Accessibility Navigation

  • Skip to Content
  • Skip to Navigation
Link to Smithsonian Institution homepage(link is external)
Login
Marine GEO logo

Main navigation

  • About Us
    • What We Do
    • Our Values
    • Who We Are
    • Guiding Documents
    • Opportunities
  • Our Network
    • Network Observatories
    • Collaborating
    • Join Us
  • Research
    • About Our Research
    • The MarineGEO Toolkit
    • Network Projects
    • Our Data
    • Publications
  • News & Events
  • Contact Us
  • Donate

User account menu

  • Log in

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. About Us
  3. Who We Are

Leah Harper

Leah Harper

MarineGEO Central

MarineGEO Central Technician

Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Leah Harper by the water

Leah has been working with MarineGEO since 2018. As Central Technician, her focus is the coordination, logistics, and execution of fieldwork. She began her marine field research and scientific diving career in 2010, spending an undergraduate semester studying coral reef ecology in Bonaire. She completed her M.S. in 2017, with a thesis that explored the relationships between life-history stages of corals in a high-latitude community. Throughout her time in graduate school, Leah was a frequent member of fieldwork teams deployed to conduct coral spawning research and benthic monitoring in locations such as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Belize. Before coming to Smithsonian, Leah was part of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) Corals Research Program, where she managed a three-year coral recruitment study in Southeastern Florida and contributed to demographic monitoring of benthic organisms in the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas. Her research interests include the dynamics and ecosystem impacts of coral diseases, recruitment ecology of sessile benthic organisms, and the relationships between fish community structure and ecosystem function.

Google Scholar

Follow Us
Facebook Twitter Flickr YouTube
  • About Us
    • What We Do
    • Our Values
    • Who We Are
    • Guiding Documents
    • Opportunities
  • Our Network
    • Network Observatories
    • Collaborating Organizations
    • Join Us
  • Our Research
    • About Our Research
    • Network Projects
    • Research in Action
    • Our Data
    • Publications
  • Resources
    • News & Media
  • Contact Us
Link to Smithsonian Institution homepage(link is external)
The Marine Global Earth Observatory (MarineGEO), directed by the Smithsonian’s Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network (TMON), is a network of partners researching biodiversity as the heart of healthy, productive, coastal ecosystems, where marine life and people are concentrated and interact most. MarineGEO marshals the Smithsonian’s leadership in discovery and convening power to advance knowledge useful to decision-makers in supporting innovative management and protection of marine life.