Blaszczak Watershed and Aquatic Ecosystem Ecology Lab
at the University of Nevada, Reno
Flathead Valley, Montana (Google Earth Image)
Welcome! Our group studies the transformations and transport of nutrients, carbon, and contaminants through watersheds and the ecosystem ecology of the streams that drain them.
We are a growing group of freshwater scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno. We use a combination of field (environmental sensors and surveys), lab (analytical chemistry and mesocosm experiments), and modeling (time-series models) approaches to address the questions we are most excited about!
Read more about our research here and check for opportunities to join the lab.
We are a growing group of freshwater scientists at the University of Nevada, Reno. We use a combination of field (environmental sensors and surveys), lab (analytical chemistry and mesocosm experiments), and modeling (time-series models) approaches to address the questions we are most excited about!
Read more about our research here and check for opportunities to join the lab.
Mono Lake Basin, CA (Fall 2019)
|
Beaver Creek, Montana
(Summer 2018)
|
An urban stream in
Durham, NC (Spring 2015)
|
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that the University of Nevada, Reno is situated on the traditional homelands of the Numu (Northern Paiute), Wašiw (Washoe), Newe (Western Shoshone), Nuwu (Southern Paiute) peoples, and that our research in other areas occurs on the homelands of tribes spread throughout North America. We respect the Indigenous people who have lived and live on these lands and recognize our responsibility to support these communities.
We acknowledge that the University of Nevada, Reno is situated on the traditional homelands of the Numu (Northern Paiute), Wašiw (Washoe), Newe (Western Shoshone), Nuwu (Southern Paiute) peoples, and that our research in other areas occurs on the homelands of tribes spread throughout North America. We respect the Indigenous people who have lived and live on these lands and recognize our responsibility to support these communities.
News Feed
September 2023 - Joanna writes an invited News & Views commentary on a recently published study investigating the deoxygenation of temperate rivers because of climate change in Nature Climate Change. Check it out HERE.
August 2023 - Dre Garcia Jimenez joins the lab as a PhD student to work on environmental controls on benthic toxin-producing cyanobacteria! Welcome Dre!
June 2023 - New lab publication out in Ecology Letters on estimating river productivity resilience and disturbance thresholds using a model fit to GPP time series! Check it out HERE.
April 2023 - Joanna is on maternity leave from mid-April to late June! Please reach out to students, postdocs, or staff in the lab if you need to get in touch with us!
April 2023 - Our recent publication on hypoxia in streams and rivers around the world is featured in Eos by Joe Besl! See it HERE.
March/April 2023 - Visiting scholar Wubneh Abebe gives the ASLO "Amplifying Voices" Webinar as well as a seminar at the UNR Global Water Center. Modelscape postdoc Leon Katona also gives a seminar at the UNR Global Water Center!
March 2023 - The Blaszczak and Chandra labs co-host Dr. Sally MacIntyre and Dr. John Melack for seminars! We all learned a ton about physical limnology and biogeochemistry in mountain lakes in the Sierras!
February 2023 - PhD student Jordan Zabrecky is awarded the General Endowment Award from the Society of Freshwater Science!! Congrats Jordan!
January 2023 - Final report and data release for the aquatic macrophyte and metabolism project led by recent alumni MS graduate Meredith Brehob posted to the Reclamation Information Sharing Environment (RISE) here.
December 2022 - New publication out from the lab on patterns and controls on hypoxia in streams around the world! Check it out HERE.
October 2022 part 2 - Recent alumni MS graduate Meredith Brehob awarded first place for her poster presentation at the 2022 SFS Meeting as part of JASM in the applied science category!!!! So proud of Meredith!!
October 2022 - Wundergrad Paola Miramontes-Gonzalez is awarded the NV EPSCoR Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program award!! Congrats Paola!
August 2022 part 4 - REU student Rija Masroor and postdoc Heili Lowman's DOM Explorer Shiny app based on data from the National Ecological Observatory Network and created in collaboration with Joanna and Purdue University postdoc Tingyu Hou & faculty Jake Hosen is live. You can check it out here: https://hlowman.shinyapps.io/neon_dom/
August 2022 part 3 - PhD student Jordan Zabrecky is awarded the 2022-2023 UNR Dean's Fellowship! Congrats Jordan!
August 2022 part 2 - Joanna is awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation Rules of Life: Emergent Networks program titled "Understanding the rule of life facilitating the proliferation of toxic cyanobacterial benthic mats in flowing freshwaters". We will be recruiting a full time research technician (3 years of funding) and a PhD student to start in spring or summer 2023. Bob Shriver and Joanna will also be recruiting a co-advised postdoc starting spring 2024.
