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Student Spotlight: Sarah Richmond
Student Spotlight Directory
“Post-fire Channel Response: Implications for Steelhead Habitat”
ERG Master's student, Sarah Richmond. |
The upper Carmel River, looking upstream from Los Padres Reservoir at the mixed severity burn (Sept. 2008). |
Sarah Richmond is a second-year Master’s student in the Energy and Resources Group (ERG). A lifelong surfer and avid backpacker, she was actively involved in the Surfrider Foundation and the Shoreline Preservation Fund while earning her B.S. in Geological Sciences at UC Santa Barbara. After traveling in Nicaragua and South America, she worked on open ocean aquaculture policy at a public interest law firm and later on hydrogeology for an environmental consulting company. Sarah came to ERG to pursue her passion for water resources management in California. She was drawn to this interdisciplinary program because it enabled her to learn more about the scientific, economic, and political aspects of water and related environmental problems.
Burnt trail obscured by dry ravel (Nov. 2008).
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Sarah at Carmel Camp (Dec. 2008) |
During her studies in ERG, Sarah fell in love with rivers. She is particularly interested in how rivers respond to episodic events such as fires, floods, and droughts, which may increase with climate change. Her Master’s project involves monitoring the upper Carmel River after the Basin Complex and Indians Fire, which burned almost the entire watershed in the summer of 2008. Wildfire typically increases runoff and erosion, transporting fine sediment, large boulders, and woody debris from hillslopes to the channel network. The upper Carmel River has high quality habitat for threatened steelhead and rainbow trout, and this runoff and erosion may have beneficial or adverse effects on their habitat. Sarah’s fieldwork will detail the post-fire channel response and help resource managers determine whether to pursue natural recovery or Burn Area Emergency Response measures.
Sarah has also worked at the Clearinghouse for Dam Removal Information, a project of the UC Water Resources Center Archives. She collaborates with dam removal researchers and practitioners all over the nation to collect and disseminate lessons learned from this increasingly common river restoration tool. Upon graduation, she hopes to continue to form partnerships and conduct geomorphic investigations to advance more sustainable management of California’s rivers.
Sarah is grateful for funding from an ERG Block Grant and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She also appreciates the countless interactions with ERG professors and peers who have enriched her academic journey at UC Berkeley.
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