Marcy Litvak
University of New Mexico, NM·Earth & Environmental Science
Forests and woodlands in New Mexico's watersheds store carbon and shape how much water reaches streams, reservoirs and communities. Thinning, fire, drought and other changes alter both.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
forest ecology
watershed management
hydrology
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2029
What they work on
- Measure how forest management, disturbance and climate change water flow, carbon storage and forest health in New Mexico watersheds, using high-resolution remote sensing and a network of ecological observation instruments.
- Combine process-based models, which simulate how water and carbon move, with machine learning models to track watershed structure and function across time and space.
- Use artificial intelligence to quantify the structure and function of New Mexico's 500 priority watersheds.
- Turn research results into practical watershed-planning strategies matched to community and state priorities, using the project's Guided Transformation framework.
More about the research
Yet little is known about how forest management and disturbance affect water supply, carbon storage and forest health across whole watersheds, which makes planning hard in a dry, warming Southwest.
Why it matters
The project aims to give New Mexico land managers, state forestry staff and rural communities practical, data-based strategies for managing forested watersheds, which could help protect water supplies and carbon storage in a dry region. The team expects the approach to serve as a model for forest, water and carbon management across the Southwestern U.S. and in dryland forests worldwide, while creating education and job opportunities in rural areas.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sharon Billings
University of Kansas, KS·Earth & Environmental Science
Determine when and how strongly bedrock, compared with plant roots, controls water and carbon movement between land and atmosphere, using new field data and existing Critical Zone, NEON and LTER datasets.
Christopher Gough
Virginia Commonwealth University, VA·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether trade-offs exist between different dimensions of carbon-cycling stability, such as resistance and recovery, across 0–85% defoliation levels in the FoRTE field experiment in Michigan.
Sarah States
Carnegie Mellon University, PA·Earth & Environmental Science
Develop a county-wide green infrastructure adoption and installation plan for Allegheny County that addresses stormwater runoff, water quality, urban heat, and carbon sequestration, convening stakeholders in hydrology, stormwater engineering, land management, community engagement, and education.
The school
University of New Mexico: 27 labs on PI Pages, $355M a year on research, 182 research doctorates a year.
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