College of Agriculture & Natural Resources Department of Fisheries and Wildlife

Background:

Mike received his bachelor’s degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of California Santa Cruz, where he had the opportunity to work in a variety of systems from the tidepools and estuaries of the California coast, to inland Alaska, to the Grand Canyon and greater Southwest. His PhD is from Cornell University, where he was advised by Nelson Hairston, Jr., and Alex Flecker and worked on the role of native fishes (suckers) in desert stream ecosystems. Mike served as a fisheries biologist and ecologist for United Water Conservation District, a state groundwater agency in southern California, from 2011 to 2018. He then became a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Cincinnati, working on basic science and applied management challenges in fisheries and aquatic ecology. Mike is a native of coastal California and spent much of his career working on aquatic systems of the desert southwest, but while in Cincinnati has worked on a variety of topics ranging from habitat assessment in reservoirs to stormwater management and the ecology of urban streams to the role of fish in ecosystem processes. He moved to the Michigan Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in 2024.

Research:

The Booth lab focuses on freshwater aquatic systems, particularly how the movement and behavior of organisms influence ecosystem processes. We are interested in questions ranging from basic natural history (e.g., fish movement and dispersal), responses to management interventions to understanding ecosystem dynamics (fluxes of sediment and nutrients) and we use creative, technological approaches to address these questions at a variety of scales. We seek to provide data and conceptual understanding of biological processes that can inform better resource management in aquatic systems. We collaborate with regional, state, and federal resource agencies, as well as a variety of management practitioners to deal with diverse environmental issues that are inextricably linked with the need for sustainable management of fisheries and water resources. 

Website:

Michigan Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit