Robert F Stallard

Robert Stallard has been at the USGS since 1987 and is now a Scientist Emeritus in the Hydro-Eco Interactions Branch of the Earth Systems Processing Division of the Water Mission Area. He studies how land-cover and climate change affect water movement through soils, weathering, and erosion, and how these, in turn, affect the composition and dispersal of dissolved and solid phases in rivers and trace gases in the atmosphere. Areas of expertise include surface-water hydrology, major element and nutrient biogeochemistry, soil formation and sediment genesis, vegetation-landscape interaction, carbon-cycle characterization on land and in the ocean, and assessment of land-use and climate change. His work has included the study of natural and human-altered landscapes, in the Americas, Southeast Asia, and Africa, including large parts of the Amazon, Orinoco, Mississippi, and Panama Canal Basins and eastern Puerto Rico.

Most of his current efforts are committed to a multi-catchment investigations designed to distinguish the roles of vegetation, climate, and land-cover change and to put this in a hydrologic and biogeochemical framework as well as to examine ecosystem costs and services focusing on water, carbon, and biodiversity. Two projects currently consume most of his USGS time: (1) Work related to the Luquillo USGS Water, Energy, and Biogeochemical Budget (WEBB) Project in eastern Puerto Rico and parallel work in Panama, which has as a goal the comprehensive assessment of catchment hydrology and biogeochemistry in a hydrologically energetic landscapes. (2) The Agua Salud Project in the Central Panama Canal Basin examines the manifold effects of different styles of reforestation as compared to mature forested and deforested catchments. The project started in 2008 and involves 13 small watersheds with different land covers.

EDUCATION

• National Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship: 1981, At the U.S. Geological Survey - Office of Marine Geology, Woods Hole, MA. Clay mineralogy of the Amazon River system.
• Ph.D., Chemical Oceanography: 1980, Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography. Ph.D. thesis entitled "Major Element Geochemistry of the Amazon River System."
• B.S., Earth & Planetary Sciences: 1974, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Emphasis in Planetary Physics and Chemistry.