Education

2013 University of South Florida, B.A.
2016 University of South Florida, M.A.
2023 University of South Florida, Ph.D.

Courses Taught

Environmental Science
Water, Wetlands, and Wildlife
Environmental Methods and Technology

Career Specialties

Kendal is an environmental archaeologist with experience in both academic and applied research settings. He studies long-term interactions between human societies, land-use systems, and ecosystem processes.

Professional and Community Activities

Kendal's work is focused in Florida, where humans have inhabited and managed dynamic environments for at least 15,000 years. Using sediment cores, excavations, remote sensing, and historical documents, Kendal reconstructs past environments to help understand ancient societies, past land-use patterns, and how these histories continue to affect modern ecosystems.

For his dissertation, Kendal developed a deep-time historical reconstruction for the formation and development of the Tampa Bay estuary over the past 20,000 years, including millennia of ecosystem engineering by Native American ancestors. This series of work was published in several peer-reviewed journals, including: the Journal of Coastal Research (2023), American Antiquity (2023), Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (2024), World Archaeology (2024), Journal of Archaeological Science (2024), Estuaries and Coasts (2024), and Journal of Ethnobiology (2025).

Kendal's research on the more recent history of Tampa Bay focused on the wide-spread ecological impacts of mosquito-ditching in coastal wetlands during the 1950s and 1960s. The research revealed that, before ditching, Tampa Bay's coastal wetlands were dominated by tidal marshes. Intensive ditching for mosquito control led to the rapid conversion of Tampa Bay's coastal marshes and oyster reefs to dense and homogenous mangrove forests, permanently altering ecosystem structure and function throughout the estuary. This work was published in the journal Anthropocene (2021) and in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022).

Most recently, Kendal has collaborated with a team of coastal geologists to study the impacts of hurricane landfalls on the Florida Gulf Coast, monitor beach erosion and sand-renourishment along the Pinellas County coast, and design Nature-Based Solutions for degraded habitats in McKay Bay and along the lower Hillsborough River. Some of this work was recently published in the Journal of Coastal Research (2025). 

As a public scientist, Kendal is involved with local non-profit organizations, such as the Alliance for Weedon Island Archaeological Research and Education (AWIARE). He also frequently gives public presentations on Tampa Bay archaeology, history, and ecology.

Honors and Awards

1st Place Poster Session Award for the 2025 USF Postdoctoral Research Symposium
$12,000 Research Award from The Felburn Foundation (2024)
$22,000 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (Award # 2024397)
The 2019 Florida Archaeological Council John W Griffin Research Award
Research Award from AWIARE/Levett Foundation (2019)

Personl Website