August 2022 - Research technician Jasmine Krause joins the lab to work on a Nevada Division of State Lands grant to investigate controls on nearshore greening in Lake Tahoe!
July 2022 part 2 - HUGE congrats to MS student Keenan Seto for successfully defending his thesis!! Stay tuned for a publication of his work.
July 2022 - Modelscapes postdoc Leon Katona joins the lab!
June 2022 part 2 - Lots of undergraduate research in the lab this summer!
June 2022 - Incoming PhD student Jordan Zabrecky and research technician Meaghan Hickey along with Joanna attend the 2022 Algal Foray at the Angelo Coastal Range Reserve and kick start anatoxin sampling in the Russian River, the South Fork of the Eel River, and the Salmon River in northern CA!
May 2022 part 3 - Wundergrad Rob Miller is awarded the NV EPSCoR summer research fellowship!! Congrats Rob!
May 2022 part 2 - Joanna, Heili, Meredith, Kelly, & Keenan are all heading to the Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting (JASM) in Grand Rapids, MI to present their work! We're all looking forward to connecting with old and new colleagues!!
May 2022 - Paola Miramontes is awarded the Nevada Undergraduate Research Award!! Congrats Paola!
April 2022 - HUGE congrats to MS student Meredith Brehob for successfully defending her thesis!! Stay tuned for a publication of her work.
March 2022 - New lab publication on freshwater salinity regimes in streams! Former technician Lauren Bolotin leads a paper using dynamic time warping and time series clustering to explore dominant freshwater salinity regimes in central and western U.S. streams. Check it out HERE.
December 2021 - Kelly presents her work at the 2021 AGU meeting in New Orleans on "Linkages between ecosystem productivity and nitrogen uptake in mountain streams with contrasting flow regimes in the Lake Tahoe Basin" AND she is awarded a UNR Graduate School Association (GSA) Research Grant to support her work on investigating stream ecosystem responses to the Caldor Fire. Awesome job Kelly!!
November 2021 - Keenan presents at the SETAC North America 42nd Annual Meeting on "Biogeochemical Responses to Changing Salinity Regimes in Northwestern Nevada River Basins". Way to go Keenan!!
October 2021 - Heili and Joanna head up to the Flathead Lake Biological Station (FLBS) in Montana for a week long modelscapes subgroup meeting for aquatic ecosystem focused folks. The larches by the lake were beautiful and lots of fun science was discussed!
September 2021 - The Blaszczak lab (meaning Kelly and Joanna) has mobilized to study the transport and downstream effects of material mobilized by the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe from the watershed to the nearshore of the lake. We are also participating in studying the effects of smoke on Lake Tahoe clarity. Read more about it here.
July 2021 - The local NPR station KUNR featured our NSF award to study environmental controls on anatoxin-producing cyanobacteria in northern CA rivers. Listen here starting at 3:08: link
- For a little longer clip and a photo, click on this KUNR link.
June 2021 - Joanna is awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation Macrosystems & NEON-enabled science grant titled "Uncovering local and regional controls on organic matter processing in freshwaters using in situ optical sensors". We will be recruiting a postdoc to work with Jake Hosen at Purdue University soon and I will be searching for an REU student for summer 2022!
May 2021 part 3 - Meredith Brehob (poster), Kelly Loria (poster), Lauren Bolotin (talk), and Joanna (talk) all present at the 2021 Society for Freshwater Science meeting. Can't wait to be in person again next year!
May 2021 part 2 - Wundergrads Chloe Dodge and Anna Zoeters are both awarded Outstanding Seniors in the NRES department!! Congrats to them!
May 2021 - Madison Glenwinkel is awarded the NV EPSCoR summer research fellowship!! Congrats Madison!
April 2021 part 2 - Kelly Loria is awarded the 2021 Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center Natural Resources Workforce Development (NRWD) Fellowship!! Congrats Kelly!
April 2021 - Joanna is awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation titled "SG: Evaluating synchrony among ecosystem productivity, benthic cyanobacterial growth, and toxin production dynamics in rivers" which will support a new Ph.D. student in the lab! We are recruiting for a new student to join the lab. If interested, please go to the current openings tab under opportunities.
March 2021 part 2 - VERY exciting news to share from the lab - Lauren Bolotin received an Honorable Mention from the NSF GRFP and Ph.D. student Kelly Loria was awarded a NSF GRF!! We are all very proud of them and so thrilled!
