Lisa Davis
Associate Professor
University of Alabama
CURRENT PROJECTS
C.V.
Project |01
Project |01 Nutrient Retention in Rivers
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High nutrient concentrations, including nitrogen and phosporus, are the main cause of river impairment in the U.S., according to the EPA's 2013 National River Assessment. For the last year, I have been collaborating with Jennifer Edmonds and Behzad Mortvazi (UA Biological Sciences) and Sagy Cohen (UA Geography) to investigate ways that larger rivers, specifically the Cahaba River of AL, retain nitrogen through naturally occurring plant-microbrial interactions that occur in bedrock shoal habitat. This work is currently being funded by grants from the UA Freshwater Studies Center and the UA Office of the Vice President of Research.
Project |02
Project |02 Alluvial Benches
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Like bedrock shoals, alluvial benches are a form of channel compexity that provide ecosystem services. For several years I have been collaborating with Dan Royall (UNC-Greensboro) and my graduate students to study benches found in rivers located across the southern Piedmont of the USA. To date, we have attempted to use bench stratigraphy and hydrologic modeling to determine relationships between bench deposition and erosion, and these methods suggest that benches in the southern Piedmont are quite stable under the current drought-dominated climate regime and in most cases, represent the active, hydrologic floodplain. Portions of this research have been support by an NSF-RAPID grant awarded to Davis and Royall.
Project |03
Project |03 Tornado Impacts
On April 27, 2011, the city of Tuscaloosa was transected by an EF4 tornado, which also crossed a local stream, called Hurricane Creek (apparently this stream has an affinity for meteorlogical phenomena). Although tornadoes and hurricanes are far more commonly occurring in the Southeast than other natural disturbance mechanisms, such as forest fires, very little research exists about their impacts on rivers. This research is only in the planning phase, but in the near future, I plan to collect water temperature data and sediment samples to see if there are any differences between stream reaches located upstream of the tornado impact zone, downstream of the tornado impact zone, and within the tornado impact zone.