Gregory B. Pasternack, Jose Constantine, Andrew Gray, Anne Senter, Matthew Vaughan
Overview
Watersheds contain a mosaic of landscape elements that are primarily linked by fluxes of water and sediment. The spatial and temporal distributions of these fluxes are a product of climate, vegetation, soils, topography, and wildlife activities. In turn, these fluxes influence local landscapes creating a diverse assemblage of physico-chemical habitats. On top of this natural system is overlaid a history of human activities, particularly those that have occurred since the Europeans conquered the North American continent. Deforestation, intensive agriculture, mining, and urbanization have fundamentally changed many components of the environment, including watersheds and estuaries. Today, the landscape we see is the result of a complex combination of all these different impacts and processes occurring at the same time. How do we piece these apart? When and where have humans really affected the system? What would it take to return the system back to what it was before human disturbance, if that is even a desirable societal goal? These questions motivate my on-going research program. Details on past and on-going projects are provided in the links below.
