[Enviro-lunch] Enviro-Lunch this Thursday (4/16)

[Kyungjin Min]

[image: image.png]

Hello all,

Hope you all had a good weekend.  This week Dr. Hannah Waterhouse, a
postdoc at UC Berkeley, will present her research on nitrogen cycling in
agricultural system. Please join us via zoom (4/16, 12-1 pm).

Join Zoom Meeting Enviro-lunch
https://ucmerced.zoom.us/j/175736103
Meeting ID: 175 736 103
One tap mobile
+16699006833,,175736103# US (San Jose)
+16468769923,,175736103# US (New York)

*Title:*
Nitrogen Cycling and Transport within the Vadose Zone under Agricultural
Managed Aquifer Recharge

*Abstract:*

The Central Valley of California is one of the most agriculturally
productive alluvial valleys in the world. However, reoccurring droughts and
mismanagement of our groundwater aquifers threatens the resiliency of our
agroecosystems. The most recent drought from 2012-2016 led to a five-fold
increase in groundwater overdraft, as farmer’s surface water allocations
were reduced to zero in some areas of the valley. Groundwater overdraft has
led to increased land subsidence which damages important water conveyance
infrastructure, degraded water quality, decreased water table levels which
increases pumping costs for farmers, and reduced capacity of groundwater to
buffer agroecosystems against future droughts. These water challenges are
expected to increase with climate change. The passing of the Sustainable
Groundwater Management Act reinvigorated efforts to pursue groundwater
recharge throughout the state in an effort to bring our water basins back
into sustainable use. A novel approach to managed aquifer recharge is being
considered whereby agricultural lands are intentionally flooded to
replenish the underlying aquifer, a strategy known as Agricultural Managed
Aquifer Recharge (AgMAR). However, uncertainty remains on how AgMAR will
affect the transport of legacy nitrate to aquifers that are already facing
water quality degradation. I will discuss my research on the potential of
certain cropping systems and soils to transport nitrate and the effect of
changing the hydrologic regime at the surface on N cycling in the shallow
and deep vadose zones.

Bio:
[image: Professional image.png]

Dr. Hannah Waterhouse is a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Environmental
Policy, Science, and Management department at UC Berkeley in Timothy
Bowle’s Agroecology Lab. Her postdoctoral work examines farmer decision
making and their effect on soil health via the coupled human and natural
systems framework. She completed her PhD in the Soils and Biogeochemistry
Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. She received the
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research
award to complete her dissertation work.  Broadly, her research focuses on
leveraging soil’s biophysiochemical properties to mitigate agriculture’s
impact on the environment, with a particular focus on nitrogen cycling. Her
PhD combined field work, lab incubations, and numerical modelling to
examine how agricultural managed aquifer recharge effects nitrate leaching
to the underlying aquifers and nitrogen cycling dynamics in the deep vadose
zone. She received her Master’s in Soils and Biogeochemistry from UC Davis
in 2015 for her work focused on identifying agricultural management
practices, including fertilizer and irrigation technologies, to reduce
nitrous oxide emissions while maintaining yields. Dr. Waterhouse has also
consulted for USAID in collaboration with a non-profit, Helen Keller
International, in Bangladesh where she advised female subsistence farmers
on how to remediate salt affected soils to improve yields. Dr. Waterhouse
holds a BA in Mathematics from Bryn Mawr College and previously worked for
the University of Delaware’s Environmental Soil Management Group.



KJ and Yang

Organizers for Spring 2020: KJ Min and Yang Yang
Faculty coordinator: Asmeret Asefaw Berhe


------
You can find the semester schedule below.

*Date *

*Speaker *

*Topic *

*2/6*

Yang Yang

@ UC Merced

Altitudinal patterns of nutrient fluxes and pools at the Sierra Nevada



*2/13*

Jing Yan

@ UC Merced

Where small-scale process matters: linking transport behaviors of
nano-sized colloids and rhizosphere water, nutrient dynamics to soil
ecosystem functions

*2/20*

Dipankar Dwivedi

@ Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Biogeochemical controls on river water quality: Quantifying dynamic
surface-subsurface interactions using reactive transport models



*2/27*

Lauren Hale

@ USDA

Utilizing rhizosphere microbiomes to improve soil health

*3/5*

Alex Leven

@ Fugro

Working outside of the academia

*3/12*

cancelled



*3/19*

Eric Slessarev

@ Lawrence Livermore National Lab

Using the state-factor concept to model pedogenesis at the global scale





*3/26*

spring break



*4/2*

Zulema Valdez

@ UC Merced

Climate Change and Wildfire Sufferance among Rural California Residents

*4/9*

Caddie Bergren

@ UC ANR

Climate smart agriculture



*4/16*

Hannah Waterhouse

@ UC Davis

Managing greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils



*4/23*

Luna Reyes

@ UC Merced

Leverage your coding skills to get your science out there

*4/30*

Ryan Bart

@ UC Merced

Coupling ecohydrology with wildfires



*5/7*

Tracey Osborne

 @ UC Merced

TBD
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/enviro-lunch/attachments/20200413/00b17a7a/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Professional image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 525488 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/enviro-lunch/attachments/20200413/00b17a7a/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.png
Type: image/png
Size: 27310 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.ucmerced.edu/pipermail/enviro-lunch/attachments/20200413/00b17a7a/attachment-0003.png>