Joanna Blaszczak

I am interested in the transport and transformation of nutrients and contaminants through watersheds and the streams that drain them. I use a combination of field, laboratory, and modeling approaches to test ecological theory and controls on water quality in human-dominated landscapes.

A central goal of my research is to improve understanding of how increasing hydroclimatic variability and land use change in the Anthropocene will alter the capacity of watersheds and freshwater ecosystems to retain, transform, and alter novel chemical mixtures. In previous research, I investigated the effects of multiple stressors in urban watersheds (e.g. contamination, excess nutrients, increased extremes in hydrologic flow regimes) as fundamental drivers of stream ecosystem function.

Questions that guide my current and future work include:

1. What is the role of novel chemical regimes (i.e. ‘chemical cocktails’) in shaping the response of freshwater ecosystems to land use change?
2. How do changes in watershed land use and hydrologic connectivity alter the chemical regimes of freshwater ecosystems?
3. What processes determine the magnitude and timing of freshwater ecosystem energetics and how are ecosystem energetics changing in the Anthropocene?