Tag: freshwater

A person smiles in front of greenery.

Q&A with RBC intern Gabriel Stephenson

Hi! My name is Gabriel Stephenson, and I’m a first-year student pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Ecology and a minor in Film Studies. I’m working as a communications intern for the River Basin Center this semester, and I’m so excited to be a part of such an inspiring community!

How’d you become interested in ecology? 

Since I was a little kid, I’ve always been enamored with nature. I’ve been extremely blessed to have had the chance to experience nature firsthand in a wide range of areas and environments. Swimming in creeks and lakes, catching frogs and lizards in my backyard, and collecting seashells on the beach make up some of my earliest memories of the natural world. As I’ve grown up, the wonder I felt at the beauty of the world has evolved into a deep desire to understand its inner workings. For me, ecology has been an amazing way to delve into the wonderful, interconnected web of life that we live in. 

Why freshwater specifically? 

Initially, I was more interested in marine ecology than anything else. Last semester, however, I took a class called Water Sustainability in the Anthropocene with Dr. Amy Rosemond. The class really helped me to realize the importance of freshwater, especially its impacts on people. So many people suffer because of the destruction of freshwater ecosystems that they depend on. That direct, vital link between humans and nature is something that I want to help to preserve. I also love the idea that freshwater ecosystems are so interconnected with both the land and the sea, and I’m fascinated by the incredible diversity of freshwater environments that exist around the world. 

What are you hoping to accomplish or learn in your role at the RBC? 

As an intern at the RBC, one of my main goals is to simply soak up the knowledge and wisdom of the folks around me and to be able to learn from their experiences as much as I can. I also hope to refine my own communication skills through different mediums such as writing, photography and videography. I hope that in my time at the RBC, I can create work that is meaningful to myself and others, and that helps people understand the beauty and the importance of freshwater ecology and the work of the people behind the science. 

Where’d you grow up? 

I’ve moved around a lot in my life, so I’d say I grew up in a lot of different places. Out of the five states I’ve now lived in, California is where I’ve been the longest, and it’s a place which has a lot of nostalgia for me. I was born in Fairfield, Northern California, and lived around the Sacramento area again during middle school. The last place I lived before coming to Athens was on a military base called RAF Lakenheath in the United Kingdom.

When you’re not in class you’re: 

Riding my bike, playing basketball, spending time with my friends and my partner, taking photos and videos of animals and plants, or trying new things.

A movie or TV show you could rewatch over and over:

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I absolutely love this movie. Aside from me just being a huge Spider-Man fan, the visuals, the story, and the characters in this movie are just so cool. It’s really changed the way I look at animation and visual storytelling, and to an extent, even life. 

A woman smiles, holding a largemouth bass, grass and a river visible behind her.

UGA graduate student pursues environmental justice in freshwater science

For Jasmine Longmire, ecological justice feels personal. 

During her junior year at Georgia Gwinnett College, she experienced a kidney failure that changed how she views her health—and her purpose. She had to take an entire year off, but the scare set into motion her current trajectory. 

“That thought process of, ‘I’m gonna die,’ shook me to the core,” she said. Several medical professionals overlooked her failing kidney, which resulted in a full removal of her right kidney at 20 years old. “After it was over, I thought, ‘I’m down one kidney. But I’m still here. I can still do the things I want and feel like I was put here to do, and for me, that was freshwater conservation.” 

Her personal brush with serious health issues spurred her to think critically about people living with significant medical conditions related to environmental pollutants.

Longmire hopes to work in freshwater conservation science, addressing current and past ecological injustices. Someday, she might like to teach and research on both topics.

Now, the Odum School of Ecology graduate student, 2022 John Spencer Fellow and affiliate at the River Basin Center is pursuing her master’s in ecology in the Wenger-Freeman lab. 

Foundations

Longmire estimates she lived in about seven different states growing up. But amidst all that change, she remembers a constant: nature documentaries. She’d watch them with her mother, and it helped her recognize her interest in science. 

College courses confirmed that passion. 

She was in class with Elizabeth Sudduth when she settled on one focus of her future career. Sudduth was honest about some of conservation science’s discriminatory practices as she lectured on the history of the discipline. 

