Mariel W. Jones

Hello! Welcome to my ever-evolving website. I am currently a PhD Candidate in Hydrology at the University of Minnesota. I focus on using cool new mathematical and modeling tools to understand better the ways that ecosystems are responding to climate change. Right now I’m focused on bogs and forested watersheds but I am interested in all sorts of plants, animals, and environments. If you are interested in learning more about some of my ongoing projects hop on over to the ‘projects’ tab in the navigation bar.

On the other end, I spend a lot of time thinking about how as scientists we can better communicate our work to curious audiences. The truth is that a lot of us are just kind of weirdos who love cool stuff and we want to share that with you! As an artist, I am particularly interested in how we can use comics and illustrations to communicate complex concepts. Often this also helps us better understand what we are doing as scientists. Some of my current art projects can be found on the ‘portfolio’ page.

Finally, two disclaimers: (1) my views are my own and nothing on this page necessarily reflects the missions of the various organizations I have been a part of and (2) this space is in flux! I am constantly working to make it better and you can look forward to more content in the future.

Happy learning, Mariel

In the meantime here’s a fun data viz snapshot of my CV:

selected publications

2023

Soil frost controls streamflow generation processes in headwater catchments

Mariel W. Jones, Stephen D. Sebestyen, Salli F. Dymond, and 2 more authors

Journal of Hydrology, 2023

Abs PDF

The relationship between snowmelt and spring streamflow is changing under warming temperatures and diminishing snowpack. At the same time, the hydrologic connectivity across catchment landscape elements, such as snowpack and surface wetlands, can play a critical role in controlling the routing of snowmelt to streams. The role of hydrologic connectivity is important in headwater regions of the continental northern latitudes, where catchments have low topographic relief and seasonally frozen ground. Nevertheless, the effects of soil frost on the sequence, timing, and magnitudes of hydrologic events that drive the movement of water from a snowpack to a stream are not fully understood. Therefore, we examine two questions: First, what is the flowpath that snow melt and precipitation from spring rain events takes to generate spring streamflow, and second, what hydrologic, climatic, or landscape variables exert the most control on the magnitude of streamflow? Here, we use long-term hydrological records from the two reference basins at the Marcell Experimental Forest in northern Minnesota to analyze the cascading effects across precipitation, snow, water table elevation, soil frost, and streamflow in peatland-dominated headwater catchments. We identify a sequence of fill-and-spill effects across the landscape that control the timing of spring streamflow generation. Then, we use stepwise regression to show that soil frost is a key supporting predictor for both the magnitude of streamflow in the spring as it adds significantly to the predictive power of precipitation and water table elevation. Our results highlight the importance of recognizing the role of soil frost, when present, on the partitioning of snowmelt between overland runoff and water table recharge during the critical snowmelt period, as well as the later partitioning between evapotranspiration and subsurface flows.