Kathi Jo Jankowski
Biography
Kathi Jo Jankowski is the Principal Investigator for the Water Quality Component of the Upper Mississippi River Restoration Program's Long-term Resource Monitoring Element. She coordinates water quality monitoring and research on the Upper Mississippi in coordination with several federal and state agencies. Her research aims to understand how land use and climate change impact ecosystem processes in large rivers. She is specifically interested in nutrient and carbon cycling, ecosystem metabolism and food web ecology and has worked in freshwater systems from the boreal zone to the tropics.
Science and Products
The ecology of river ice
Many of the world's rivers are ice-covered during winter months but increasing evidence indicates that the extent of river ice will shift substantially as winters warm. However, our knowledge of rivers during winter lags far behind that of the growing season, limiting our understanding of how ice loss will affect rivers. Physical, chemical, and...
Thellman, Audrey; Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Hayden, Brian; Yang, Xiao; Dolan, Wayana; Smits, Adrianne P; O'Sullivan, Antoin M Warmer winters increase the biomass of phytoplankton in a large floodplain river
Winters are changing rapidly across the globe but the implications for aquatic productivity and food webs are not well understood. In addition, the degree to which winter dynamics in aquatic systems respond to large-scale climate versus ecosystem-level factors is unclear but important for understanding and managing potential changes. We used a...
Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Houser, Jeffrey N.; Schuerell, Mark D.; Smits, Adrianne P Land use change influences ecosystem function in headwater streams of the Lowland Amazon Basin
Intensive agriculture alters headwater streams, but our understanding of its effects is limited in tropical regions where rates of agricultural expansion and intensification are currently greatest. Riparian forest protections are an important conservation tool, but whether they provide adequate protection of stream function in these areas of rapid...
Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Deegan, Linda A.; Neill, Christopher; Sullivan, HIllary L.; Ilha, Paulo; Maracahipes-Santos, Leonardo; Marques, Nubia C.S.; Macedo, Marcia N. Riparian forests buffer the negative effects of cropland on macroinvertebrate diversity in lowland Amazonian streams
Riparian forests regulate stream ecosystems and biodiversity. Therefore, changes to riparian structure may threaten stream ecosystem function by triggering taxonomic and functional changes to aquatic communities. Because macroinvertebrate assemblages are sensitive to environmental changes, they can be effective indicators of stream integrity in...
Marques, Nubia C.S.; Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Macedo, Marcia N.; Juen, Leandro; Luiza-Andrade, Ana; Deegan, Linda A. Aquatic ecosystem metabolism as a tool in environmental management
Recent advances in high-frequency environmental sensing and statistical approaches have greatly expanded the breadth of knowledge regarding aquatic ecosystem metabolism - the measurement and interpretation of gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (ER). Aquatic scientists are poised to take advantage of widely available...
Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Mejia, Francine H.; Blaszczak, Joanna; Holtgrieve, Gordon W. Using Markov chains to quantitatively assess movement patterns of invasive fishes impacted by a carbon dioxide barrier in outdoor ponds
Natural resource managers use barriers to deter the movement of aquatic invasive species. Research and development of new invasive species barriers is often evaluated in pond and field scales using high‐resolution telemetry data. Telemetry data sets can be a rich source of data about fish movement and behavior but can be difficult to analyze due...
Borland, Lauren K; Mulcahy, Collin J; Bennie, Barb; Baumann, Douglas D; Haro, Roger J.; Van Appledorn, Molly; Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Cupp, Aaron R.; Erickson, Richard A. Integrating perspectives to understand lake ice dynamics in a changing world
Ice cover plays a critical role in physical, biogeochemical, and ecological processes in lakes. Despite its importance, winter limnology remains relatively understudied. Here, we provide a primer on the predominant drivers of freshwater lake ice cover and the current methodologies used to study lake ice, including in situ and remote sensing...
Sharma, Sapna; Meyer, Michael F.; Culpepper, Joshua; Yang, Xiao; Hampton, Stephanie; Berger, Stella A.; Brousil, Matthew R.; Fradkin, Steven C.; Higgins, Scott N.; Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Kirillin, Georgiy; Smits, Adrianne P; Whitaker, Emily C.; Yousef, Foad; Zhang, Shuai Mapping the thermal landscape of the Upper Mississippi River
Temperature has a fundamental influence on physical, chemical and biological processing in aquatic ecosystems. River temperatures respond to a diverse array of drivers including air temperature, streamflow, and thermal inputs, but the physical template has been shown to play a significant role in structuring spatial and temporal variation in water...
Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Robinson, Larry R.; Kalas, John; Carhart, Alicia; Lubinski, Brian R.; Ruhser, Janis Watershed geomorphology modifies the sensitivity of aquatic ecosystem metabolism to temperature
How carbon cycles are regulated by environmental temperature remains a substantial uncertainty in our understanding of how watersheds will respond to ongoing climate change. Aquatic ecosystems are important components of carbon flux to the atmosphere and ocean, yet we have limited understanding of how temperature modifies ecosystem metabolic...
Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Schindler, Daniel E. Exploring silica stoichiometry on a large floodplain riverscape
Freshwater ecosystems are critical zones of nutrient and carbon (C) processing along the land-sea continuum. Relative to our understanding of C, nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) cycling within the freshwater systems, the controls on silicon (Si) cycling and export are less understood. Understanding Si biogeochemistry and its coupled biogeochemical...
Carey, Joanna C.; Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Julian, Paul; Sethna, Lienne; Thomas, Patrick; Rohweder, Jason J. Identifying the molecular signatures of agricultural expansion in Amazonian headwater streams
Agricultural impacts on aquatic ecosystems are well-studied, however, most research has focused on temperate regions, whereas the forefront of agricultural expansion is currently in the tropics. At the vanguard of this growth is the boundary between the Amazon and Cerrado biomes in Brazil, driven primarily by expansion of soybean and corn...
Spencer, Robert G.M.; Kellerman, Anne M.; Podgorski, David C.; Macedo, Marcia N.; Jankowski, Kathi Jo; Nunes, Darlisson; Neill, Christopher
Indicators of ecosystem structure and function for the Upper Mississippi River System
This report documents the development of quantitative measures (indicators) of ecosystem structure and function for use in a Habitat Needs Assessment (HNA) for the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS). HNAs are led periodically by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Upper Mississippi River Restoration (UMRR) Program, which is the primary habitat...
De Jager, Nathan R.; Rogala, James T.; Rohweder, Jason J.; Van Appledorn, Molly; Bouska, Kristen L.; Houser, Jeffrey N.; Jankowski, Kathi Jo