“We have generations upon generations of people who are [disadvantaged] by environmental hazards because of who they are or where they were born, or just because of their simple race or gender,” Longmire said. Through research-based ecological solutions, she wants to fix that. 

She’s hopeful for the future, and the lecture inspired her to put environmental justice at the center of her later work. 

“We’re at a place in conservation science where we understand it’s actually good to have people from different backgrounds, minorities and other voices on a project,” said Longmire. “They have different perspectives that someone outside of that community wouldn’t have thought of.” 

It’s a step in the right direction and a problem at the forefront of a lot of environmental researchers’ minds.

She also got hands-on field experience at Georgia Gwinnett, working under Peter Sakaris. 

“His love for freshwater is just amazing,” Longmire explained. It was his passion—and instruction—that helped her settle on a freshwater track. 

With him, she conducted a follow-up study on the Northern snakehead’s population health, after a project conducted by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources on the invasive species. The Northern snakehead was first found in Georgia in 2019 and has been a concern ever since.

She begrudgingly admires the species’ tenacity. “This fish. It’s just so determined. It can physically breathe air for certain periods of time, as long as it’s moist enough.”

Beyond UGA

Still in her first year of graduate school, Longmire hasn’t definitively settled on the scope of her graduate research. But she has a few headings. 

Her work will be conducted on the Broad River, one of Georgia’s last free-flowing rivers and home to at least one endemic species, the shoal lily. She’ll expand some of the monitoring done by the Broad River Watershed Association. 

“Right now, I’m mapping out the main river and then its tributaries, and then I am pinpointing each agricultural source that is near that river or can be put into the river based on where it branches off,” explained Longmire. 

She also hopes to investigate industrial sources, wastewater and the complicated topic of reservoir sedimentation, where she hopes to focus the bulk of her master’s work.

When she’s not in class or in the field, Longmire likes to volunteer for river cleanups, read—if she has the bandwidth—or curl up with her dog Sage or leopard gecko Blu and catch an episode of Midnight Gospel on Netflix. 

Though she knows it will have a freshwater and environmental justice bent, she’s not sure what’s next after her master’s. But remembering the impact her professors had on her, Longmire might want to teach undergraduates someday. 

People in yellow vests stand around bags of trash pulled from rivers.
Participants in the yearly Georgia Waterway Cleanup, hosted in October by Rivers Alive, found everything from mattress springs to whole vehicle tires. Longmire volunteered this fall.

“I’d love to have the chance of being someone’s support system like that, helping them and saying, ‘Hey, you can do this. I know it seems impossible. But you can do this if you want,’” she said. 

The John Spencer Fellowship fund honors the legacy of John Kyle Spencer, a master’s student at the Odum School of Ecology who passed away in 2016. The fellowship was first established through the generosity of his friends and family.

Burning questions: The mysteries of pyrogenic carbon and the effects of prescribed fire on soil

When you think of a forest on fire, you aren’t usually thinking about what’s happening in the soil- but graduate student Ali Moss is. The Spencer Research Grant winner and Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources student’s research investigates the relationship between prescribed fire and carbon cycling, specifically studying an organic material known as pyrogenic carbon. This form of organic carbon appears when soil interacts with fire, and Moss intends to learn its secrets.

Soils are beautiful! Moss examines soils collected immediately after the prescribed burn in April 2021. In the background, pyrogenic carbon from burned grasses and litter blankets the soil surface.

“One of the big areas of mystery is that pyrogenic carbon is present in rivers, and is travelling from rivers to the ocean,” Moss said, “but we don’t really understand the details of how it moves from soil to waterways, and we don’t really understand how it becomes dissolved.” Pyrogenic carbon tends to persist in soil longer than unburned organic matter. Researchers originally thought that this was because microbes couldn’t break down pyrogenic carbon, but this since been disputed.

“We know that pyrogenic carbon is harder for microorganisms to decompose than regular organic matter,” Moss explained. “But it’s always a mistake to underestimate microorganisms, because they can do, like, anything.” Moving forward, Moss hopes to characterize dissolved pyrogenic carbon in South Georgia forests managed with prescribed fire, and figure out how it makes its way into water.

