Mary Power Elected to National Academy of Sciences

Mary Power, NCED Principal Investigator and Professor of integrative biology at the University of California-Berkeley, has been elected as a new member of the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. The NAS announced the election of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 15 countries on May 1, 2012, making a total of 2,152 active members and 430 foreign associates of the Academy.

Membership into the NAS is a widely accepted mark of excellence in science and is considered one of the highest honors that a scientist can receive. Professor Power was notified of her election by the Academy at 6 am in the morning and was promptly served Prosecco by her husband Bill Dietrich, another NAS member who knew the election was in the works. "We usually don't feel that way about 6 am phone calls!" she said.

Mary will be inducted into the NAS next April, along with the other new members, during the Academy's 150th annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Congratulations to Mary!

News announcement from UC-Berkeley can be found here.

NCED REU on Sustainable Land and Water Resources 

This year's NCED Research Experience for Undergraduates begins on June 11th, 2012 and will introduce students to interdisciplinary research on sustainable land and water resources that is essential for improving management practices. Students will work on one of three teams using an interdisciplinary team-oriented approach that emphasizes quantitative and predictive methods. Team SPAW will have six students working throughout the Salish and Pend d'Oreille Aboriginal Watershed (SPAW) and at Salish Kootenai College in western Montana. Six more students will work on Team Gida at the Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College in Northern Minnesota. Team Stream, at the University of Minnesota, will have 3-5 students working in the Outdoor Stream Lab at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory in Minneapolis. Student projects will integrate the Earth-surface dynamics, geology, ecology, limnology and paleolimnology, and hydrology principles and techniques required for sustainable land and water management and restoration. 

NCED REU 2011

More information on each team's focus can be found here.

PI Focus: Karen Gran

Karen Gran has been an NCED PI since 2010, and she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Her general research interests include fluvial geomorphology, sediment transport, landscape analyses/GIS, volcanic geomorphology, and stream restoration. Read more about her recent research activities below:

"I am working on a series of projects in Minnesota focused on understanding sediment sources and how they change through time. In the Minnesota River basin, we have been involved in a multi-year effort to delineate major sediment sources now and in pre-settlement times in the Le Sueur River. Using a combination of high-resolution lidar analyses coupled with field mapping and age determination of strath terraces, we have been able to reconstruct valley incision and excavation history on the Le Sueur River since the initial carving of the Minnesota River valley 11,500 radiocarbon years before present. This information has helped us determine the normally elusive pre-settlement sediment load to compare with modern sediment loads on the Le Sueur River. This effort is currently being expanded to cover the entire Greater Blue Earth watershed. 

Up on the North Shore of Lake Superior, we are using a combination of lidar analyses, surficial geology data, and field measurements to delineate erosional hotspots in major basins along the North Shore. A parallel project is focused on better understanding of the drivers of bluff and bank erosion in Amity Creek, a watershed on the east side of Duluth, Minnesota, through event-scale terrestrial lidar scanning.

On the other side of the world, I have been tracking channel recovery following the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, for more than a decade. Recent research has focused on the relationship between sediment transport, aggradation, and vegetation growth on the upper alluvial fans of a pair of rivers draining the eastern flank of the volcano. We are also working on better understanding the role of sand loading on seasonal sand and gravel transport, incision, and armoring processes. Fluctuations in sand loading on a seasonal basis are significant, leading to dramatic response in river systems there."

NCED PhD student Stephanie Day is currently at the University of Minnesota under the advisement of NCED PIs Karen Gran and Chris Paola. 

Stephanie's research focused on mapping bluff erosion and ravine development in the Le Sueur River basin. Using high resolution aerial-based LiDAR and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) on multiple bluffs, her research explores several techniques to measure bluff change over a range of timescales. She found that bluffs in the Le Sueur River watershed contributed from 44 to 66% of the average measured total suspended solids load from 2000-2010. Stephanie also conducted several sets of small physical experiments at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory to test how overland flow rates contribute to the volume of sediment erosion and behavior of ravine development. The research demonstrated that, unlike in pre-existing channels, the volume of erosion is not dependent on the flow rate, but on the total volume of water entering the ravine. 

Stephanie recently defended her PhD on Friday, May 18^th, 2012. She has accepted a position as an assistant professor of geology at North Dakota State University in Fall 2012. 

The University of Pennsylvania is accepting applications for competitive postdoctoral fellowships for academic diversity. The deadline for application is August 1st, 2012, and details can be found here.

Douglas Jerolmack, an NCED Affiliate Scientist and Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Penn, noted that this department is looking to attract applicants in earth surface processes. Current faculty in this area include professors Jerolmack, Willenbring, Scatena, and Horton. Penn is home to experimental and analytical facilities in support of geomorphology, and hosts the Luquillo Critical Zone Obervatory. If interested, please send a note to Douglas Jerolmack, and visit the Department of Earth and Environmental Science web page to learn about faculty working in earth surface processes at the University of Pennsylvania.

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