Sustainability Leadership Fellow Cohort: 2016-2017

Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship

Research Summary: I use cottonwood trees to understand floodplain land surface processes and river discharge histories. Cottonwood age is a proxy for the age of the underlying land surface, and tree age distributions reveal rates of river migration. Therefore, we can compare recent changes to the centuries of changes that occurred before the modern era of intense human modification of river corridors, watersheds, and the atmosphere. Additionally, I use dendrochronology (tree ring science) to reconstruct river flows to gain a long-term perspective on the status of these ecosystems in the modern world.