The Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) recently awarded a Pathfinder Graduate Student Fellowship to Ryan Gordon, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Earth Sciences in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences and native of Orono, Maine. The fellowship program enables students to broaden their research to an additional field site for comparative research, to collaborate with research groups using alternate approaches or modeling methods, or to add an interdisciplinary dimension to water science research.

Gordon works with Laura Lautz, assistant professor of Earth Sciences. Lautz is a hydrologist who is among a small group of researchers nationwide who uses heat to trace water movement between subsurface groundwater and streams. Gordon uses the technology to investigate how patterns of water flow in restored streambeds are affected by cross vanes. Gordon expects to complete a Ph.D. at SU in 2014. Gordon received a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in 2010.

Established in 2001, CUAHSI enables the water science community to advance understanding of the central role of water to life, Earth, and society. CUAHSI focuses on water from bedrock to atmosphere, and from summit to sea.