After two decades of studying impaired waterways and the impact of Pleistocene-Holocene climates and conditions on landscapes in the mid-Atlantic region, our research group at Franklin and Marshall College established the Chesapeake Watershed Initiative in 2020 to deepen understanding of 1) the Quaternary geologic history of modern landscapes, 2) the legacies of human impacts on riparian-aquatic ecosystems, and 3) the effectiveness of transformative restoration efforts to improve water quality and ecosystem health. Our approach connects landscape history and trajectories to current place-based restoration and applies to many human-impacted geographies worldwide. We investigate Earth’s past to envision restoration potential and guide restoration approaches. We use several types of long-term monitoring to evaluate landscape response to restoration. These include repeat RTK GPS and aerial lidar surveys, multiple USGS gage stations to monitor water and sediment fluxes, and in situ thermal sensors and UAVs (drones) with thermal cameras to assess the mixing of surface and groundwater (i.e., hyporheic exchange).
 

Dorothy Merritts is a geomorphologist recognized for her work on the history of landscapes and the processes that shape them. She investigates landscapes perturbed by geologic events and climate change during the past ~130,000 years and by human activities during the past ~400 years. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees in geology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, and the University of Arizona. She served as president of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Earth and Planetary Surface Processes Section (EPSP), is a fellow of both the Geological Society of America (GSA) and the AGU, was a co-recipient of the GSA Kirk Bryan award for outstanding scholarship, and received the Distinguished Career award from the GSA Quaternary Geology and Geomorphology Division and the G. K. Gilbert award from AGU EPSP. In 2022 she was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

* For the Zoom link please email Xueyao Cheng  > xc272@stanford.edu