Minnegram community news

Jessy Carlson joined the WRC as our new Extension educator working on urban stormwater management. Jessy comes to us from Minnesota Sea Grant, where she was serving as a resilience extension associate working with local governments on stormwater practices and policies. Prior to that position, Jessy worked in a range of other roles across the Minnesota Arrowhead region, including with the Cook County Local Energy Project, 1854 Treaty Authority, and the EPA Office of Research and Development, among others. She has a master’s of environmental studies from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and a bachelor’s in biology and plant science from UW-Superior.

Brenna Finley joined the WRC as our new Extension educator focusing on private wells and groundwater. Brenna is joining us from Dakota County Public Health, where she was a family health program coordinator. Prior to that, she was a family home visiting nurse in Dakota County, a NICU bedside nurse at Masonic Children’s Hospital, and a Clinical Research Coordinator here at the University. She has a bachelor’s in human development and a master’s degree in public health and nursing. Brenna will be based in the Farmington Regional Office. She brings with her a wealth of knowledge and experience in health communications and environmental health, and we are very much looking forward to working with her. 

We are pleased to introduce Tim Gieseke as the new ag water management Extension educator. Tim joined us from the MN Department of Natural Resources, where he was most recently the assistant regional manager for the southern region. Prior to that he was a regional groundwater planner (also with the MN DNR), owned a business developing training and conducting research on agricultural conservation topics, and served with the Carver Soil and Water Conservation District. He also runs a small farm near New Ulm. He has a bachelor’s degree in biology and a master’s in environmental science, both from Minnesota State University - Mankato. Tim will be based in the Farmington Regional Office, and his work will focus on a range of agricultural water topics, including irrigation and drainage management. 

Please welcome Anya Normandeau as our Program/Project Specialist and new Minnegram editor based in the Water Resources Center St. Paul office. As a University of Minnesota graduate, she has a bachelor's degree in Journalism and brings experience in the administrative and communications worlds. She brings skills from her different positions including Administrative Assistant at the UofM's Harris Cancer Research Lab and Program/Project Specialist at the Midwest Antiviral Drug Discovery Center. Here at the WRC, she will be assisting with general office operations and communications needs.

WRC staff participated in the 2024 AWRA, UCOWR, NIWR 60th Anniversary Joint Water Resources Conference in St. Louis. Speakers and panelists include John Bilotta, Maggie Karschnia, A. Marcelle Lewandowski and Jeff Peterson.

Extension educator Jodi DeJong Hughes was inducted into the second annual Stip-Till Farmer Hall of Fame class for her role in moving the strip-till practice forward and her overall impact on the industry. DeJong-Hughes has been educating farmers about soil for over 25 years, building a reputation as one of strip-till’s top authorities. DeJong-Hughes has dedicated her career to sharing knowledge with others, delivering presentations to up to 7,000 people annually, including growers in Minnesota, North Dakota, the Corn Belt and across Canada, with additional international speaking invitations in Ukraine and Australia. She also organizes the Soil Management Summit, attended by 170-300 people annually for the past 19 years, in addition to multiple workshops and strip-till field days across western and southern Minnesota.

Please join us in welcoming Gabi Bolwerk as an Extension educator focused on water quality and soil health based in the Cloquet Regional Extension Office. Gabi is joining us from South Dakota State University, where she most recently obtained a master's in natural resource management. She also has a bachelor's in soil and land management from the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point. Gabi brings a tremendous set of skills and expertise to her work as an Extension educator, including as an outreach coordinator for the SDSU Native Plant Initiative, a soil conservationist with the NRCS in South Dakota, and a communications specialist with the UWSP Office of Sustainability. In her role at the U of M, Gabi will be working with the Extension water team, the Minnesota Office for Soil Health, and the Extension crops team to help increase the adoption of soil health practices across the state.

James Cotner (WRS faculty, EEB) was featured on the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission's Clean Water Podcast. The episode's title is Too much of a good thing: The role of nutrients in water.

