Austral Weeks

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Fulbright Proposal - Funded!

I propose to study the hydrologic and biogeochemical evolution of alpine critical zone environments of the Patagonia with Dr. Brian Reid, a biogeochemist at the Centro de Investigación en Ecosistemas de la Patagonia (CIEP) in Coyhaique, Chile. Dr. Reid conducts field studies on Patagonian volcanic ash soils and the ecosystem services they provide, but has not incorporated numerical modeling techniques. My computational skills can complement Dr. Reid’s work by providing novel insights into the underlying physical and chemical processes and predicting how these landscapes will evolve over time. Communities throughout the world rely on alpine watersheds for their water supply. Although there is strong evidence for global climate change, we do not yet understand how local water resources will be affected by shifting regional climate patterns. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2013) warns that “changes in streamflow and water availability have been observed and projected to co...
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Project Priorities

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I am deep in the process of determining how I will use the next 8 months most efficiently in a way that will honor a number of different research priorities. The purpose of this post is to document these priorities in a way that will hopefully organize my own thoughts, and communicate to folks what exactly I'm doing down here in Aysén ! As both a Fulbright scholar and a human, I feel the need to do as much listening, observing, and learning as possible to understand what types of environmental problems exist in the Chilean Patagonia, so that our modeling can provide some useful or impactful information. This post is organized by: 1. past/current work in Colorado 2. future work in Colorado 3. work in Aysén  4. personal to-do list Where I've been:  So far, my academic research has focused on  aspect controls on hill slope hydrology.  What does this mean? The Boulder Creek Critical Zone Observatory's field site at Gordon Gulch, CO, USA is characterized by a ...
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Weather Station Installation

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Finally time to head to the field! Our site is, fortuitously, not located in the rainy coastal mountains, but far inland towards the Argentinian pampas, and constitutes the headwaters of the Río Coyhaique that supplies the city’s water. The area is dominated by various forms of deforestation:  the initial burning to make room for sheep when the area was first settled in the middle of the 20th century, and then recent cutting to provide firewood for the city of Coyhaique . The drive is pure magic, rolling hills of golden grass radiating from soil hummocks, the rare wetlands host white swans, pink flamingos. It is deep autumn and the lengas ( nothofagus pumilio ) glow orange in the understory while the ñires ( nothofagus antarctica ) crown the canopy with fiery flecks of red. Day 1: We head into the deforested watershed and look for a site for the first weather station – we have two stations, one for this watershed and another for the native forest nearby. I pick a windswept s...
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