Email: sara.rathburn@colostate.edu
Previous Education: Colorado State University (B.S. Earth Resources, 1985), University of Arizona (MS Geosciences, 1989), Colorado State University (PhD Earth Resources, 2001)
About Sara: Originally from Boulder, I found Fort Collins as an undergraduate geology student and am fortunate to be back working at CSU. I thoroughly enjoy backcountry skiing, hiking into various water bodies with my family, gardening, cooking, and eating!
Research: My research emphasis is on watershed response to sediment disturbances. Working in a bedrock river in the Front Range of CO, I used various flow and sediment transport models to predict recovery from a reservoir sediment release that filled pools that are important habitat for fish. From there, I moved to the Upper Colorado River where I have had four students work on various aspects of a sediment release from a breach in an irrigation ditch that triggered a debris flow, including monitoring the effectiveness of a channel restoration implemented by park staff. In response to the High Park Fire in 2012, another student assessed controls on channel morphology and sediment delivery from one mulched and one control basin. I am working with colleagues on Italian Alps rivers to investigate channel response to an increasing sediment supply under a changing climate. I expanded my spatial focus to work on big rivers (lower Yellowstone, Powder River) with a PhD student using cottonwood tree rings to reconstruct discharge, floodplain dynamics, and climate history, and with another PhD student to research the geologic and climate controls (permafrost degradation) on mass movements in Denali. Another MS student addressed the ongoing impacts of the September 2013 flood sedimentation and channel development along North St. Vrain Creek. With my current PhD students, I am working with colleagues from the USGS to understand the timing of arroyo incision and cottonwood floodplain forest establishment, and the effects of invasive vegetation removal on channel morphologic change in the Colorado River Basin. In addition, my MS student (co-advised with Dan McGrath) is investigating valley bottom alluvial dynamics at CSU's Mountain Camus. All interesting stuff!
Publications: See my vitae
Recently Funded Proposals
1) USGS EDMAP, Geologic mapping of a portion of the Pingree Park Quadrangle, Colorado: Valley evolution of the South Fork Cache la Poudre River at Colorado State University's Mountain Campus
2) NPS and US Geological Survey, Channel change and floodplain forest establishment within the Yampa River Basin
3) Denali National Park and Preserve, Mass movement response to climate change, Denali National Park, AK
4) City of Longmont: Post-flood sediment and wood flux into Ralph Price Reservoir, North St. Vrain Creek, CO
5) National Park Service, Rocky Mountain National Park: Wood loading and jam characteristics following disturbances on the Upper Colorado River
6) National Park Service, Rocky Mountain National Park: Electrical resistivity imaging for Phase I effectiveness monitoring, Upper Colorado River
7) NSF CNIC: US-Italy Research Project Development on Alpine Mountain Drainage Basin Response to Climatic Warming (Rathburn PI, with Francesco Comiti, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano and Franceso Brardinoni, University of Bologna)
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