Katrina Moser
Associate Professor and Graduate Chair
Research Interests
My research is on water quality and quantity issues, and specifically how humans are impacting these important resources. Key questions that I am interested in are:
- how will future climate warming impact water resources?;
- how has anthropogenic pollution affected “pristine” alpine and arctic lakes?
- can climate and pollution synergistically impact water resources?
In order to look at these questions I use paleolimnological techniques, which provide me with long term (100s to 1000s of years) records of changes in water quality and quantity. Paleolimnology uses fossils and geochemical signals preserved in lake and river sediments (mud) to infer environmental change. Presently, I have four main research projects ongoing:
- determining long term records of drought in the western United States using alpine lake sediments;
- determining environmental change for the last 10,000 years from sediments from lakes and small ponds on Victoria Island in the Canadian Arctic;
- determining long term records of environmental change in the Canadian Rockies, and
- looking at changes in water quality and quantity in southwestern Ontario.
Publications (past 7 years)
Refereed Journals
Tingstaad, A., Moser, K.A., MacDonald, G.M. and Munroe, J.S. (submitted) 'A ~13,000-year paleoenvironmental record from the Uinta Mountains, Utah inferred from diatoms and loss-on-ignition analysis' Quaternary International
Reynolds, R.R., Mordecai, J.S., Rosenbaum, J.G., Ketterer, M.E., Walsh, M.K. and Moser, K.A. (in press) 'Compositional changes in sediments of subalpine lakes, Uinta Mountains (Utah): Evidence for the effects of human activity on atmospheric dust inputs' Journal of Paleolimnology
Moser, K.A., Mordecai, J.S., Reynolds, R.R. and Rosenbaum, J.G. (in press) 'Diatom changes in two Uinta Mountain Lakes, Utah, USA: Responses to anthropogenic and natural atmospheric inputs' Hydrobiologia
Sack, D., Patrickson, S.J., Brunelle, A.R. and Moser, K.A. (in press) 'Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene paleoclimate insights from Bonneville paleolake dynamics, Stansbury Island, Utah' Quaternary Research
Westover, K., Moser, K.A., Porinchu, D.F. and MacDonald, G.M. 2009 'Physical and chemical limnology of a 61-lake transect across mainland Nunavut and southeastern Victoria Island, Central Canadian Arctic' Fundamental and Applied Limnology 175: 93-112
Porinchu, D.F., Rolland, N. and Moser, K.A. 2009 'Development of a Chironomid-based Air Temperature Inference Model for the Central Canadian Arctic: Incorporating High Resolution Gridded Climate Data' Journal of Paleolimnology 41(2): 349-368
Kaufman, D.S., Bright, J., Dean, W.E., Moser, K.A., Rosenbaum, J.R., Anderson, R.S., Colman, S.M., Heil, C.W., Jiménez-Moreno, G. Reheis, M. and Simmons, K.R. 2009 'A Quarter-million years of paleoenvironmental change at Bear Lake, Utah/Idaho' in Paleoenvironments of Bear Lake, Utah and Idaho, and its catchment ed Rosenbaum, J.G. and Kaufman, D.S. Geological Society of America Special Paper 450: 311-331
Moser, K.A. and Kimball, J.P. 2009 'A 25,000 Year Record of hydrologic and climatic change inferred from diatoms from Bear Lake, Utah/Idaho, USA' in Paleoenvironments of Bear Lake, Utah and Idaho, and its catchment ed Rosenbaum, J.G. and Kaufman, D.S. Geological Society of America Special Paper 450: 229-246
MacDonald, G.M., Moser, K.A., Bloom, A.M., Porinchu, D.F., Potito, A., Wolfe, B.B., Edwards, T.W.D., Petel, A., Orme, A.R. and Orme, A. 2008 'Evidence of temperature depression and hydrological variations in the eastern Sierra Nevada during the Younger Dryas stade' Quaternary Research 70: 131-140
Munroe, J.S., Laabs, B.J.C., Moser, K.A. and Gurrieri, J.T. 2007 'UINTAS 2006: The Uinta Interdisciplinary Assessment Symposium, Snowbird, Utah, May 2006, Introduction' Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 39: 517-520
Porinchu, D.F., Moser, K.A. and Munroe, J.S. 2007 'Development of a Midge-based Summer Surface Water Temperature Inference Model for the Great Basin of the Western United States' Arctic, Antarctic and Alpine Research 39: 566-577
Potito, A.P., Porinchu, D.F., MacDonald, G.M. and Moser, K.A. 2006 'A late Quaternary chironomid-inferred temperature record from the Sierra Nevada, California: connections to northeast Pacific sea surface temperatures' Quaternary Research 66(2): 356-363
Chan, M., Moser, K.A., Davis, J.M., Southam, G. Hughes, K. and Graham, T. 2005 'Desert potholes: ephemeral aquatic microsystems' Aquatic Geochemistry 11: 279-302
Books
Moser, K.A., Smol, J.P and MacDonald, G.M. 2004 'Ecology and Distribution of Diatoms from Boreal Forest Lakes in Wood Buffalo National Park, Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories, Canada' Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia 59
Supervised Graduate Students and Theses Titles
| PhD Students | Year | Title |
|---|---|---|
| J. Davis | Current | Ephemeral desert pools, Moab University of Utah |
| E. Hundey | Current | Sources of nutrient pollution in high alpine lakes (Uinta Mountains) |
| G. Atwood | 2006 | Great Salt Lake Superelevated Shorelines Associated with 1986/86 Floods University of Utah |
| A. Bloom | 2006 | High resolution analysis of climate change in California University of Utah |
| MSc Students | Year | Title |
| K. Hollingshead | Current | TBA |
| S. Ngai | Current | TBA |
| O. Squire | Current | TBA |
| K. Alexander | 2011 | A Paleolimnological Investigation of the Impacts of Recent Human Activity and Temperature Change on Two Small Lakes in Southern Ontario |
| A. Bair | 2008 | Translating Seasonal Climate Forecasts from Large Climate Divisions to Local Stations University of Utah |
| J. Hartman | 2006 | Environmental Change in the Uinta Mountains University of Utah |
| J. Siderius | 2004 | Treeline dynamics in the Uinta Mountains University of Utah |
| A. Bloom | 2001 | Inferring Drought in California University of Utah |
| M. Walsh | 2001 | Fire frequency in the Uinta Mountains University of Utah |
| P. Kimball | 2001 | Climate change inferred from Bear Lake sediments University of Utah |
Also from this web page:
- Office: SSC 2407
- Telephone: 661-2111 x80115
- e-mail: kmoser@uwo.ca
Courses Taught
