(from UNM Ricardo González-Pinzón’s lab website)
From May 8th through June 11th, with support from the 2015 CUASHI Pathfinder Graduate Student Fellowship Program, Kaylyn will work on answering some of her dissertation research questions in New Mexico’s Jemez River basin. This area experiences sustained upland erosion that is already recognized as a potential source of streambed clogging. A research visit to our lab will provide Kaylyn with the opportunity to not only study hyporheic flow in a region with a high natural abundance of sediment transport, but she will also learn how to use the ‘smart’ tracer Resazurin as a technique to quantify how changes in stream bed structure impact ecological function. Kaylyn’s research projects seek to understand how reach size and storm events impact hyporheic zone clogging and aerobic respiration in an area that experiences sustained fine particle erosion. She will study the effects of stream order on hyporheic zone clogging and aerobic respiration in the Jemez River, a tributary to the Rio Grande. Additionally, Kaylyn will look at the impacts of storm events on temporary hyporheic zone clogging remediation by examining aerobic respiration before and after rainstorms. Understanding how varying river size and storms impact hyporheic zone structure and function are necessary to answer her broader dissertation research questions.
Kaylyn’s research will be coupled with our Ricardo González-Pinzón’s lab ongoing research on quantifying (via actual field measurements) biogeochemical processes along river continuums.