Hello, I’m Raphael, a Master of Science student in Geography at York University. My research focuses on the St. Lawrence River basin. My background in Environmental Management showed me how much communities depend on healthy river systems and the ecosystem services they provide. It also made me want to understand how those systems respond under stress.

My thesis examines how drought moves through the St. Lawrence River basin. Using standardized hydrological indices, I build a complex network of the basin with graph theory. Locations become nodes, and links between them capture how drought conditions spread from one part of the basin to another. This network view lets me trace where droughts tend to begin, how they travel, and which areas act as hubs or bottlenecks in that spread. I am also investigating how large-scale climate patterns, or teleconnections, shape these pathways.

The goal is practical. A clearer picture of how drought propagates across the basin can support earlier warning and more effective water management for the communities that rely on the St. Lawrence.