Mindy Granley (Water Resources Science alumni, 2004) has been selected to serve on the Governer’s Advisory Council on Climate Change beginning 2024. Granley is the Sustainability Officer for the city of Duluth.

Bailey Tangen joined the WRC as a water quality and soil health Extension educator. Tangen recently completed her master's degree in Water Resources Science, with a minor in Land and Atmospheric Science.  Her research focused on the connections between soil health, water quality, and quality of life for farmers. She also has a BS in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the U of M. Tangen began work January 16, 2024 at the Farmington Regional Extension Office. 

William Arnold (CE, WRS faculty) will be the 2023-2024  William R. Kenan, Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. Arnold also received two new grants: Finding, Capturing, and Destroying PFAS in Minnesota Waters from MN ENRTF with co-PIs Paige Novak (CE, WRS faculty) and Hillmyer and Fluorine Beyond PFAS: Pathways to Sustainable Fluorochemical Design Through Environmental Degradation Studies and Fluorine Mass Balances from NSF Environmental Chemical Sciences with co-PIs Will Pomerantz and Sebastian Behrens (CE, WRS faculty).

John Gulliver (CE, WRS faculty) and Jacques Finlay (EEB, WRS faculty) received funding for Effectiveness of Remediation Techniques on Pond Phosphorus Release Rates, Minnesota Stormwater Research Council, May 2023 – December 2025.

John Gulliver (CE, WRS faculty) and Jacques Finlay (WRS faculty) received a grant from the Minnesota Local Road Research Board for their project: Wet Pond Modeling for Contaminant Retention and Maintenance.  April 2023 – June 2026.

Minnesota 1st in awarded USGS competitive grants

Every year the U.S. Geological Survey, in cooperation with the National Institutes for Water Resources, releases a call for research proposals to focus on specific water priorities. An estimated $4,000,000 was available in 2022 for awards across three categories: PFAS, AIS, and "National Competitive" (this third category focuses on general priorities). Only 24 total awards were given across the United States, and Minnesota received four of those 24, which was more than any other state, and the most Minnesota has ever received in a single year. Three of these awards will also include a WRS graduate student to assist with the research. In total, U of M researchers received over $935,000 which is nearly a quarter of the available federal funding.

Awards

• Predicting from the past - identifying characteristics of invasion-resistant and invasion-prone waterbodies to aid horizon scanning
  • PI: Nick Phelps (AIS) 
• Field to stream: analyzing the network timescale of sediment transport and legacy phosphorus mobilization
  • PI: Diana Karwan (National Competitive)  
• Quantification of total PFAS concentrations and PFAS binding using ¹⁹F-nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
  • PI: Bill Arnold (PFAS) 
• Tracing atmospherically deposited PFAS from source to sediment in the Great Lakes Region the impacts of PFAS deposition on hydrologic systems
  • PI: Alexander Frie (PFAS) 

Sub-award

• An assessment of three sources of data for predicting the presence/absence and human- mediated spread of AIS throughout the Upper Mississippi River Basin
  • Collaborator: Nick Phelps (AIS grant awarded to Indiana)

Sarah Roth (WRC, Extension) presented June 2022 at the International Association of Society & Natural Resources, June 2022, about diverse urban water values and inclusive water policy. Roth is partnering with the Metropolitan Council on Phase 2 of the project, beginning fall of 2022.

Andy Erickson (WRS faculty, SAFL) and John Gulliver (WRS faculty, CE) received funding for the project, Updating the 2009 Stormwater BMP Maintenance Resource Guide, from the Minnesota Local Road Research Board, July 2022 – June 2024.

John Gulliver (WRS faculty, CE) and Mei Cai received funding for the project Addressing the research needs for the sustainable application of Tire Derived Aggregate in stormwater infiltration/treatment, from the Minnesota Local Road Research Board, July 2022 – June 2025.

