River Chemistry From Space an “Evening Talk” with Ms. Catherine Kuhn, PHD Student in the School of Forest Sciences at the University of Washington

When: Friday, March 17 from 7-8 p.m.

Where: Forks, WA at the Olympic Natural Resources Center in our Hemlock Forest Room. ONRC is located at 1455 S. Forks.

Catherine Kuhn is a PhD student in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. Catherine’s research is on the human transformation of large river systems and explores the intersection of water resources, biogeochemistry, and environmental change. Catherine specializes in satellite remote analysis of inland waters and is pioneering new methods to test optical models for quantifying changes in river chemistry from space. After spending half a decade teaching environmental science in urban public schools, Catherine returned to graduate school where she earned her Masters in Environmental Science from the Yale School of Forestry. Catherine originally hails from the Kansas plains and in her spare time enjoys trail running, surfing and baking pies.

Rivers, lakes, and streams are considered sentinels of environmental change, yet most research analyzing the impact of change occurs at the watershed scale. While smaller scale studies provide invaluable insight into physical processes, few studies describe the vulnerability of inland water quality (WQ) to environmental change at larger scales. While both types of knowledge are crucial for informing policy-making, water resources management and conservation, few national scale studies exploring water quality exist. However, advances in cloud-based data analytics have created a new research landscape making possible the rapid analysis of public datasets to monitor changes in surface waters at large spatial and temporal scales. We can extend our analysis across larger spatial scales by incorporating cloud-based computing and the rapidly expanding library of environmentally-focused satellite imagery products. In this talk, Catherine will explore some of these cutting edge new tools for landscape analysis and share results from her research comparing satellite retrieved estimates of water quality to field measurements for the Columbia River.

Please join us! Evening Talks at ONRC is funded through the Rosmond Forestry Education Fund, an endowment that honors the contributions of Fred Rosmond and his family to forestry and the Forks community. Refreshments will be served and a potluck of your favorite dessert is encouraged. For more information contact: Frank Hanson at 374-4556 or fsh2@uw.edu.