There are several moving parts to this research: Moss and their team pull soil cores to get a profile of organic matter at different soil depths. Then, to investigate the connections between carbon in the soil and in the water, they pull water samples directly from the soil using lysimeters. They also do extractions of soil in water in order to test and compare two different methods for studying dissolved pyrogenic carbon in soil.

A field of lysimeters installed in the burned stand of forest immediately after the prescribed fire, April 2021. A lysimeter is a device used to measure evapotranspiration by recording the amount of water percolating through soil.

Another major question is simply how long pyrogenic carbon can last in the soil after a burn. “Because pyrogenic carbon hangs out in the soil longer, it might be an important carbon sink,” Moss said, explaining how carbon, pulled from the atmosphere by plants, may remain sequestered in the soil longer after it has been exposed to fire. “Some pyrogenic carbon does hang out in the soils for millennia, but most of it is probably cycling out within decades or centuries. So what are the controls on this? How can we get a better idea of what kind of sink pyrogenic carbon is and how would we quantify that?”

The experiment is currently underway near Tifton, Georgia and compares two stands of longleaf pine trees, one of which is not managed with fire, and one where Moss and their team performed a prescribed fire back in April of 2021. Prescribed fire is a forestry management technique that involves strategic burning. The practice brings a lot of known environmental benefits that are still being explored—and Moss is a big fan. “I think prescribed fire is awesome.” Moss said. “Getting to participate in prescribed fire I felt was really cool…It’s a really powerful tool.”

The prescribed fire in April 2021, shortly after ignition: a backing fire crawls through the understory with low intensity.

Part of her interest in the project stems from this enthusiasm for prescribed fire. “Despite its importance as a land management tool,” Moss said in their Spencer Research Grant proposal, “prescribed fire science remains underfunded compared to wildfire science, resulting in many knowledge gaps.”

Moss hopes her research may one day help inform forest managers how to regulate carbon through fire. “I love to talk to people about prescribed fires and spread the word about how awesome prescribed fire is.”

Ali Moss in March 2021, assessing fuel composition before the prescribed fire.

Moss’s research is funded by the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources as well as a 2022 Spencer Research Grant. The grant is an annual award given to graduate students studying freshwater resource management and conservation. It is named for the late John Kyle Spencer, an Odum graduate student who was passionate about freshwater research. Moss’s project reflects a love for ecological science and conservation-focused management techniques.

Photos provided by Ali Moss. Story by Olivia Allen.

Part 1: On the Road—and the River—with the Ecological Problem Solving Class

Across three state and three rivers: An experiential learning journey

Science doesn’t—and shouldn’t—happen in a vacuum. Amanda Rugenski, lecturer and undergraduate coordinator at the University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology, gets that. 

“To be able to listen to people is really important, not just to the scientists, not just to the water managers, but also to the communities that are present in these areas,” she said.

She hopes the question of who needs to have a seat at the table is something students take away from the Maymester study away course she led (ECOL 3300, Field Program in Ecological Problem Solving), from May 21 to June 4, 2022, with the assistance of Odum graduate students Kristen Zemaitis and Jeffrey Beauvais. 

Rugenski’s class of 19 had ample opportunity to practice listening as they attended presentations and hands-on workshops throughout swaths of the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin, learning to view environmental issues through a social-ecological lens.

Ecological Problem Solving is an experiential learning course offered annually for Ecology A.B. students, and it’s an anchor course for the Sustainability Certificate. The class is meant to give students a whirlwind introduction to problem solving at the intersection of science, society, and policy. The course is built around one such issue—the tri-state “Water Wars”—and the efforts of a regional organization, the ACF Stakeholders, Inc., to provide solutions through consensus. 

For several decades, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida have disputed water allocation in the ACF Basin. Georgia needs water to support both agriculture in the southern part of the state and the continued growth of Atlanta in the north. Alabama requires water for power, drinking supply, and fisheries, and Florida needs enough water to reach the coast to prevent saltwater intrusion and to sustain its seafood industry.

In response, the ACF Stakeholders—composed of a range of people including civic leaders, farmers, fishermen and researchers across sectors and state lines—aims to foster informed, cooperative and equitable water sharing. 

