Lab values
In the Water Resources Ecohydrology Lab, we work by a set of shared values, including:
Diversity
From who we are to the work we do, a diverse group will be required to create a sustainable water future. We welcome people from all backgrounds and with a variety of expertise, from physical hydrology to ecology to policy analysis to economics, to better understand how watersheds function and inform their management.
Collaboration
Watersheds and water resource systems are complex systems that involve interactions between physical, chemical, ecological, and human processes. We collaborate with colleagues to understand both individual system components and their joint behavior; we often use computational simulators as a platform for such collaboration.
Impact
Our work seeks to develop a more sustainable water supply that benefits both people and nature. Our work ranges from basic science seeking to understand watershed function to applications targeting landscape management, but the work is always in service of that desired future.
P. James Dennedy-Frank
P. James Dennedy-Frank leads the Water Resources Ecohydrology Lab (WRElab). James is an Assistant Professor in the Departments of Marine & Environmental Sciences and Civil & Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University. James completed his Ph.D. at Stanford University and worked as a postdoctoral scholar at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. James also has a B.S. and M.S. in planetary science and industry experience at Flexible Liner Underground Technologies (FLUTe), a company that makes groundwater sampling systems.
James has strong interests in how we can best manage watersheds for the good of both people and nature. To accomplish this, James seeks to understand how watersheds function as systems and particularly how ecohydrological systems interact to change the flow of water through watersheds and to plants. He believes that computational simulation serves as a great platform for collaborative work to understand watershed function, and so uses watershed simulators across a variety of complexity levels in his work to interact with colleagues and stakeholders.
UNDERGRAD
Alexander Tansey
Alexander Tansey is a fourth year at Northeastern University, where he is majoring in Environmental and Sustainability Science with a concentration in Environment and Society and a minor in Psychology. He is considering a career in environmental law.
In the WRElab, Alex is investigating the connections between tree water sources and both soil water availability and atmospheric conditions at the East River Watershed in Colorado. To do so, he is using recent high-frequency observations of sap flux, soil moisture, and stable isotope ratios that provide a novel look at these connections. He is analyzing this data using sophisticated regression and machine learning approaches.