His research can help incentivize actions to prevent water quality degradation from wildfires.
Braxton Porter, a Civil Engineering graduate student and Sustainability Lab member, successfully defended his master's thesis on March 14.
Combining existing tools in new ways, Braxton developed a method to model sediment runoff from watersheds before and after wildfires. He demonstrated the method on the Provo River watershed, but the process can be repeated for any watershed and even other pollutants. The research can help incentivize actions to prevent water quality degradation from wildfires.
Braxton's graduate committee—Dr. Rob Sowby and Dr. Gus Williams from Civil and Construction Engineering and Dr. April Hulet from Plant and Wildlife Sciences—provided feedback on technical points which Braxton will improve before submitting a final thesis and eventual scientific journal paper. Braxton also collaborated with researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.