The group’s goals dovetail perfectly with those of the class. To Rugenski, the organization is illustrative of a critical point. 

“Sometimes when we think of problem solving, people don’t think of humans as being a part of the solution, and others may not think of the environment and ecosystem as being part of the solution. I want students to see how interconnected these all are, to solve these complex problems,” said Rugenski.

Out of the classroom and into the creek: Field experience at the Jones Center

The group experienced the ACF basin from its headwaters to the Gulf Coast, traveling a roughly 1,000-mile loop and visiting as many of the ACF stakeholders as possible along the way to learn first-hand about their perspectives and priorities. Their travels included stops to sample fish in the Chestatee River in North Georgia, a visit from an attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, a tour of the AgLanta Urban Food Forest at Browns Mill, and a meeting with the West Atlanta Watershed Association.

The group swept through Florida, with highlights including a stop at the Apalachicola National Estuarine Research Reserve, a visit from Dr. Brooke, who presented on the Apalachicola Bay System Initiative and a tour of the bay by boat to learn about restoration projects along Highway 98.

By Memorial Day, the class had wound its way back to southern Georgia, to the Jones Center at Ichauway.

Aquatic biologist Steve Golladay welcomed them to the reserve, or what he calls “30,000 acres of green in a sea of agriculture,” and presented background about the research center and the scope of natural resource management in Georgia.

The center’s threefold focus is on water—the unique hydrology of the mostly free flowing Flint River and its tributary, Ichawaynochaway Creek; woods—preserving its longleaf pine ecosystem; and wildlife—protecting the roughly 1,200 species present on the reserve, partially supported by its isolated wetlands.

On paper, Georgia is a freshwater-rich area, Golladay shared, with an average of about 50 inches of rainwater a year. That’s well above the national average. And the Flint—15 miles of which wends through Ichauway—is partially fed by the rapidly recharging Floridan aquifer, not just runoff and seepage. That makes it an especially reliable source of freshwater.

The challenge is that no single year gets the average amount of rainfall. Some years see 70 inches and others see 30—sometimes several years in a row, leading to periods of stress on water systems and periods of abundance. Sensibly bridging the gap between the two is a major water management goal. 

The Jones Center supports some of the most robust research on longleaf pine management in the country. Of the 30,000 acres on the ecological reserve, longleaf pine forest makes up about 18,000.

A habitat type that once spanned between 60 to 90 million acres of land in the southeastern United States prior to European colonization, longleaf ecosystems are reduced to about four and a half million acres today.

Ichauway’s second-growth pine is now mature, at 80 to 100 years old. It’s the perfect tree cover for Georgia’s on-again, off-again water supply: longleaf pine stops pumping water in drought years. It offers the benefits of forestation without straining water systems in times of water scarcity.

A large part of the center’s mission is providing access to its findings and the physical space itself.

Students head toward the creek.

That’s why, when his presentation was over, Golladay took the students to Ichawaynochaway Creek to go “mussel hugging,” a term he uses to encompass both the process of finding and identifying mussels and the unbridled enthusiasm with which he feels that task should be undertaken.

Golladay lectures from Ichawaynochaway Creek, camera in-hand.

Graduate student Jamie Rogers and research associate Caitlin Sweeney, with the help of student volunteers, set up a kick net and searched for critters. The water was clouded, but the murky flow was actually the result of staining from swamps up river, Golladay explained. It’s normally quite clear, with visibility sometimes reaching 15 feet.

Jamie Rogers and Caitlin Sweeney demonstrate how to use a kick net to gather samples.

Though no mussels were found, students discovered minnows, small fish, insects and several crayfish. It’s the kind of field experience and tactile learning that Golladay says the center is all about.

“I think one of the things that we offer at Ichauway is a real field experience. We’re all field-oriented, and so it gives people a chance to come and stay here, to see what we do out in the world. Especially now, given that we’re coming out of two years of virtual learning, the role of places like Ichawauy has become extremely important,” Golladay said.

Tina Vu inspects a net for insects, her favorite critters.

And students were conscious of that. For class member Alanna Deveter, the interactive nature of the course wasn’t just a perk—it was integral to her learning experience.

