My name is Kelley Appleman and I am a third year Doctoral student in Marine Studies and a first year Master’s student in Economics at the University of Delaware. I started my undergraduate career as a scientist, but soon realized that I was more interested in the environment and coastal preservation from an economic perspective. After working on a project with my advisor to value open space for farmland preservation in Lancaster County, my budding interest in economic valuation of the environment and environmental amenities grew into a full blown career path that has lead me to where I am today. In 2001, I graduated from Millersville University with a B.A. in Economics and departmental honors for my undergraduate thesis entitled, “Valuing Water Quality Improvements in the Chesapeake Bay.”

In 2005, I joined the College of Marine and Earth Studies at the University of Delaware to pursue a Doctorate in Marine Studies. I felt that the Marine Policy program would allow me to explore my interest in the environment from both a scientific and economic perspective, while gaining valuable insight into the policies that shape our coastal zones. In one of my first few meetings with my advisor, Dr. George Parsons, I was introduced to the shorebirds of the Delaware Bay. I was instantly captivated by the unique role that the Delaware estuary has in the life cycle of migratory shorebirds. I was also just as amazed to learn that our Bay serves host to the world’s largest breeding population of Mid-Atlantic Horseshoe crabs.

I decided to build my dissertation around the economics of wildlife preservation and to focus specifically on conservation issues tied to shorebirds and horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay. More specifically, I plan to design and estimate two economic models to value shorebird populations. One will be used to value the recreational use of the resource by birdwatchers, while the second will be used to measure its existence value including non-use value to the general population. The results will be useful in a number of ways including damage assessments for accidents like oil spills, priority setting for state and federal government agencies managing natural resources, benefit-cost analyses now legislated by many natural resource regulations, and for economic analysis of horseshoe crab harvest restrictions.