EES Seminar: Nutrient and Energy Dynamics Along the Urban Watershed Continuum

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Urbanization is a major environmental concern at local, regional, and global scales. The continued expansion of urban development is particularly concerning given that urban populations are expected to increase for the foreseeable future. Therefore, understanding the impacts of urbanization on the environment is a necessity to protect and improve ecological dynamics and reduce downstream impacts. Increased nutrient and pollutant export from the landscape, driven largely by changes in inputs (e.g., fertilizers, fossil fuel use, synthetic chemicals) and hydrological dynamics (e.g., increased impervious surfaces and flashier hydrographs), is one of the primary environmental threats associated with urbanization. In the Urban Ecosystem Ecology Lab, we study how urbanization affects water quality across the entire watershed, including residential landscapes, stormwater systems, and downstream aquatic environments. This presentation will focus on nutrient and energy cycling within stormwater ponds and urban streams, and how human actions effect the fate and transport of nutrients. Understanding how human activities on the land affects what flows downstream is essential for us to be able to develop solutions to our water quality issues.

Dr. Alexander J. (“AJ”) Reisinger is an associate professor of urban water quality in the Department of Soil, Water, and Ecosystem Sciences at the University of Florida. He is an aquatic ecosystem ecologist and biogeochemist focused on how human activities on the landscape affect export of pollutants to aquatic ecosystems, and how these aquatic ecosystems respond to pollutants. In particular, AJ focuses on energy dynamics, nitrogen and phosphorus cycling, and the effects of emerging contaminants (e.g., pharmaceuticals, PFAS) ion aquatic ecosystem functioning. AJ received a BS in Environmental Sciences from the University of Notre Dame, an MS in Biology from Kansas State University, and a PhD in Biology from the University of Notre Dame. Following his PhD, AJ was a postdoc at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies where he studied the biogeochemical effects of urban stream restoration in Baltimore, Maryland. He has been at UF since August 2017, where his program focuses on biogeochemical dynamics of urban watersheds, including the effects of residential landscape management on nutrient leaching and runoff, nutrient cycling and algal dynamics of stormwater ponds, and nutrient and energy dynamics of urban streams.