The calendar turns to August and we take a breath to reflect on a busy spring and summer! The heat and gnats have been ever present, the flows have been dropping, and the Jones Center never sleeps! Here’s what we’ve been up to the first part of the summer and what’s planned for the rest of the year!
New faces and New roles
We had a similar section in last update, but changes are still happening in the lab. We’ve stayed busy with new faces joining, familiar faces moving on, and visitors joining the effort.
- Dustin Benton and Jewell Johnson, members of the 2024-2025 RaMP cohort, have re-joined the lab as seasonal technicians and jumped right back in to lab tasks and taken on new side projects to build on their RaMP efforts.
- Scott Messick joined for the summer, taking a break from his undergraduate studies at the Odum School at UGA. Scott is a fascinated by aquatic insects and has been digging into data collected by NEON at the Jones Center.
- Chloe Hall has moved on to a new position, ending her ~13 months in the lab. Fortunately, she will back soon, as she begins a co-advised PhD program with the lab and Dr. Amanda DelVecchia at UNC-Chapel Hill and use sites at the Jones Center for her field research.
- Tayton Alvis will also join the lab as a PhD student, co-advised with Carla Atkinson at the University of Alabama. Tayton also comes from UNC-Chapel Hill and has spent the summer working for the state of NC and their aquatics survey team.
- Finally, we’ve been lucky to host Anh Quach and Jadon Wellum, also from UNC-Chapel Hill (a theme is developing here…). Anh is a PhD student advised by Dr. Amanda DelVecchia and has been looking for Corbicula in our Coastal Plain streams to measure their role in emitting methane.
Fishes of the Flint River goes live!
We finished production of the Fishes of the Flint River poster. We parterned with the Flint Riverkeeper and Flint River Outfitters in Bainbridge as local pickup spots for the public to get these posters. They went like hotcakes! We also partnered with GA DNR to have these posters displayed at boat launches across the Lower Flint! If you see these in the wild, let us know!
Big thanks to our Education and Outreach staff for helping bring this to life!
New toys for new data
As we try to stay on top with new technology and new ways to measure the world around us, we’ve upgraded and added to our measurement arrays
- The stream monitoring stations with Hobo DO loggers have been upgraded to YSI EXOs. The multiprobe sondes expand our data collection at two of our focal sites
- To these sites and a subset of our wetland sites, we’ve added light sensors to supplement our estimates of aquatic primary productivity. With light data, we can estimate light use efficiency and light attenuation in the water column!
Sharing our work
We’ve stayed active in sharing our work with the public, stakeholders, and our peers.
- Jamie, Chloe, Jewell, and Caitlin Sweeney (Mussel Conservation lab) attended the Society for Freshwater Science meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico to give talks and posters
- We participated with the Georgia Youth Science and Technology Centers (GYSTC) Environmental Education Research Academy (EERA) to teach the teachers about the wetlands of South Georgia. We identified macroinvertebrates, discussed soil properties, amphibians, and water resources of isolated wetlands common across the region
- Jamie and Dustin participated at the 4H2O event at the Newton boat ramp on the Flint River. They presented the Fishes poster and helped show students the identifying characteristics and fishing regulations of native black basses in the lower Flint River.
Plans for Fall 2025
We keep on trucking and the fall will be busy as usual
- The 2025-2026 cohort of RaMP fellows will start at the Center in late August, including a fellow joining our lab
- Planned collaborator visitors to the Center
- Research team from the Georgia Aquarium
- IGEL
- Nitrogen cycling in Ichawaynochaway Creek at low flow conditions, in collaboration with Ryan Meyer and Jen Tank (Notre Dame)
- Wetland sediment carbon stocks and age dating with Matt Waters
- Cross-Jones Center lab collaborations:
- Herpetology: assessing wetlands for vegetation state and prioritize for prescribed fires in the spring
- Entomology: aquatic insect communities across habitats in the Flint River and its tributaries
- Landscape Ecology: dendrochronology of Cypress trees on dredge spoil islands in the Flint River
- Wildlife: use of isolated wetlands by Northern bobwhite quail
- Ecohydrology: isolated wetland hydrology and hydroperiod
Follow along with us on our social media