St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL) is impossible to miss. It sits just below the falls along Minneapolis’ popular riverfront area. The hydraulic research facility, completed in 1938, continues to attract researchers across disciplines, from civil engineers interested in energy generation to ecologists studying water quality. Among them is Jacques Finlay, a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior (CBS) who has worked at the lab since starting as a faculty member in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior in 2003, and has been a SAFL faculty affiliate since 2008.
Finlay studies freshwater ecosystems, and how watersheds, organisms and human activities affect them. His interest in stormwater runoff — the water that flows over streets when it rains or when snow melts — is part of a broader focus area around urban lakes and streams Finlay leads within the Minneapolis-St. Paul Long-Term Ecological Research program.
Some of the stormwater runs directly in rivers and lakes. Some accumulates in tens of thousands of stormwater ponds, which are built across the urban landscape to capture and manage runoff. They take many forms that include former wetlands to purpose-built structures.
Finlay views these ponds as living systems rather than just infrastructure. "We need to better understand how these ecosystems work to know how to manage and design them for the future," Finlay says. Also, while these ponds are not always managed for habitat and biodiversity, in some cases, they provide important habitat for native species. This matters because stormwater runoff is a major source of water pollution. It carries nutrients like phosphorus into lakes and streams. Managing stormwater is a major concern for city planners and others.
"Stormwater is a major stressor of water quality, and it's a major cost for cities to take care of their infrastructure and make decisions about the best approach to take,” says Finlay.
That’s where interdisciplinary collaboration through SAFL comes in. A center rooted in engineering and civil design, it provides access to expertise and instrumentation. SAFL is an ideal place for collaboration between biologists, physical scientists and engineers to understand, for example, how the urban environment and tree canopies influence wind over ponds, which influence how often they mix and how much oxygen they have, a key biogeochemical biological parameter.
"One of the things that makes SAFL special is that engineers and biologists are working side by side, in the same spaces, on the same questions,” says SAFL Director Lian Shen. “Our facilities make it easy for those conversations and collaborations to happen naturally. When people with different ways of thinking come together, it leads to better science and more practical solutions to complex water and environmental challenges that don't belong to a single discipline." –Stephanie Xenos