, 12(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1764

Tsai, W.-L., Merrill, N. H., Neale, A. C., & Grupper, M. (2023). Using cellular device location data to estimate visitation to public lands: Comparing device location data to U.S. National Park Service's visitor use statistics. PLoS ONE, 18(11), e0289922. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0289922

Grupper, M. A., Sorice, M. G., Stern, M. J., & Schreiber, M. E. (2021). Evaluating determinants of social trust in water utilities: implications for building resilient water systems. Ecology and Society, 26(4). https://doi.org/10.5751/es-12833-260441

Grupper, M. A., Schreiber, M. E., & Sorice, M. G. (2021). How Perceptions of Trust, Risk, Tap Water Quality, and Salience Characterize Drinking Water Choices. Hydrology, 8(1), 49. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/hydrology8010049

Grupper, M.A. (2020). Exploring the Role of Trust in Drinking Water Systems in Western Virginia. Master's Thesis, Virginia Tech. http://hdl.handle.net/10919/99860