“I definitely prefer this type of learning environment to just sitting in a classroom,” she shared. “I have a pretty busy brain. So hands-on works for me. It’s an actual experience where I get to have my own perspective.”

And with each stop, students’ perspectives became more and more informed.

This kind of experiential learning is available to all A.B Ecology majors and students pursuing the Sustainability Certificate. Current and prospective students can learn more here.

Check back soon to read about the students’ stop at the Albany State’s Water Policy Center, UGA’s Stripling Center and the Flint RiverQuarium!

Laura Naslund, sitting in a canoe on a pond, smiles while taking emissions data.

A Day in the Life of a Pond: Measuring Small-Reservoir Emissions to Inform Infrastructure Decisions

By 7:45 a.m. on Tuesday, June 21, Laura Naslund had already spent over an hour in a canoe on a little pond on the east side of Athens, Georgia. Naslund, a graduate student in the Odum School of Ecology and a 2022 Spencer Grant recipient, was finishing up the first field sampling event of her new research project. She’d started work early on Monday morning, and was still paddling a canoe out to measure gas emissions all over the pond 24 hours later.

“The idea is to understand the times, places and pathways that are most important for emissions,” Naslund said over a quick breakfast, “and then apply that information to a later study at more sites which examines the drivers of the differences in emissions between sites.” 

There are 364 reservoirs in Athens-Clarke County, but only 23 of them are listed in the National Inventory of Dams, leaving hundreds of smaller reservoirs that receive far less attention from freshwater research and management alike.

Laura Naslund and volunteer assistant Ally Whiteis paddle a canoe across a small pond for field sampling.
Laura Naslund and volunteer assistant Ally Whiteis paddle a canoe across a small pond for sampling, around the 2-hour mark of the 24-hour field sampling.

Naslund believes these small reservoirs may have a much larger impact on inland water systems than we currently recognize. She hopes to expand our understanding of freshwater reservoir emissions by focusing research attention on the small ponds of Athens. The end goal of Naslund’s research is to help inform infrastructure decisions regarding which of these dams have the greatest environmental impact and which may be highest priority for removal.

“Particularly as we are about to have the largest infrastructure investment probably in my lifetime, I think now’s a good time to start thinking about how we can use ecological knowledge to inform where and what kind of infrastructure we have,” she explained. “And this project, I think, is a little bit unique among that body of work in that it’s focused on the end of an infrastructure life cycle.”

Naslund is particularly dedicated to accurate field testing: data collection for this research will involve sampling all over each test reservoir for over 24 hours at each event. These methods were designed to get the most accurate possible understanding of where, when and how gases are emitted throughout a day.

Laura Naslund paddles a canoe across a wollfia-covered pond.
Laura Naslund paddles a canoe across a wollfia-covered pond, around the 6-hour mark of her 24-hour field sampling.

“I think researchers have thought about spatial variation a lot, we’ve thought about seasonal variation a lot, but we’ve though less about the variation in emissions that happens over the course of a single day,” Naslund explained. By focusing on variation at a daily scale, Naslund hopes to collect emissions data that more accurately represents the natural history and spatial heterogeneity of a system.

It’s strenuous work to sample for 30 hours at a time, but Naslund doesn’t mind camping out. “The places that I’m working in are beautiful. So that always helps!”

She also acknowledged that she could not do this research alone. Her team of volunteer assistants included professors, undergraduates, and fellow graduate students, who came in shifts throughout the 30-hour sampling. “It’s been really great to collaborate with people, to show them new techniques, and to learn from them,” Naslund said.

Ally Whiteis, Odum undergraduate, paddles a canoe on a wolffia-covered pond.
Ally Whiteis, Odum undergraduate, paddling a field canoe.
Olivia Allen, Odum undergraduate, sitting behind Laura Naslund in a field canoe and recording data.
Olivia Allen, Odum undergraduate, recording data.

