Dustin Kincaid Wins Prestigious Water Resources Research Editors' Choice Award

 

 
BREE postdoctoral associate Dustin, Kincaid, PhD received the 2020 Water Resources Research (WRR) Editors' Choice Award for his research article "Land Use and Season Influence Event-Scale Nitrate and Soluble Reactive Phosphorus Exports and Export Stoichiometry from Headwater Catchments." The article, which used research supported by BREE funding, includes numerous collaborators from Vermont EPSCoR, including postdoctoral associate Erin Seybold, PhD, Ecological Systems Team Co-Leaders Carol Adair, PhD and Andrew Schroth, PhD, BREE researchers Breck Bowden, PhD and Julia Perdrial, PhD, and Matthew Vaughan, PhD, a former RACC graduate research assistant who now serves as the Chief Scientist at the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
 
Dr. Andrew Schroth congratulated Dustin “for receiving a prestigious Editor's Choice Award for 2020 papers in Water Resources Research, one of the premier water research journals in the world! These are hard to come by, and a testament to Dustin's hard work and thoughtful research. Also one of many good examples of the high caliber of research that we have all been conducting under the BREE umbrella.”
 
Dr. Kincaid's research explores the large quantities of nitrogen and phosphorous transported into streams by storms and other high-flow precipitation events. These elements lead to the formation of algal blooms and degrade overall water quality. Examining stream sites at Hungerford Brook, Potash Brook, and Wade Brook—an agricultural brook, forested brook, and urban brook, respectively—Dr. Kincaid's research noted a seasonal influence on the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous released into the streams.
 
"Nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, that flow from our landscape to Lake Champlain can influence processes including cyanobacterial blooms in the lake," said Dr. Kincaid when discussing the publication. "My collaborators and I found that land use and time of year interact to influence the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus that flow off our landscape and into streams during snow melt and rain events. We also found that nitrogen and phosphorus move differently during runoff events. This means that managers looking to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus transport to the lake need to design reduction strategies specific to the nutrient, land use, and time of year."
 
Dr. Kincaid's article was one of only four 2020 publications to receive a WRR Editors' Choice Award. The announcement of the award was made at the American Geophysical Union Annual Meeting, which was held from December 13th to 17th, 2021.
 
Dr. Kincaid's publication is available through WRR open access here.