MJSMALLmainpage

Contents

Master's Thesis

UNC Stream Team January Retreat

Hydro-ecological Modeling

Undergraduate Research

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Melanie J. Small
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Department of Geography

CB # 3220
Chapel Hill, NC 27599
email: mjsmall@email.unc.edu
Adviser: Martin Doyle

Links

UNC Dept. of Geography

RHESSys Home Page

Doyle's UNC Stream Team

Martin Doyle's Page

Publications

My Research Interests:
Keywords: Organic matter transport, temporary storage, debris dams, and floodplain-channel connections.

At the 2005 River Retreat, Martin Doyle's Stream Team and Emily Bernhardt's group from Duke joined forces in an intercollegiate stream eco-geomorphological stream blitz. Some of us experimented with constructing our own debris dam. We wanted some preliminary information on how CPOM and coarse woody debris move in a low gradient black water stream, and how the dams act to store CPOM, and our new term, VCPOM. VCPOM is Very Coarse Particulate Organic Matter and includes debris ranging from large twigs to leaf fragments.

Indian River, Adirondacks Park Preserve, New York

I am currently working on a proposal for a Master's thesis. My research is located in tributaries to the Hudson River in the Adirondacks Park Preserve, New York. There, I will be studying the storage and re-mobilization of CPOM as it varies in time and along a channel network.

Publications:

Small, M. J., C. J. Small and G. D. Dreyer. 2005. Changes in a hemlock-dominated forest following woolly adelgid infestation in southern New England. Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 132(3): 458-470.

Small, M. J. , L. Band, T. Hwang. 2005. Using RHESSys eco-hydrological model to examine the affect of riparian buffer zone width and placement on nitrogen loading. Poster to be presented at the Mid-Atlantic ESA Conference.

Small, M. J. 2003. Vegetation response to hemlock decline, Honors Thesis for Department of Botany, Connecticut College, New London, CT.

Ecological modeling using RHESSys with the Hydro-ecology research group, led by Larry Band.

RHESSys is a hydro-ecological, GIS-based program that models water, nutrient, and carbon fluxes across a landscape. I used the program to examine the question: what is the effect of riparian buffer width on nitrogen loading to a stream in a deforested watershed with agricultural land use? A first look at the results shows that buffers 5 m wide or less on streams derived from a 0.5 ha threshold, are insignificant in denitrification, N uptake or storage. Riparian areas around the headwaters of a stream appear to be particularly important areas of denitrification and N retention. The model is not yet able to deal with phosphorus or sediment load, but eventually using a model like RHESSys to individually analyze factors contributing to poor water quality could be useful.

I did my undergraduate work at Connecticut College, New London, Ct. There, I double majored in Botany and Environmental Studies and got my environmental studies certificate through the Goodwin-Niering Center for Conservation Biology and Environmental Studies. This is a great center that prepares its students to conduct original research and confidently present their findings in professional settings. For my honors thesis, I worked with Christine Small and Glenn Dreyer to study succession in a mixed hemlock-hardwood forest that was losing its hemlocks to the hemlock woolly adelgid. 50 years of long-term ecological data in the Connecticut College Arboretum allowed me to compare recovery following the 1938 hurricane to recovery following the woolly adelgid infestation. In both cases, the majority of the hemlocks in the Arboretum died. Following the 1938 hurricane, young hemlocks crowded the understory. During the decline of the hemlock, areas with different physical characteristics such as those on a ledge and in a ravine became compositionally more distinct. Ledge sites became dominated by American beech and black oaks. Ravine sites became dominated by sassafras, black cherry and red maple.