Researchers teachers and engineers

Jay P.
ZARNETSKE

Ecohydrology, United States

Contact details

Watershed Science & Hydroecology Lab
Michigan State University

Email.
jpz@msu.edu
Personal Website.
https://www.zarnetskelab.com

Research topics

PROJECT

Toward Developing an Integrative River Corridor Perspective to Advance Freshwater Research, Policy, and Management

River corridors occupy a small fraction of Earth’s surface; yet, they are ubiquitous and play a large role in ecosystems and society, connecting catchments and people to the greater Earth System. River corridors are significant landscape features because they control the fluxes, forms, and ages of materials transported over great distances. Through these processes, river corridors provide critical services that benefit society such as water supply, water-quality, flood regulation, recreation, and a place for our homes, crops, and businesses. Nearly all climatic and anthropogenic activities influence the properties freshwaters because nearly all freshwater converges and mixes as it flows through river corridors. However, there are no conceptual models of river corridors that recognize this convergence of processes and disciplines. There is an urgent need to unify the different disciplines studying the physical, biological, and social processes occurring in river corridors. No longer can we study and manage freshwaters and river corridors as the sum of their parts.

This project embarks on a long-term goal to cultivate a collaborative, interdisciplinary team of scholars to advance river corridor thinking and create a new unifying transdisciplinary conceptual model for river corridors. Striving for this goal will catalyze new science that will advance our predictive understanding of ecological functions and societal services of river corridors.

Lyon and the sponsoring laboratories are ideal locations to advance this integrative river corridor thinking because the region and its scholarship has been engaging in integrative approaches to freshwater science and management for the last 25 years. Project activities include six synergistic research projects and five collaborative community-building projects that all work toward the ultimate goal of enhancing water resource research, policy and management through a river corridor perspective.

Activities / Resume

BIOGRAPHY

Jay Zarnetske is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Michigan State University, USA.
His research, teaching, and outreach programs strive to show how water connects us all, and that we must learn to appreciate and value water. His research program investigates the coupled hydrological and ecosystem responses to climate and land use change in watersheds. He focuses on exploring the hydrological controls on ecosystem processes of river, lake, wetland, and groundwater environments. He employs field experiments and monitoring with data mining techniques and numerical models to reveal new knowledge about complex watershed processes.
Currently, Jay is engaged watershed projects across the United States, Europe, and the Arctic. He teaches courses and does science outreach associated with hydrology and environmental science, from developing new graduate programs to developing new science-art collaborations. Before his current position, Jay was a Gaylord Donnelly Environmental Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies.
He received a PhD in Water Resource Science from Oregon State University. He also has a Masters degree in Watershed Science from Utah State University, and an undergraduate degree in Geology from Colby College. Outside of academia, Jay served as a visiting scientist for New Zealand's National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research and a consulting groundwater hydrologist for CDM-Smith, Inc.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  • Zarnetske, JP, M Bouda, BW Abbott, J Saiers, and PA Raymond (2018) Generality of hydrologic transport limitation of watershed organic carbon flux across ecoregions of the United States. Geophysical Research Letters, 45. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL080005
  • Shogren, A, JP Zarnetske, BW Abbott, Frances Iannucci, and William B. Bowden (2020) We cannot shrug off the shoulder seasons: Addressing knowledge and data gaps in an Arctic Headwater. Environmental Research Letters, https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9d3c
  • Shogren, A, JP Zarnetske, °°BW Abbott, F Iannucci, R Frei, NA Griffin, and WB Bowden (2019) Revealing biogeochemical signatures of Arctic landscapes with river chemistry. Scientific Reports, 9(1): 12894, DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-49296-6.
  • Abbott, BA, K Bishop, JP Zarnetske, DM Hannah, RJ Frei et al. (2019) A water cycle for the Anthropocene. Hydrological Processes DOI: 10.1002/hyp.13544
  • Abbott, BA, K Bishop, JP Zarnetske, C Minaudo, FS Chapin III et al. (2019) Human domination of the global water cycle excluded from depictions and perceptions. Nature Geoscience. 12(7): 533-540. 10.1038/s41561-019-0374-y
  • Abbott BW, G Gruau, JP Zarnetske, F Moatar, L Barbe, Z Thomas, O Fovet, T Kolbe, S Gu, AC Pierson-Wickmann, P Davy, G Pinay. (2018) Unexpected structure and synchrony of water quality in headwater stream networks. Ecology Letters. doi: 10.1111/ele.12897
  • Pavelsky, TM, and JP Zarnetske (2017) Declining aufeis in Arctic Alaska reflects a changing hydrologic cycle. Geophys. Res. Lett., 44, doi:10.1002/2016GL072397.
  • Ruhala, S, and JP Zarnetske. (2016) Using in-situ optical sensors to study dissolved organic carbon dynamics of streams and watersheds: A review. Sci. of the Total Env. doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.09.113.
  • Briggs, MA, FD Day-Lewis, JP Zarnetske, and JW Harvey. (2015) A physical explanation for the development of redox microzones in hyporheic flow. Geophys. Res. Lett., 42, doi: 10.1002/2015GL064200.
  • Zarnetske, JP, R Haggerty, SM Wondzell, V Bokil, and R González-Pinzón. (2012) Coupled transport and reaction kinetics control the nitrate source-sink function of hyporheic zones. Water Resour. Res., 48, W11508, doi:10.1029/2012WR011894.
  • Zarnetske, JP, R Haggerty, SM Wondzell, and MA Baker. (2011) Dynamics of nitrate production and removal as a function of residence time in the hyporheic zone. J. Geophys. Res., 116, G01025, doi:10.1029/2010JG001356.

Additional informations

Poster

H2O'Lyon Webinar // Mind the spatial gaps: Addressing hydrologic linkages of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems across scales