I am interested in applying my geochemistry skills to problems in sediment transport and landscape evolution on human timescales.
In 2017, took advantage of an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program offshoot called GRIP (Graduate Research Internship Program) (alphabet soup) to spend about three months working at the USGS Water Science Center in Portland, Oregon. My task was to figure out if it would be possible to use the chemical composition, or ‘fingerprint,’ of sediment to trace where in a watershed the phosphorous-rich sediment comes from. The river of interest, the Sprague River, has a long, complicated history of conflict between ranchers, native populations, and environmental regulators.
Banks trampled by cows and fencing across the river. Not difficult to imagine an unnatural source of sediment here.