Another great paper on stormwater wet ponds by Piehler Lab alum Adam Gold. He found that sediment nitrate uptake was higher during the summer, however the nitrate uptake was driven by retention rather than denitrification. Information from this paper will advance our understanding of the function and management of this common piece of stormwater infrastructure. Congratulations again Adam. Download the paper here.
Last week I had the opportunity to testify before a congressional sub-committee about several of our projects focused on resilience. It would have been more fun to be in DC, but it was still a great time!
Defending in a strange time, but there was nothing surprising about the result! What a graduate career Adam!!
UNC Researchers Receive NSF Grant to Study Extreme Weather Events with Interdisciplinary Approach
Exciting new project harnessing the expertise across Carolina in a convergent approach to tackie resilience!
I am always grateful for the amazing members of the Piehler Lab. This year is clearly different and has required not just great plans for amazing science, but also clear plans to stay safe.
It has been a great Summer, and the fun hasn’t finished yet!
We can stream music and movies to our devices, but what about streaming live data from streams? Monitoring flow and water quality in streams has typically been expensive and labor intensive, but the advent of “smart” technology is making stream monitoring more accessible. For this project, we are using low-cost, open-source technology such as Arduino-based dataloggers, water quality sensors, and cell modems to monitor streams and transmit data in real-time. The low cost of this technology (<10% of typical monitoring equipment) and the ability to transmit data in real-time allows us to create much larger stream monitoring networks and collect more/better data. We have utilized resources from EnviroDIY.org (a Stroud Water Research Center initiative) to build, program, and deploy stream monitoring stations, but this work also aligns with a broader initiative within the scientific community to make stream and environmental monitoring more accessible. Scott Ensign (Piehler lab alum and Assistant Director of the Stroud Water Research Center) recently wrote about the EnviroDIY initiative for AGU’s EOS: https://eos.org/project-updates/a-digital-mayfly-swarm-is-emerging
Visit our project website to view the documentation for our stream gauges: https://ims-stream-gauges.netlify.com/