Are you interested in river corridors, watersheds, biogeochemistry, or open science? Are you an educator looking for opportunities for your students to engage in active research studies? Are you looking for researchers who can engage with your students? Are you a student interested in these topics?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, please consider collaborating with us. We are research scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. We lead a scientific research consortium focused on river corridors that works with a broad range of stakeholders to co-design and implement field-based sampling campaigns. Information on the consortium is here: https://whondrs.pnnl.gov/. We’re looking for collaborators who might be interested in river sampling at one or more sites near their institutions for the current WHONDRS “ICON-ModEx” study. This is an open science effort that can provide numerous collaborative, scientific, and educational opportunities to students from high school to graduate levels, educators, researchers/faculty, and other stakeholders.
Some ways you might gain value from engaging with this effort:
- Guide and enhance educational opportunities for you, your teams/students, and other scientists.
- Help advance river corridor science through development of transferable knowledge and predictive models.
- Generate data (for free) from your field site to support your publications and proposals.
- Open new collaborative and networking opportunities for you and your students.
About ICON-ModEx
We are motivated by the observation that riverbed sediments contribute anywhere from 4 to 96% of stream respiration, yet there are no models that account for this variability. In turn, we aim to understand riverbed sediment biogeochemistry through iteration between artificial intelligence models and crowdsourced samples. For more information on the project, please visit https://www.pnnl.gov/projects/WHONDRS/icon-modex.
Sampling Details
We will begin with engaging with you about potential study sites and simple data (i.e., temperature, dissolved oxygen) that you and/or students can collect. If the site is chosen by the artificial intelligence model, we will discuss if you are interested in collecting samples. Sampling is focused on small amounts of river sediment and water. We supply the sampling materials for free, pay for shipping in both directions, and make the data publicly available. Here is a video of the sampling protocol: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fHKCeVCOWc. The sampling and data types have been designed/selected based on community feedback, and the field time required is about one hour for a two person team. We will work with you to find a location in the United States and timing that works for you.
Classroom Engagement
If you are interested in having a guest presentation or other type of engagement with your classroom, we would love to discuss what we can do that you would find the most valuable.
If you or any of your colleagues across the United States are interested in getting involved with this opportunity, please let us know and we can talk about next steps. If you have bachelors, masters, or doctoral students that are looking for job opportunities, we also have several postings open that close February 16 (https://tinyurl.com/2023-DMjob).
Please reach out with any questions via email to WHONDRS@pnnl.gov, connect via Twitter @WHONDRS, and consider sending this along to interested colleagues.
We look forward to collaborating with you,
Brieanne Forbes, Amy Goldman, and James Stegen
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory