Page 17 - 2020 GGE Newsletter

Page 17

A NOTE FROM THE ENGINEERING GROUP
AND THE SURFACE PROCESSES AND GEOMORPHOLOGY GROUP
CONT’D

The Surface Processes and Geomorphology group (Danica Roth and students) has been growing and thriving in spite of this year’s
pandemic hurdles. After cancelling our first field campaigns in March, we focused on data-driven approaches that have since developed into
exciting new collaborations with colleagues from over a dozen universities, the USGS and the US Forest Service. Claire Vavrus (MS, 2021) was
awarded a CUAHSI Pathfinder
Fellowship to study the impact
of roads on post-fire rill and
gully erosion, which she is in-
vestigating with lidar and pho-
togrammetric data collected in
Montecito, CA after the 2018
debris flows. Caroline Bedwell
(MS, 2021) received a GSA
Graduate Student Research
Grant to study the impact of
climate variation on post-
wildfire soil hydrology, and is
now compiling and analyzing
data from collaborators across
the Western US, as well as Socially distanced Roth-Walton Supergroup Picnic/Happy Hour Plus Plus Ones and Friends
field work at the recent Griz- (RWSPHHPPOF).
zly Creek fire in CO. Both
Caroline and Claire passed their MS proposal defenses this
summer and will present their work at AGU. We welcomed two
new group members this year: PhD student Hayden Jacobson
(co-advised with Dr. Gabe Walton) will be examining the rela-
tionship between surface roughness, biotic processes, hydrolo-
gy and erosion after wildfires; and MURF intern Alex Coronado
is examining the seismic signals generated by sediment
transport and water turbulence in rivers. Our new gamma spec-
troscopy lab is nearly ready to analyze erosion rates over days
to decadal timescales, and we recently co-purchased a Distrib-
uted Acoustic Sensing (DAS) system with several other Mines
faculty, which we will use to study a range of surface processes.
Danica now has a courtesy joint appointment with the Geo-
physics Department and is a member of the Hydrological Sci-
ences and Engineering Program; she also serves as a Steer-
ing Committee member and the Geomorphology Working Caroline Bedwell setting up a transect to measure hydraulic conductivity after the
Group Lead for the NSF-funded DAS Research Coordina- Grizzly Creek fire in Colorado
tion Network (RCN), as well as the Mines Graduate Council and GE de-
partment’s Diversity, Inclusion and Access Committee. She published a
paper in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences this year,
gave invited talks at Washington University in St. Louis, University of
Pennsylvania, UC Santa Barbara and the Community Surface Dynamics
Modeling System (CSDMS) Summer Science series at CU Boulder, and is
convening two sessions on Environmental Seismology at AGU. Danica
also teaches the newly redesigned undergraduate Engineering Terrain
Analysis and Advanced Physical Geology lab courses, a new graduate
course in Point Cloud Data Analysis (co-developed with Dr. Gabe Wal-
ton), and a Wildfire, Erosion and Hazards graduate seminar. In addition
to research, our group members are also taking steps to foster community
support both in and outside the department, such as inviting fellow geo-
morphologist Jane Willenbring (Stanford University) to visit Mines and
share her experiences with Growing Up in Science and the #MeTooSTEM
movement, developing the new Mines Employee Relief Fund, starting a
biweekly GE coffee hour focused on diversity, inclusion and access, and
contributing to the growth of student-owned initiatives for professional
development and cohort-building. More information about the SPG group and our work can be found at The Surface Processes and
https://surfaceprocesses.mines.edu. Geomorphology group’s new
gamma spectroscopy lab.