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Above: Me standing near Lake Irwin, a campground a bit west of Crested Butte, Colorado.
Above: Amelia Nelson (now a post-doc at UC Berkeley) taking a photo of a cow drinking from the edge of the East River near Crested Butte, Colorado.
Undergraduate Research
My undergraduate thesis was focused on alpine riverine sedimentology, titled, "Geomorphic and Sedimentological Controls on Hyporheic Flow in an Alpine River" (link). This research was advised by Dr. Audrey Sawyer at The Ohio State University (Dr. Sawyer's website). I had the opportunity to work as a field assistant to graduate students in Dr. Sawyer's lab that were working on a Scientific Funding Area near Crested Butte, CO in August 2018.
Among the main sample and data collection, my project incorporated over 40 sediment grab samples from the water-riverbed interface over a 200-meter meander in the East River. I conducted grain size analyses on these samples to produce a map of approximate grain size throughout the meander. Pairing these results with a map of vertical head measurements collected throughout the meander, we showed that the bedforms in the river (i.e., pools vs. riffles) had a greater control on surface water and groundwater interactions (upwelling vs. downwelling) than grain size on the meander scale in this alpine river.
Publications have come from this work, including but not limited to:
Nelson, A.R., Sawyer, A.H., Gabor, R.S., Saup, C.M., Bryant, S.R., Harris, K.D., Briggs, M.A., Williams, K.H., and Wilkins, M.J., Heterogeneity in hyporheic flow, pore water chemistry, and microbial community composition in an alpine streambed. Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences, 124, 3465-3478, doi: 10.1029/2019JG005226, 2019.
Dataset doi: 10.15485/1507800
Saup, C.M., Bryant, S.R., Nelson, A.R., Harris, K.D., Sawyer, A.H., Christensen, J.N., Tfaily, M.M., Williams, K.H., and Wilkins, M.J., Hyporheic zone microbiome assembly is linked to dynamic water mixing patterns in snowmelt-dominated headwater catchments. Journal of Geophysical Research - Biogeosciences, 124, 3269-3280, doi: 10.1029/2019JG005189, 2019.
Dataset doi: 10.15485/1504779
Above: A marmot looking at me before going back to its home underneath a cabin porch at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory in Gothic, Colorado (August 2018).
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