Naslund’s research is funded by the Network for Engineering With Nature, a collaboration between UGA and the US Army Corps of Engineers, along with a grant from the Odum School of Ecology and a 2022 Spencer Grant from the River Basin Center. The Spencer Grants are annual awards given to graduate students studying freshwater management and conservation. The grant is named for the late John Kyle Spencer, an Odum graduate student who was passionate about freshwater research. Research like Naslund’s is a reflection of this passion for freshwater science and cooperation among environmental researchers.

Photos and story by Olivia Allen

Precision Conservation of Imperiled Species

A tiny, rainbow-finned fish lives in the swiftly flowing waters of Georgia’s Etowah River. Known as the Etowah darter (Etheostoma etowahae), it exists only in the Etowah River Basin, mainly inhabiting the mountain streams of North Georgia.

The Etowah darter is only one example of the diverse array of freshwater fish, amphibians, crawfish and mussels that live in Georgia, including many endemic, imperiled species. However, the state is also a bustling transportation hub, with 1,253 miles of interstate highway and the busiest airport in the world.

Many of these species are highly sensitive to the threats associated with development.

In a recent project that brought together the University of Georgia’s River Basin Center and Institute for Resilient Infrastructure Systems, the Georgia Department of Transportation, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, researchers pinpointed ways to facilitate important construction projects around the state while tailoring conservation practices to each imperiled species’ needs.

Read the full article here.

Climate and Water Research Slam

Save the date: Climate and Water Research Slam – Thursday, May 12 1:00-5:00

The River Basin Center, the Georgia Initiative for Climate and Society, and the Office of Sustainability have joined forces for a climate and water “research slam” — a series of five-minute lightning talks by faculty and students on climate OR water (or both) followed by a social.

We have an awesome lineup of 24 5-minute lightning talks from a diverse group of speakers from across the UGA campus. Join us to hear about the wide range of water and climate work at UGA, to network with colleagues, and to celebrate the end of the semester. After the talks we’ll have a social with beverages and heavy snacks. Please join us!

Location: Innovation Hub, 210 Spring Street 

Schedule of Events:

  1:00 – 2:40  Session 1

  3:00 – 4:20  Session 2

  4:20 – 5:00  Social with beverages and snacks

Registration is free! But to help us plan for enough food and beverages, we ask you to please fill out this registration form by Monday May 9.

To see the full lineup, check out the draft detailed schedule (subject to correction for the next couple of days).

Third Wednesday Game Night with Dr. Karen Bareford

Last week Dr. Karen Bareford, the National Sea Grant and Water Resources Lead, delivered a Third Wednesday talk on the water resource efforts of the Sea Grant Network and its key partners, as well as the publicly available National Water Model. Afterwards, she presented the new Watershed Game: Coast Model, an engagement tool allowing players to take on the roles of policy and decisionmakers and collaborate in the management of water resources. Thank you to Dr. Bareford for speaking and showing this community-engaging activity!

RBC Policy Director Search

The RBC is hosting three Environmental Policy talks this spring. Dr. Catherine Macdonald has already given the first talk, on February 17. View a recording here. The next two are coming up soon, so mark your calendars:

Friday, Feb 25, 9:30am: Dr. Animesh Gain. This is a virtual event. The Zoom link will be distributed shortly before the event to RBC affiliates and friends. Join our email list here to receive the link.

Friday, Feb 25, 9:30am: Dr. Sechindra Vallury. This will be a hybrid virtual and in-person event at the UGA Ecology Building Conference Room (room 12) for RBC affiliates and friends. The Zoom link will be distributed shortly before the event. Join our email list here to receive the link.

Each speaker is also giving an Ecology and Environmental Policy Seminar through the Odum School of Ecology. Here is the information for the two remaining seminars:

Thursday, Feb 24, 9:30am: Ecology & Environmental Policy Seminar: Dr. Animesh Gain. “Human-nature interaction of water and its ecosystems: A nexus and environmental diplomacy approach.” Please fill out this form to be added to the EcoSeminar listserv to receive the link.

Thursday, March 3 4:00pm: Dr. Sechindra Vallury. “Governance for Sustainable Resource Management: Lessons from South Asia and the Western U.S.” Virtual and in-person event. Please fill out this form to be added to the EcoSeminar listserv to receive the link. The in-person event will be held at the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, Building 1, Room 304.

We hope to see you for each of these events!