March 2021 - (1) We are thrilled to have Heili Lowman has joined the lab as a postdoc on the NSF EPSCoR funded Modelscapes project! (2) Joanna gave a seminar at the University of Oklahoma titled "Predicting the pulse of rivers: ecological insights from river oxygen dynamics". Watch a recording here.
December 2020 - (1) Joanna presents ongoing work in collaboration with Lauren Bolotin and Chloe Dodge (lab members), as well as Phil Savoy (USGS) on freshwater salinization regimes across the western US at AGU 2020 and (2) Joanna is awarded a Nevada INBRE (IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence National Institutes of Health (NIH) program) grant to develop methods with the UNR Proteomics center to measure the cyanotoxin anatoxin-a in rivers!
October 2020 - Congrats to M.S. student Meredith Brehob on being awarded the Robert E. Dickenson Scholarship!!
September 2020 - Congrats to Ph.D. student Kelly Loria on being awarded the Whittell Forest Graduate Research Fellowship!!
August 2020 - Two very exciting pieces of news for August:
1. Two awesome graduate students, Kelly Loria (Ph.D. student) and Keenan Seto (M.S. student) have joined the lab!! See the people tab for more information about them.
2. Joanna is awarded a NSF EPSCOR RII Track-2 grant titled "Highly predictive, explanatory models to harness the life science data revolution". Joanna and Matt Forister (UNR Biology) will be splitting 3 postdocs each year and the Blaszczak lab will be deploying a buoy in Lake Tahoe! If you're interested in a postdoc and reading this, look for an advertisement soon and get in touch with me.
July 2020 - Big congrats again to Albert for this time on having his NSF EPSCoR Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) proposal funded for the 2020-2021 academic year!! Very exciting!
June 2020 - Congrats to Albert for being awarded the Nevada Undergraduate Research Award for the 2020-2021 academic year!!
March 2020 - The lab is staying home and staying safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
February 2020 - Joanna attends a StreamPulse project meeting, the 5th Symposium on Urban Stream Ecology (SUSE5), and the Water Research Career Collaborative annual meeting!
January 2020 - The Blaszczak lab is growing! Meredith Brehob joins the lab as the first MS student and is co-advised by Sudeep Chandra. Albert Lopez joins as a McNair scholar and Chloe Dodge joins as a research assistant. Excited for the semester!
December 2019 - Joanna presents the Global Riverine Hypoxia project at the AGU meeting in San Francisco
September 2019 - Joanna attended the Dry Rivers RCN workshop, which was productive and fun - papers are forthcoming!
September 2019 - Lauren Bolotin (UNR grad '19) is the first member to join the Blaszczak lab as a research technician!
August 2019 - The Blaszczak lab has opened its doors!
September 2023 - Joanna writes an invited News & Views commentary on a recently published study investigating the deoxygenation of temperate rivers because of climate change in Nature Climate Change. Check it out HERE.
August 2023 - Dre Garcia Jimenez joins the lab as a PhD student to work on environmental controls on benthic toxin-producing cyanobacteria! Welcome Dre!
June 2023 - New lab publication out in Ecology Letters on estimating river productivity resilience and disturbance thresholds using a model fit to GPP time series! Check it out HERE.
April 2023 - Joanna is on maternity leave from mid-April to late June! Please reach out to students, postdocs, or staff in the lab if you need to get in touch with us!
April 2023 - Our recent publication on hypoxia in streams and rivers around the world is featured in Eos by Joe Besl! See it HERE.
March/April 2023 - Visiting scholar Wubneh Abebe gives the ASLO "Amplifying Voices" Webinar as well as a seminar at the UNR Global Water Center. Modelscape postdoc Leon Katona also gives a seminar at the UNR Global Water Center!
March 2023 - The Blaszczak and Chandra labs co-host Dr. Sally MacIntyre and Dr. John Melack for seminars! We all learned a ton about physical limnology and biogeochemistry in mountain lakes in the Sierras!
February 2023 - PhD student Jordan Zabrecky is awarded the General Endowment Award from the Society of Freshwater Science!! Congrats Jordan!
January 2023 - Final report and data release for the aquatic macrophyte and metabolism project led by recent alumni MS graduate Meredith Brehob posted to the Reclamation Information Sharing Environment (RISE) here.
December 2022 - New publication out from the lab on patterns and controls on hypoxia in streams around the world! Check it out HERE.
- UNR press release about the article: "Global study of hypoxia in rivers shows it is more prevalent than previously thought"
- Featured on the National Science Foundation Research News Feed
October 2022 part 2 - Recent alumni MS graduate Meredith Brehob awarded first place for her poster presentation at the 2022 SFS Meeting as part of JASM in the applied science category!!!! So proud of Meredith!!
