From dams to sea grass beds, and how mud quality affects the Chesapeake Bay...

Our speaker, Emily Russ, will give a historical overview of sediment delivery from the Susquehanna River, and the impact of the Conowingo Dam upon the Susquehanna River and Chesapeake Bay. She addresses the current state of knowledge around the Dam, and what her lab group is doing to better understand how the infilling of the Conowingo Dam will impact the Bay. The sea grass beds on the Susquehanna Flats will be discussed - its history, and how it impacts sediment input to the Bay.

About our Speaker: Emily Russ is originally from western North Carolina, which is where she developed a love of nature and the outdoors through hiking in the beautiful Linville Gorge. She attended North Carolina State University, where she initially majored in Meteorology, as a result of a fascination with weather. However, after her freshman year, she decided that she preferred to study the impact of weather rather than the mathematics of it. So, in 2011, she received a BS in Marine and Coastal Resources. She continued on to obtain a Master's in Coastal Geology at NCSU, where she developed maps that showed how hurricanes impacted the shoreline of the NC Outer Banks. In the fall of 2014, Emily left for Horn Point Laboratory (in Cambridge, MD), a research lab at the University of Maryland's Center for Environmental Science, where she studied all things mud!