Research

My work focuses on providing evidence for the diversity of travel times experienced by suspended sediment during source to sink transport using data from the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond to quantify sediment delivery timescales. As sediment travels through a watershed, it is constantly being cycled between periods of active channelized transport and storage in adjacent reservoirs (e.g., floodplains, point bars, etc.). The time sediment spends in storage has been shown to greatly exceed that of transport. Thus, the time required to transport sediment from source to sink is dominated by storage timescales. This has important implications for the fate and transport of contaminants, the development of effective watershed restoration plans, and the delivery of sediment signals.

My research uses a combination of geomorphic mapping, stratigraphic analysis, geochronology, and numerical modeling to study watershed scale sediment routing over geologic timescales.

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