With Celeste A. Searles Mazzacano, Ph.D.

Backyard ponds help create a network of green space that provides refuge and connectivity between habitat patches in urban landscapes.  Urban ponds can be quality habitat for many aquatic insects, including dragonflies, damselflies, beetles, and bugs, whose presence, in turn, creates a food-rich oasis for birds and amphibians.

Join us as Celeste A. Searles Mazzacano, Ph.D., owner of CASM Environmental LLC., shares how pond restoration and creation increases dragonfly and damselfly diversity and abundance, provides refuges for both common and locally rare species, and helps local populations thrive in an urban setting.  Learn about all the different elements needed to create a pond that will make dragonflies and damselflies eager to call your own back yard "home".

Dragonfly - Flame Skimmer, Libellula saturata - Westmoreland Park

Celeste is the Principal Scientist and Owner of CASM Environmental, LLC, specializing in invertebrate-based environmental education and research. She has a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Minnesota, and an obsession with insects that spans two decades of research, education, and conservation. Her work includes teaching the public and natural resource professionals about insects and other invertebrates; monitoring invertebrates in streams, wetlands, and springs; developing invertebrate indicators of streamflow duration; surveys, status reviews, and management plans for at-risk species; and natural resource education programs and citizen science projects.  She is the editor of Argia, the news journal of the Dragonfly Society of the Americas, past Project Coordinator for the Migratory Dragonfly Partnership, and has written guidelines on backyard habitat for dragonflies.

Damselfly - California Spreadwing, Archilestes californica- Westmoreland Park