October 2022 - Wundergrad Paola Miramontes-Gonzalez is awarded the NV EPSCoR Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program award!! Congrats Paola!
August 2022 part 4 - REU student Rija Masroor and postdoc Heili Lowman's DOM Explorer Shiny app based on data from the National Ecological Observatory Network and created in collaboration with Joanna and Purdue University postdoc Tingyu Hou & faculty Jake Hosen is live. You can check it out here: https://hlowman.shinyapps.io/neon_dom/
August 2022 part 3 - PhD student Jordan Zabrecky is awarded the 2022-2023 UNR Dean's Fellowship! Congrats Jordan!
August 2022 part 2 - Joanna is awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation Rules of Life: Emergent Networks program titled "Understanding the rule of life facilitating the proliferation of toxic cyanobacterial benthic mats in flowing freshwaters". We will be recruiting a full time research technician (3 years of funding) and a PhD student to start in spring or summer 2023. Bob Shriver and Joanna will also be recruiting a co-advised postdoc starting spring 2024.
August 2022 - Research technician Jasmine Krause joins the lab to work on a Nevada Division of State Lands grant to investigate controls on nearshore greening in Lake Tahoe!
July 2022 part 2 - HUGE congrats to MS student Keenan Seto for successfully defending his thesis!! Stay tuned for a publication of his work.
July 2022 - Modelscapes postdoc Leon Katona joins the lab!
June 2022 part 2 - Lots of undergraduate research in the lab this summer!
- REU student Rija Masroor joins the lab for the summer to work with Heili and Joanna as well as Jake Hosen and Tingyu Hou at Purdue University to look at macrosystem patterns in DOM.
- McNair scholar and NURA recipient Paola Miramontes-Gonzalez works with Joanna as well as Simon Poulson and Scott Allen to investigate longitudinal patterns in urban stream chemistry and stable water isotopes
- NV EPSCoR summer research fellow Rob Miller works with Kelly Loria, Joanna, Heili, and Sudeep to measure nearshore N-fixation rates in Lake Tahoe
- UNR undergraduate student Helen Lei is helping out with multiple projects and will develop an outreach education activity this fall
June 2022 - Incoming PhD student Jordan Zabrecky and research technician Meaghan Hickey along with Joanna attend the 2022 Algal Foray at the Angelo Coastal Range Reserve and kick start anatoxin sampling in the Russian River, the South Fork of the Eel River, and the Salmon River in northern CA!
May 2022 part 3 - Wundergrad Rob Miller is awarded the NV EPSCoR summer research fellowship!! Congrats Rob!
May 2022 part 2 - Joanna, Heili, Meredith, Kelly, & Keenan are all heading to the Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting (JASM) in Grand Rapids, MI to present their work! We're all looking forward to connecting with old and new colleagues!!
May 2022 - Paola Miramontes is awarded the Nevada Undergraduate Research Award!! Congrats Paola!
April 2022 - HUGE congrats to MS student Meredith Brehob for successfully defending her thesis!! Stay tuned for a publication of her work.
March 2022 - New lab publication on freshwater salinity regimes in streams! Former technician Lauren Bolotin leads a paper using dynamic time warping and time series clustering to explore dominant freshwater salinity regimes in central and western U.S. streams. Check it out HERE.
December 2021 - Kelly presents her work at the 2021 AGU meeting in New Orleans on "Linkages between ecosystem productivity and nitrogen uptake in mountain streams with contrasting flow regimes in the Lake Tahoe Basin" AND she is awarded a UNR Graduate School Association (GSA) Research Grant to support her work on investigating stream ecosystem responses to the Caldor Fire. Awesome job Kelly!!
November 2021 - Keenan presents at the SETAC North America 42nd Annual Meeting on "Biogeochemical Responses to Changing Salinity Regimes in Northwestern Nevada River Basins". Way to go Keenan!!
October 2021 - Heili and Joanna head up to the Flathead Lake Biological Station (FLBS) in Montana for a week long modelscapes subgroup meeting for aquatic ecosystem focused folks. The larches by the lake were beautiful and lots of fun science was discussed!
September 2021 - The Blaszczak lab (meaning Kelly and Joanna) has mobilized to study the transport and downstream effects of material mobilized by the Caldor Fire in South Lake Tahoe from the watershed to the nearshore of the lake. We are also participating in studying the effects of smoke on Lake Tahoe clarity. Read more about it here.
