Ally Jacoby

​I'm a PhD candidate in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. My research focuses on catchment-scale response to climate change, at the intersection of hydrology and biogeochemistry, in the tropical glacierized Andes Mountains. This region is extremely vulnerable to climate change, with rapid glacier retreat and vegetation redistribution observed in recent decades. These major landcover changes alter water and chemical budgets, which can have implications for downstream ecosystems and people who rely on these types of glacierized headwater streams for water resources. Specifically, I'm interested in characterizing the composition and export dynamics of dissolved organic matter--an important aquatic nutrient--using fluorescence spectroscopy and parallel factor analysis. I also employ computational hydrologic models to disentangle the impact of simultaneously changing environmental conditions on water availability, in addition to making predictions about future streamflow conditions.