iUTAH Team - Graduate Research Assistant

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JULIA KELSO

Utah State University

 

Research Topic

The characterization of riverine organic matter in an urban landscape.

 

iUTAH Research Focus Area

RFA1

 

Faculty Advisor

Michelle Baker

 

Abstract

This project aims to identify and quantify sources of aquatic and terrestrial organic matter in rivers along a gradient of urbanization within three watersheds. Increased urban and agricultural land use can alter organic matter inputs to rivers and consequently alters the storage, transformation and transport of nutrients in aquatic ecosystems. A better understanding of how land use changes affect organic matter processing at a watershed scale can inform management policies aimed at preventing nutrient loading and eutrophication of surface waters.

 

Biography

Julie is a Ph.D. student at Utah State University studying aquatic ecology and biogeochemistry. Her current research focuses on using stable isotopes to identify sources of dissolved and particulate organic matter within a matrix of land use. She also has helped develop efficient and portable instream filtering methods to be used by personnel from any discipline. For her master’s thesis she investigated the potential effects of natural gas drilling on macroinvertebrate communities of headwater streams and the role of the hyporheic zone as refuge for macroinvertebrates from stream drying.

 

Posters