Pete Otterness joined OSTP as a septic workshop instructor August 29, 2022. Otterness was the Assistant Director of Property Services for Nicollet County. Otterness also managed local government programs for septic systems in Nicollet and Blue Earth Counties, and prior to that he worked at the Minnesota Valley Testing Laboratories. 

Amy Schrank (WRC, Sea Grant) received an LCCMR grant for the project Bugs Below Zero. The program aims to raise awareness about winter life in streams through community and K-12 science engagement in water research.

Danielle Yantes joined the OSTP on September 26, 2022 as the OSTP Program Specialist. Yantes has a range of experience in technical as well as customer-focused work that prepares her well for this position. Most recently, she designed fiber placement projects for Telecom Construction, creating detailed drawings for construction crews. From 2010-2016 she supervised the manufacture of specialized medical equipment and then managed a Starbucks store. Danielle earned her BS degree in Business Administration from UW-River Falls.

John Gulliver (WRS faculty, CE), John Nieber (WRS faculty, BBE) and Nicholas Tecca presented Measuring Infiltration Rates: The pros and cons of several infiltrometers at EWRI 2022 Conference Operation and Maintenance of Stormwater Control Measures, Wilmington, NC, March 13 – 16, 2022. 

Greg Klinger and Jamie Mosel joined the Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership and the Water Resources Center as Extension educators focusing on climate adaptation and resilience in agriculture and forests.

Judy Yang (WRS faculty, CE) received a NSF grant for the project Collaborative Research: Grain to Channel Scale Experimental and Numerical Investigation of Cohesive Sediment Transport. Yang will be the lead PI for the project.

John Bilotta and Maggie Karschnia (WRC) with Minnesota Sea Grant have made the Coast Model of the Watershed Game available to communities and classrooms across the country, as of April 2022. The Coast model represents a typical coastal community or estuary, adds nitrogen as one of the pollutants of concern, and introduces a flooding resiliency component.

Minnesota Stormwater Research Program is featured in the December 2021 issue of the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education. John Bilotta and Jeff Peterson authored the Minnesota Stormwater Research and Technology Transfer Program - A Comprehensive Approach to Collaborative Research. The program report concludes: "As the program emerges from its infancy, explorations are underway to collaborate with and leverage instate programs and resources working within the stormwater arena. The program has the potential to serve as a model of stormwater research program has the potential to serve as a model of stormwater research collaboration and grow to address local, regional, and national needs."

Chia-Yang Chen joined Onsite Sewage Treatment Program in December 2021. Chen will be working on the Evaluation and Application of Biochar and Iron-Enhanced Sands in Septic Systems project. Sara Heger is the PI on the project. Chen received his PhD in Environmental Engineering, National Cheng Kung University and his research interests include biomass and bioenergy, thermal treatment, water treatment, air pollution and hydrogen energy.

Water Resources alumni Kaitlin Reinl received UCOWR's 2022 PhD Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled: The intersection of climate change, watershed influence, and phytoplankton dynamics in Lake Superior, which details explores how climate change is impacting phytoplankton dynamics in Lake Superior using monitoring, experimental, and computer modeling approaches. Reinl is a Postdoc at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and also works as the Research Coordinator at the Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, Superior, WI. 

Sarah Roth joined the Water Resources Center as a Research and Extension Coordinator March 14, 2022. Roth previously worked for the Center for Changing Landscapes at the University of Minnesota, where she worked as a Research Associate. Roth has worked collaboratively on numerous research projects focused on the social science aspects of water and environmental issues. Prior to her research position, she was the Education Coordinator at the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, where she coordinated numerous outreach activities and managed an active grant program. Roth earned her BS degree in Natural Resource Policy and Administration from North Carolina State University and her MS degree in Natural Resource Science and Management from the University of Minnesota. In her new role at the WRC, Roth will manage a portfolio of programs and projects, including USGS-funded programs, the Watershed Innovations program, and large-scale grants awarded by the National Science Foundation. In addition, she will develop an independent research and Extension program by building on her previous work.