Very excited to announce that our proposal on "Broadening participation in (sub)urban watershed science in the Southeast (BUSS)" was selected for funding by DOE. This project will allow us to build a research partnership with Biological and Environmental Research at Oak Ridge National Lab by funding two incoming M.S. students who will collaborate with ORNL staff on their thesis research. It will also allow us to continue to build our E. coli monitoring network in the South River. The full press release is available here.
So excited to announce that the evolution of Lacey Davis's thesis has been published in WIREs Water. In this paper we explore the regulatory framework around E. coli in streams, how this leads to environmental injustice in urban streams and rivers, the many ways groups try to address contamination within the regulatory framework, and the clear need for approaches outside of this framework to address E. coli. We then summarize the literature around mycofiltration, or the use of fungi, as a bioremediation technique for E. coli- a technique that we propose watershed advocacy groups and those in areas suffering from disproportionate exposure to E. coli contamination could potentially use to address contamination.
As always, if you don't have free access to the paper, drop me an email- I'm happy to share! Since 2020 the CUAHSI Board of Directors has been discussing the importance of both considering the impact of COVID on tenure requirements (not just adding tenure clock extensions, which overwhelmingly impact women and result in lower life-time earnings) and considering what we 'count' as important contributions to the hydrologic community! The commentary has specific recommendations for external evaluators, review committees, senior faculty, academic leaders, and funding agencies. We hope this opens up a conversation about what is important and helps early career hydrologists feel supported!
You can download the commentary for free here: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021WR030930 Our paper on the impacts of wastewater treatment plants on whole-stream metabolism has just been published and is available here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0256292. In this paper, we looked at nine sites located above or below four WWTPs to see how metabolism and dissolved oxygen changed over 13 months. We found some of the highest rates of GPP and ER above any WWTP influence, and spatial patterns in metabolism were most strongly controlled by light. That said, metabolism rates were higher below plants than above, but this impact was attenuated within about 1-3 km of stream length. We also looked at DO criteria used by stream managers to assess ecosystem health and found the highest number of potential violations above any WWTP impact. We also found that, if average DO is used, longer monitoring periods result in fewer violations (so violations are not chronic), but if absolute number of violations is used, this will discourage long-term monitoring to fully understand how the stream functions across time!
The lab is excited to welcome Alisha Guglielmi and Raquel Oliva on board! Alisha is joining us from Salem State and will be working on the NSF project trying to scale-up our findings- how many beaver ponds are there in Atlanta, Charlotte, and Raleigh, what is attracting beaver to these sites and what is their larger-scale impact? Raquel is joining from UGA and the urban hydrology research world is her oyster (project TBD)!
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