Our talented group of CIROH post-docs presented their research in a series of weekly seminars in Fall 2023. This stellar group brings expertise in water sensing technologies, fluvial geomorphology, ecosystem services valuation, data assimilation and modeling, risk communication and more. See the full set of seminar topics at our CIROH @ UVM website.
Our first product of the LCBP floodplains project – this paper, lead authored by Rebecca Diehl, was published today in PLOS One. Thanks to Vermont EPSCoR for their Twitter post on the paper’s release.
Rebecca Diehl presented a final report today to the Technical Advisory Committee of the Lake Champlain Basin Program (LCBP) on our two-year study to map floodplains in the basin and quantify the deposition of sediment and sediment-bound phosphorus. After technical review, a final report on the project will be available on the LCBP website at https://www.lcbp.org/news-and-media/publications/technical-reports/
Graduate student Stephi Drago was selected by the New England-St.Lawrence Valley (NESTVAL) chapter of the Association of American Geographers for best student paper presented at the regional conference on November 14, 2020. Stephi’s presentation described her M.S. thesis research – contributing to the mapping of floodplains in the Lake Champlain basin of Vermont, estimating floodwater storage on floodplains, and development of a protocol to identify restoration opportunities along in-active rail lines improve river-floodplain connectivity. Congratulations Stephi on this recognition of your work!
Julyance (July) Cruz is joining us this summer as an EPSCoR intern funded under our “Basin Resilience to Extreme Events” grant by the National Science Foundation. July hails from Puerto Rico, where she was involved in EPSCoR as a high school student. She is now a student at St. Michael’s College in Colchester, where she has worked with our EPSCoR and is known for her “can do” approach to challenging tasks. This summer, July will be helping us build our dataset of sediment and phosphorus deposition on floodplains in the Lake Champlain basin of Vermont. Welcome July – we’re thrilled to have you as part of our team! 
Congratulations to Matt Vaughan on publication of his paper in Limnology & Oceanography Methods on the use of UV-visible spectrophotometry to detect phosphorus species in river water. Vanesa Perillo just had her paper on phosphorus availability in stream corridor soils accepted in the Journal of Environmental Quality. Check back soon for paper pdfs on our Publications page.
This fall we welcome Rebecca Diehl as a new post-doctoral fellow and Stephanie Drago as a new masters student. Rebecca joins us after earning her PhD from Utah State University and winning an NSF-funded post-doctoral award for work based at the University of Montana. We are thrilled to have her geomorphic expertise in Vermont. Stephi Drago joins us after earning her undergraduate degree from Augustana College in Illinois and working with the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service.
I just received the announcement of my promotion to full professor! It’s been 19 great years at UVM, and I am pleased to have passed this milestone. Thank you students and colleagues for your support and encouragement over the years — you make the job worth it!
Congratulations to Nitin Singh for the acceptance of his first paper from our TNC-Gund Institute project modeling the effects of nature-based interventions on floodplains! Check my publications tab for a copy of the paper.
Jody Stryker’s paper modeling alternative climate scenarios for Vermont and effects on streambank erosion was also recently accepted in the Journal of Hydrology Regional Studies. Congratulations Jody! We’ll have a pdf posted here as soon as the paper goes through copy editing and is released for publication.
Just back from this fall’s AGU meeting! Nitin Singh presented a poster on our TNC-Gund Institute project, Erin Seybold presented a poster on the New England Water Resources Network (NEWRNET) project, and Beverley presented a poster on her sabbatical research in Ecuador. We all enjoyed a chance to eat beignets, sample New Orleans culture, and enjoy the balmy weather in the Big Easy!