Robert Stallard Email & Phone Number

Boulder, Co, Us

Boulder County, Colorado, United States

Research focused on the effects of land-use change on geomorphic and biogeochemical processes that control the chemistry of solid and dissolved phases in rivers, including interlinked, multidisciplinary studies of weathering, erosion, biogeochemical cycling, atmospheric-gas exchange, and land use.

Boulder County, Colorado, United States

Research focused on the effects of land-use change on geomorphic and biogeochemical processes that control the chemistry of solid and dissolved phases in rivers, including interlinked, multidisciplinary studies of weathering, erosion, biogeochemical cycling, atmospheric-gas exchange, and land use.My basic research program focuses on the use of natural and altered landscapes to understand the regional effects of land-cover change. Over the years, work has been split among several projects that involve research into near-earth-surface biogeochemical processes on Pleistocene to technological time scales. Since 1990, I have organized and have led two large, interlinked, multidisciplinary studies concerned with the land-use change. One project is part of the USGS Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budgets (WEBB) Project in eastern Puerto Rico and parallel work in central Panama funded by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI). The other project was the Inter-Divisional “Carbon Project” which ran from 1993 to 2004 as the “Mississippi Basin Carbon Project” (MBCP).

Chicago, Illinois, United States

For the last 20+ years I have used knowledge gained from studies of intensely studied watersheds to develop simple but reliable techniques to rapidly assessment of hydrologic and biogeochemical conditions in remote, pristine ecosystems. My focus has been tropical, and while the initial work was in Panama, since 2004, I have worked with the Science Action for Conservation & Community Program of the Chicago Field Museum, now the Amazon and Andes Program, to rapidly inventory and assess remote landscapes in western Amazon and Guyana. The purpose of these inventories is to promote conservation, and we apply rigorous biological, social, and now earth-science observations to understand landscapes and to present this knowledge so that it is accessible to non-scientists, including members of indigenous tribes, with whom we are working, local conservationists, and government policy makers. Each inventory is run as a multi-week field campaign to remote and minimally described regions that are of great conservation value and require characterization to be placed into a protected status.This work has been remarkably successful; in the ten inventories with which I have been directly involved, 35,128 km2 of rainforest has been protected, almost four times the area of Yellowstone National Park. Most recently, Yaguas National Park, Peru, created in January 2018, came out of this work; it alone is the size of Yellowstone National Park. Although I work as a volunteer, these campaigns have contributed powerfully to my research interests relating landscape to natural land cover. My last Inventory, completed just before COVID-19 ended such fieldwork, was Rapid Inventory 31 of the lower Putumayo, Yaguas, and Cotuhé Rivers in both Peru and Colombia. I am currently working on developing a study of the Rupununi Portal in Guyana

Panama City, Panama

The Agua Salud Project is a basic-science ecosystem-service project focused on the role of different types of reforestation as a means of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The results will have significant impact on management and conservation in steepland landscapes in the humid seasonal tropics. With proposals to plant of trees to sequester substantial anthropogenic carbon, there is a conflict between water availability and carbon sequestration. According to Jackson et al. (2005, Trading water for carbon with biological sequestration, Science, v. 310, p. 1944-1947), older forests reduce annual runoff by 150-600 mm compared to adjacent lands (for the Agua Salud forests, this is more than 500 mm). We have more than 10 years of data. The Agua Salud project is attracting research groups that are studying hydrology, carbon and nutrient cycling, biodiversity, microbial biology, and ecosystem-services studies. Our principal field site includes the Río Agua Salud watershed and the headwaters of several adjacent rivers in the central Isthmus of Panama, east of the Panama Canal. The region encompasses both protected mature forests and a wide variety of land uses that are typical of rural Panama. Reforestation experiments at the scale of entire catchments, ranging from 6 to 180 ha in area, permit complete water and carbon inventories and exchanges for different land uses. There are five experimental treatments: native-species plantation, monoculture teak plantation (supplemented with native species after 7 years), native secondary succession, silvo-pastoral, and deforestation. There are four different control catchments: mature forest, grazed pasture, tropical agricultural mosaic, and a catchment covered by a monoculture of invasive canal grass (Saccharum spontaneum). Controls serve to distinguish between effects of tree growth and interannual-climate variation.

Boulder, Colorado, United States

The University of Colorado, INSTAAR has provided me with a platform upon which I can include graduate students and undergraduates in my research projects at the U.S. Geological Survey and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Spread across these projects, I currently work in four broad themes: (A) continental-scale biogeochemistry, (B) nutrient-carbon-cycle research, (C) event-related hydrology and biogeochemistry, and (D) source-region controls on hydrology, biogeochemistry, and vegetation in tropical to glacial landscapes. My most active initiative, the Agua Salud Project (ASP) examines ecosystems services of forests as compared to other land used in the central Panama Canal Watershed, currently funded through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

Research involved low-temperature geochemistry, emphasizing relating geomorphic and biologic processes to the chemistry of solid and dissolved phases in rivers and soils. Principal investigator for seven funded projects. Major advisor for seven Ph.D. and seventeen B.A./B.S.E. students.

Post Doctoral Research, Clay Mineralogy

Clay Mineralogy of the Amazon River System

Doctor Of Philosophy - Phd, Geochemistry

Thesis: Major Element Geochemistry of the Amazon River System

Bachelor Of Science - Bs, Earth And Planetary Sciences

Emphasis in Planetary Physics and Chemistry