Blog

Congrats to Kelvin Adu Baah for a successful M.S. defense!

The AGL is pleased to announce that Kelvin Adu Baah successfully defended his M.S. thesis last week (August 7)! Kelvin's thesis is entitled Floodplain phosphorus and sediment deposition in the West Nishnabotna River corridor.

Graduate opportunities in stream restoration evaluation: FILLED

The Applied Geomorphology Lab and the McMillan Research Lab at Iowa State University are seeking applicants for two funded graduate assistantships studying stream restoration.

Tanner Lambert successfully defends M.S.! Congrats Tanner!

Congratulations to Tanner Lambert on a successful defense of his M.S. thesis last week! Tanner's thesis is entitled Streambank stabilization effects on point bar accretion and phosphorus storage.

Tanner Lambert Presents Poster at GSA Connects 2023

Tanner Lambert, master student in the AGL, presented his research at the GSA annual meeting in Pittsburgh, PA.

New JAWRA paper from AGL alum Forrest Williams

The Journal of the American Water Resources Association (JAWRA) has just published an OpenAccess paper by former M.S. student Forrest Williams (M.S. Environmental Science, 2019) and other AGL members and collaborators.

Lilly Welsh presents at the Honors research symposium

Long time AGL member and undergraduate research assistant extraordinaire Lilly Welsh (B.S., 2023) presented her Honors project poster at the Honors poster session, 5/3/23.

Congrats to Jade Allen for her successful M.S. defense!

Jade Allen is the newest AGL graduate, having successfully defended her M.S. thesis on December 19, 2022. Jade's thesis, entitled Streambank Erosion Over Time and Space, includes two components.

Congratulations to Tanner Bonham on successfully defending his M.S.

Tanner Bonham is AGL's newest graduate alum, having successfully defended his M.S. thesis entitled Hydraulic Geometry Relationships and the Development of Bankfull Regional Curves for Iowa Streams.

Landform regions of the glaciated Central Lowlands

A new open-access article published in the Journal of Maps presents a new map of landform regions for the portion of the Central Lowlands physiographic province that was glaciated in the past 1 million years.

Development and Analysis of Regional Curves for Iowa’s River Restoration Toolbox

By Tanner Bonham on June 3, 2021

Iowa's Nature (update): Landforms and Geology supplement available

In addition to the main publication on Iowa's Landforms and Geology (pdf), Pete and co-authors Beth Caissie and Matt Graesch Prepared a Places to Visit supplementary map and document that highlights several places across the state of Iowa where the public can visit and explore some of the rocks and landforms mentioned in the main article. Check out the document and explore for yourself!

New open-access paper explores evolution of debris-covered glacier surfaces

A new paper by Pete in online journal Frontiers in Earth Science examines the feedbacks between ablation and supraglacial debris movement that affect both how debris-covered glaciers melt over long periods of time and how they construct distinct landforms. This paper is part of a special issue focused on Debris-Covered Glaciers: Formation, Governing Processes, Present Status and Future Directions.

Iowa's Nature: Landforms and Geology article co-authored by Pete

Pete co-authored a new general-audiences publication on Iowa's Landforms and Geology (pdf) as part of the Iowa's Nature series, produced by ISU Extension and Outreach. The Iowa's Nature series represents a complete update to the 1990's publication series by the Iowa Association of Naturalists, and includes ten articles covering numerous aspects of Iowa's natural history and resources. Co-authors on the Landforms and Geology article were Dr. Beth Caissie, now of the United States Geological Survey, and Matt Graesch of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.

New paper by Bridget and others published in ESPL

AGL postdoc Bridget Livers Gonzalez and coauthors from UC-Boulder and Colorado State University have published a new article in Earth Surface Processes and Landforms. Their study evaluates several common methods for estimating the wood volume and porosity (or empty space) in log jams, and provides recommendations for best practices in the future. Congrats Bridget!

New paper by Forrest Williams now available at Geomorphology

The first paper from AGL alum Forrest Williams's M.S. thesis is now available on the web! This paper describes the tool (called AIMM, for Aerial Imagery Migration Model) that Forrest developed in ArcPy and ArcGIS to combine aerial imagery and LiDAR datasets to estimate the net volume change of sediment in dynamic river and stream networks. The paper discusses all the gory details of what goes into AIMM, and then demonstrates it's use in the South Fork Iowa River watershed.

Congrats to Joshua McDanel for a successful M.S. defense!

Congratulations to Joshua McDanel for successfully defending his Masters thesis the week before Thanksgiving! Joshua worked on a collaborative project between the Applied Geomorphology Lab and the Geospatial Laboratory for Soil Informatics in Agronomy. His work focused on mapping the catchments of closed depressions throughout the glaciated upper Midwest using digital soil data in GIS.

Thoughts on Mount Rainier's glaciers

This post is a bit later than I would've liked, but nevertheless seems an appropriate one to wind up this hot month of July.

AGL seeking two new grad students

The Department of Natural Resource Ecology & Management (NREM) at Iowa State University is seeking applications for two graduate assistantship (M.S.) positions starting January or May, 2020. Ideal candidates for both positions would have a Bachelor’s degree in biology, geoscience, civil or environmental engineering, or environmental science. Both projects will be jointly supervised by Dr. Pete Moore and Dr. Tom Isenhart and can be pursued as part of an M.S. degree in Environmental Science, Geology, or Fisheries Biology.

Congrats to Sally Carullo for a successful M.S. defense!

Congrats to Sally for successfully defending her M.S. thesis this morning! Sally shared her research about relationships between riparian vegetation and stream channel morphology across Iowa to a full house and did a great job. Next she's off to Hawaii, where she's secured a position as a hydrologist with the USGS! Congrats Sally!

AGL Mount Rainier research published in AAAR

Research from former AGL grad student Theresa Groth, summer researcher Leah Nelson, and Pete was published this week in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. The paper grew out of summer fieldwork completed in 2013-2014 on Emmons Glacier, which has a blanket of rock debris covering much of its terminus. We measured the impact of that rock debris on ice melt during a ten-day period in the summer of each of those years, confirming that thicker debris inhibits ablation more than thin debris but also promotes more warming of the debris surface.