Laurie is a Research Chemist at Geology, Minerals, Energy, and Geophysics Science Center. Since joining the USGS in 1986, her career is devoted to studying environmental geochemistry. She specializes in metal cycling in aquatic environments with a current focus on the toxicity of metal mixtures to aquatic life.
Laurie worked as a chemical oceanographer in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington early in her career, and did various coastal and open-ocean cruises. Her research at that time examined the adsorption of metals onto synthetic metal oxide phases and natural particles, and she helped with porewater work on organic matter diagenesis. When she joined the USGS, Laurie continued her adsorption research and got involved in field studies that examined the behavior of metals in terrestrial ecosystems. She studied carbon cycling in wetlands in Louisiana, metal cycling in numerous natural and pit lakes in the Northern United States, the composition of hydrothermal vents in Yellowstone Lake and their effect on lake chemistry, and the behavior of contaminants resulting from historical mining activities in numerous river basins in Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Montana, Washington, and Vermont.
Science and Products
Potential Toxicity of Multiple Metals Associated with PGE Deposits
Developing the next generation of USGS resource assessments
Science and Products
- Science
Potential Toxicity of Multiple Metals Associated with PGE Deposits
Water quality and aquatic life standards that are set by Federal and state regulatory agencies are used to evaluate the quality of our nation’s water and the health of aquatic ecosystems. These standards currently are based on hardness of the water and are determined for single metals, not for mixtures of metals that are typically found in natural systems. Metal mixtures can potentially be more or...Developing the next generation of USGS resource assessments
Resource assessments constitute a key part of the USGS mission, and represent a crucial contribution toward Department of the Interior (DOI) and broader Federal objectives. Current USGS energy and mineral assessment methods evaluate total technically recoverable resources (energy) or economically exploitable materials (minerals); the fiscal year 2010 budget for this work is $82M. To help stakehol - Publications
- Data
- Multimedia
*Disclaimer: Listing outside positions with professional scientific organizations on this Staff Profile are for informational purposes only and do not constitute an endorsement of those professional scientific organizations or their activities by the USGS, Department of the Interior, or U.S. Government