News

By Emily Case-Buskirk, NDMC Communications Specialist

After completing a master’s project on banana production and drought, a recent graduate is moving to Hawaii, the U.S. state with the highest banana yields, for a job opportunity in her field. 

Elli Winkler has been interested in environmental issues since her first year of high school. 

“Climate change was a big topic at the time, and I became interested in climate change, what’s going on with our planet and what people are doing to protect it,” she said. 

In college, Winkler started out at Western Nebraska Community College and was on the volleyball team. She finished her undergraduate years at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental science, with a “big focus on water and soil science.” 

After college, she worked at the Nebraska Department of Water, Energy and Environment, first on the air quality team, and then the surface water monitoring team. The latter involved visiting state lakes to get water samples and test them for Harmful Algal Blooms and E. coli bacteria. 

"Having both EPA regulation framework and sampling is really helpful and led me on the career path I wanted to go,” she said. 

Winkler’s college and work experiences led her to seek out graduate programs involving environmental assessment.  

She was accepted into UNL’s Natural Resource Sciences master’s program and chose a specialization in climate assessment and impacts. The National Drought Mitigation Center also offered her an assistantship. 

"I was able to learn more the climate side of things and that rounded out my background,” she said. 

One of the most impactful classes she took was a course on global climate change taught by the recently-retired Dr. John Gamon, which provided new perspectives for her. 

“The way we discussed things, the papers we wrote and conversations we had taught me something new,” she said. “I’ve been studying climate change for years and I felt like I learned new things.” 

For her master’s project, she worked with Kelly Smith and Tsegaye Tadesse to make connections between banana production and drought. This was in partnership with the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology & Hydrology. 

The project focused on banana production in Saint Lucia, a country in the Caribbean Islands. She used the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index to measure drought conditions and analyzed banana production data from 1971 to 2022.  

Winkler concluded that banana production is highly susceptible to a variety of climate impacts including drought, floods and temperature, and is also affected by crop diseases, farming practices such as irrigation, and policy and market incentives. 

“We can’t just look at precipitation or temperature to determine what’s going to happen with a crop or what’s going to happen to a city with drought,” she said.  

In early summer, Winkler accepted a job offer from the Commission on Water Resource Management, which operates within the State of Hawaii’s Department of Land and Natural Resources.  

As a drought and water resilience specialist, her role will involve regulatory work around water permits, investigations on water use and creating a drought plan for Hawaii. She will also do surface water monitoring, just like she did in Nebraska, but on an island instead of a landlocked state.  

“It felt like everything fell into place right at the perfect time,” she said. 

Winkler will enter the role as Hawaii is facing significant climate change impacts, including drought. In the past year, parts of Hawaii have experienced water shortages, water restrictions, high levels of fire activity and drought-stricken pastures. 

“They do have a limited supply of water, and finding out where that freshwater comes from is super-important,” she said. 

She also looks forward to growing in her role and learning more about the regulatory side. 

Winkler’s job starts in August and she will be working out of an office in downtown Honolulu. It won’t be the first time she’s been in Hawaii. Back in her WNCC volleyball days, some of her teammates were from Oahu. She has visited one of her best friends, who lives on Oahu, a few times, and visited other Hawaiian islands. 

“I love going to the beach, that’s going to be my favorite thing to do,” she said. “I love the warm weather, excited to get out of Nebraska winters for a bit." 

Winkler is grateful for her experiences in the master’s program and expressed gratitude to her connections made during her student days, as well as the NDMC, her friends and family. 

"Thank you is important because I wouldn’t have gotten this opportunity without everyone I just mentioned,” she said.