Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
email: lgonzalez@harc.edu
phone: 281-364-6044
fax: 281-363-7914
Lisa Gonzalez is the vice president and chief operating officer of the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) where she is responsible for managing the daily operations of the organization.
Ms. Gonzalez’s research focuses on the analysis and dissemination of data relating to the health and productivity of bays and estuaries, coastal watersheds, and the Gulf of Mexico. Ms. Gonzalez has experience managing and analyzing large environmental monitoring data sets, developing estuarine indicators, conducting status and trends analyses of estuarine natural resources and human resource use, and disseminating science-based information to interested stakeholders and the public. Her expertise ranges across various coastal issues including coastal water quality, fish and wildlife populations, invasive species, habitat characterization, freshwater inflows, and seafood safety.
Ms. Gonzalez joined HARC in 2002 after working as a Research Associate for the Environmental Institute of Houston at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. Prior to that Ms. Gonzalez served as Operations Manager at the Institute of Marine Life Sciences at Texas A&M University at Galveston. She earned a Master of Science degree in Environmental Management from the University of Houston-Clear Lake in 2000. She received a Bachelor of Science degree in Marine Fisheries from Texas A&M University at Galveston in 1992.
Ms. Gonzalez co-edited the second and third editions of the State of the Bay: A Characterization of the Galveston Bay Ecosystem published in 2002 and 2011, respectively. She also created The Quiet Invasion field guide series, a publication describing invasive plants and animals of the Galveston Bay region. Other projects have included the Galveston Bay Status & Trends Project, the Double Bayou Watershed Protection Plan, the Galveston Bay Invasive Species Risk Assessment, and the Human Dimensions of Invasion Potential Scorecard.
Ms. Gonzalez serves in an advisory capacity to a variety of organizations. She is a member of the Gulf and South Atlantic Regional Panel on Aquatic Nuisance Species, the Monitoring and Research Committee of the Galveston Bay Estuary Program, and the Invasive Species Working Group of the Galveston Bay Estuary Program. She also serves on advisory committees for several agencies, including the Texas General Land Office.
Expertise
Coastal Ecology
Marine Fisheries
Hydrology
Data Management and Analysis
Environmental Management
Public Policy
Projects
The State of the Bay, Third Edition
A Collaborative Approach to Managing the Invasion Potential of Aquarium Species
Double Bayou Watershed Characterization Project
The Quiet Invasion: Galveston Bay Invasive Species Field Guides
Galveston Bay Status & Trends Project
The Galveston Bay Ecological Indicators Project
The Galveston Bay Invasive Species Risk Assessment