lab News

Summer 2021: 

• Just about back to normal! Steve is teaching the Wetland Ecology and Management course at KBS with Todd Losee and we are conducting field experiments to trace plant water uptake with bromide.

Fall-Winter-Spring 2021:

• Laying low during the pandemic! Everyone working from home as much as possible.

Spring-Summer 2020:

• KBS officially joins the LTAR network (USDA's Long-term Agroecological Research program), with Steve as a co-PI

Summer-Fall-Winter 2019-20:

• Steve and Emma Rosi worked in the Mara Reserve in Kenya on the effects of hippos on river biogeochemistry
• KBS agricultural ecology research continues with LTER and GLBRC .
• With Emma Rosi, Steve once again co-led teaching the Fundamentals of Ecosystem Ecology course at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in January

Fall-winter 2018-19:

• With Emma Rosi, Steve taught the Fundamentals of Ecosystem Ecology course at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies
• Steve worked with his collaborators in the Pantanal region of Brazil on a project examining the environmental drawbacks and benefits of small hydropower dams, which are proliferating in the watersheds draining to the Pantanal

Spring-summer 2018:

• Beginning in August 2018, Steve began dividing his time between MSU and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in New York, where he is appointed as a Senior Scientist.
• Dustin Kincaid is doing a postdoc on the Basin Resilience to Extreme Events (BREE) project at the University of Vermont, working with Drs. Andrew Schroth and Carol Adair.
• Bonnie McGill is doing a postdoc sponsored by the David H. Smith Conservation Research Fellowship. This prestigious  fellowship managed by the Society for Conservation Biology is only offered to five people each year. She is working on conservation practices and agriculture, based at the University of Kansas.

Fall-winter 2017:

• Bonnie McGill, Dustin Kincaid and Leila Desotelle successfully defended their dissertations! Also two students co-advised by Steve--Rubia Fantin in Brazil and Vanessa Reis in Australia--finished their PhDs. Congrats to all!
• Bonnie and Steve presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in New Orleans. Bonnie earned an Outstanding Student Presentation Award!
• Fulbright scholar Leticia Mesa visited KBS for three months with her family; she works at the National Institute of Limnology in Argentina and studies the impacts of cattle on floodplains

Summer 2017:

• Steve spent two weeks doing field work in the Maasai Mara region of Kenya, helping a team from the Cary Institute and Yale University study the biogeochemical implications of hippo use of waterholes along rivers.
• Steve was named a Fellow of the Society for Freshwater Science at the annual meeting in Raleigh. Hamilton lab research presented there included Steve's work on Oregon reservoirs, Dustin Kincaid and Nicolas Lara on flocculent sediment biogeochemistry, and Sarah Roley on  phosphorus in Michigan reservoirs.
• Steve returned from sabbatical in Oregon and Bonnie McGill is back from her African adventure. The lab is reunited!

February 2017:

• Steve went to Brazil to participate in setting up a new research project on the environmental effects of small hydropower development in the watersheds feeding the Pantanal wetland. He toured a number of dams with industry reps and met with about 50 researchers to design the research strategy.

November 2016:

• Steve worked with researchers from OSU and the  USGS. to study the total drainage of Fall Creek reservoir in Oregon, conducted by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Steve studied biogeochemical changes and particularly dissolved oxygen dynamics downstream of the dam.

August 2016:

• Steve heads to Oregon State University for a 9-month sabbatical, studying the ecological ramifications of extreme reservoir drawdowns to be conducted experimentally for salmon management.
• Bonnie heads to Africa for her Borlaug Fellowship adventure!

Summer 2016:

• The lab is humming with graduate and undergraduate research:
  • We hosted a month-long visit by Vanessa Souza e Reis, a Brazilian PhD student enrolled at the Australian Rivers Institute and co-advised by Steve, who is analyzing the conservation status of global wetlands. 
  • We have two REU students - Julie Barrios and Carlneshia Johnson - working with Bonnie on soil biogeochemistry.
  • Another REU - Nicholas Lara - is working with Dustin to study decomposition rates in flocculent sediments.
  • An undergrad research assistant from MSU - Jezreel Wallace - is helping Dustin and conducting research on algae in flocculent sediments.

June 2016:

• Bonnie McGill went to Washington D.C. for a policy forum sponsored by the American Meteorological Society.
• Hamilton lab research was presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Freshwater Science by Hamilton, Kincaid, Kinsman-Costello, and our 2015 REU Adamaris Muñiz Tirado. Collaborative research projects are also being presented at the meetings of the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (Jeff White) and the International Association for Great Lakes Research (Mark McCarthy).

April 2016:

• Former student Jorge Celi is teaching at IKIAM Regional Amazonian University in Tena, Ecuador

March 2016:

• The KBS LTER renewal proposal was submitted! Steve would take over as Lead Principal Investigator of this large project that was founded in 1988.

February 2016:

• Bonnie McGill received the USAID Borlaug Fellowship to work with the International Water Management Institute in Pretoria, South Africa. She will be there for 6 months starting in the fall, working on hydrogeology of an aquifer on the border with Botswana.

December 2015:

• Bonnie McGill received an Outstanding Student Presentation Award at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union!
• Steve's National Academy of Science committee released its report entitled "Spills of diluted bitumen from pipelines: A comparative study of environmental fate, effects, and response." It is available here http://www.nap.edu/download.php?record_id=21834

Fall 2015:

• We hosted a visiting PhD student from the Federal University of Mato Grosso in Brazil named Rubia Fantin da Cruz. She is working on the ecological impacts of small hydropower development in rivers that feed the Pantanal floodplains.

July 2015:

• Steve & Dustin, together with Todd Losee, once again taught a field course on Wetland Ecology & Management at KBS. For more information and to check out a list of all of the courses offered at KBS this summer, click here.

June 2015:

• We have three undergraduates working with us this summer: Adamaris Muniz Tirado from the Univ of Puerto Rico, and Andrew Copsey and Anika Sasinski from MSU
• Steve received the Society for Freshwater Science's Environmental Stewardship Award at their 2015 Annual Meeting in Milwaukee. Well-deserved, Dr. Hamilton!
• We published a paper on crop water use in Environmental Research Letters. Press on the paper includes: https://www.glbrc.org/news/perennial-biofuel-crops-use-water-levels-similar-corn

May 2015:

• Our synthesis book on the LBS LTER project, which  is 25 years old, was published by Oxford University Press! Our webpage for the book is http://lter.kbs.msu.edu/synthesisbook/ and PDFs of the book chapters and slides of figures for download are available at http://lter.kbs.msu.edu/synthesisbookchapters/

April 2015:

• A big high five to Dustin Kincaid, who is this year's KBS LTER Fellow!  The fellowship provides Dustin with a stipend and covers his tuition and fees for one year.

February 2015:

• Dustin spent a week learning how to model high-resolution distributed temperature sensing data to characterize surface-groundwater interactions in flocculent sediments with Dr. Marty Briggs at the US Geological Survey's Office of Groundwater, Branch of Geophysics in Storrs, CT. Thanks to the USGS for hosting Dustin!