Galen Gorski


PhD Candidate

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences

galen.gorski[at]ucsc[dot]edu

Research interests: water quality and quantity in natural and managed landscapes

Curriculum Vitae        Website 

Biography

I grew up in Spokane, Washington, and got my undergraduate degree in chemistry at Carleton College in Minnesota. I worked as a lab technician at the University of Utah and the University of Minnesota before coming to UC Santa Cruz to pursue a Ph.D. I am always excited to connect or collaborate so please visit my website and/or get in touch if you’re interested to learn more!

In January 2021, I will begin as a post-doc in the Environmental Systems Dynamics Laboratory of Laurel Larsen at UC Berkeley where I will work on a data synthesis project modeling watershed storage characteristics using a recently compiled dataset of long-term streamflow and solute fluxes.

Research

I am a quantitative hydrologist interested in issues related to water quantity and quality in natural and managed landscapes. I am principally advised by Andrew Fisher and co-advised by Adina Paytan. My research combines laboratory, field, and modeling methods to understand key linkages between hydrology and biogeochemical cycling. Broadly, my research is aimed at addressing the following questions: 

1) What are the physical, geochemical, and biological factors that control water quality in freshwater systems? 

2) When, where, and how are materials transferred between groundwater and surface water systems? 

3) What can data synthesis tell us about how the answers to these questions vary across climate, land use, and lithologic gradients?