July 2021 - The local NPR station KUNR featured our NSF award to study environmental controls on anatoxin-producing cyanobacteria in northern CA rivers. Listen here starting at 3:08: link
- For a little longer clip and a photo, click on this KUNR link.
June 2021 - Joanna is awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation Macrosystems & NEON-enabled science grant titled "Uncovering local and regional controls on organic matter processing in freshwaters using in situ optical sensors". We will be recruiting a postdoc to work with Jake Hosen at Purdue University soon and I will be searching for an REU student for summer 2022!
May 2021 part 3 - Meredith Brehob (poster), Kelly Loria (poster), Lauren Bolotin (talk), and Joanna (talk) all present at the 2021 Society for Freshwater Science meeting. Can't wait to be in person again next year!
May 2021 part 2 - Wundergrads Chloe Dodge and Anna Zoeters are both awarded Outstanding Seniors in the NRES department!! Congrats to them!
May 2021 - Madison Glenwinkel is awarded the NV EPSCoR summer research fellowship!! Congrats Madison!
April 2021 part 2 - Kelly Loria is awarded the 2021 Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center Natural Resources Workforce Development (NRWD) Fellowship!! Congrats Kelly!
April 2021 - Joanna is awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation titled "SG: Evaluating synchrony among ecosystem productivity, benthic cyanobacterial growth, and toxin production dynamics in rivers" which will support a new Ph.D. student in the lab! We are recruiting for a new student to join the lab. If interested, please go to the current openings tab under opportunities.
March 2021 part 2 - VERY exciting news to share from the lab - Lauren Bolotin received an Honorable Mention from the NSF GRFP and Ph.D. student Kelly Loria was awarded a NSF GRF!! We are all very proud of them and so thrilled!
- Kelly also gave a talk through the Headwaters Science Institute "Lunch with a Scientist Lecture Series". See the recording here!
March 2021 - (1) We are thrilled to have Heili Lowman has joined the lab as a postdoc on the NSF EPSCoR funded Modelscapes project! (2) Joanna gave a seminar at the University of Oklahoma titled "Predicting the pulse of rivers: ecological insights from river oxygen dynamics". Watch a recording here.
December 2020 - (1) Joanna presents ongoing work in collaboration with Lauren Bolotin and Chloe Dodge (lab members), as well as Phil Savoy (USGS) on freshwater salinization regimes across the western US at AGU 2020 and (2) Joanna is awarded a Nevada INBRE (IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence National Institutes of Health (NIH) program) grant to develop methods with the UNR Proteomics center to measure the cyanotoxin anatoxin-a in rivers!
October 2020 - Congrats to M.S. student Meredith Brehob on being awarded the Robert E. Dickenson Scholarship!!
September 2020 - Congrats to Ph.D. student Kelly Loria on being awarded the Whittell Forest Graduate Research Fellowship!!
August 2020 - Two very exciting pieces of news for August:
1. Two awesome graduate students, Kelly Loria (Ph.D. student) and Keenan Seto (M.S. student) have joined the lab!! See the people tab for more information about them.
2. Joanna is awarded a NSF EPSCOR RII Track-2 grant titled "Highly predictive, explanatory models to harness the life science data revolution". Joanna and Matt Forister (UNR Biology) will be splitting 3 postdocs each year and the Blaszczak lab will be deploying a buoy in Lake Tahoe! If you're interested in a postdoc and reading this, look for an advertisement soon and get in touch with me.
July 2020 - Big congrats again to Albert for this time on having his NSF EPSCoR Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) proposal funded for the 2020-2021 academic year!! Very exciting!
June 2020 - Congrats to Albert for being awarded the Nevada Undergraduate Research Award for the 2020-2021 academic year!!
March 2020 - The lab is staying home and staying safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
February 2020 - Joanna attends a StreamPulse project meeting, the 5th Symposium on Urban Stream Ecology (SUSE5), and the Water Research Career Collaborative annual meeting!
January 2020 - The Blaszczak lab is growing! Meredith Brehob joins the lab as the first MS student and is co-advised by Sudeep Chandra. Albert Lopez joins as a McNair scholar and Chloe Dodge joins as a research assistant. Excited for the semester!
December 2019 - Joanna presents the Global Riverine Hypoxia project at the AGU meeting in San Francisco
September 2019 - Joanna attended the Dry Rivers RCN workshop, which was productive and fun - papers are forthcoming!
September 2019 - Lauren Bolotin (UNR grad '19) is the first member to join the Blaszczak lab as a research technician!
August 2019 - The Blaszczak lab has opened its doors!
