John Melack

Biography

John Melack attended Cornell University (B.A. in Biological Sciences) and Duke University (Ph.D. in Limnology), held a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan, and has been on the faculty of the University of California, Santa Barbara, since 1977. His honors include being an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and American Geophysical Union and as a Blaustein Visiting Professor at Stanford University

Research

John Melack's research has emphasized ecological processes in lakes, wetlands, and streams, and hydrological and biogeochemical aspects of catchments. He has conducted multi-year studies of freshwater and saline lakes in eastern Africa and floodplains in the Amazon and Pantanal of South America. In California, his studies of the saline Mono Lake and high-elevation lakes in the Sierra Nevada have continued for over 30 years, and he is involved in an LTER examining linkages among coastal watersheds, near-shore kelp ecosystems, and offshore waters in Santa Barbara Channel. He has applied active and passive microwave and optical remote sensing to studies of lakes and tropical wetlands.

Selected Publications

Melack, J.M., S. Sadro, J.O. Sickman, and J. Dozier. 2020. Lakes and watersheds in the Sierra Nevada of California: Responses to environmental change. UC Press.

Barbosa, P.M., J.M. Melack, J.H.F.Amaral, S. MacIntyre, D. Kasper, A.C. Cortes, V.F. Farjalla and B.R. Forsberg. 2020. Dissolved CH4 concentrations and fluxes to the atmosphere from a tropical floodplain lake. Biogeochemistry 148: 129–151. doi.org/10.1007/s10533-020-00650-1.

Amaral, J.H.F., J.M. Melack, P.M. Barbosa, S. MacIntyre, D. Kasper, A.C. Cortes, T. Silva, R. Nunes and B.R. Forsberg. 2020. Carbon dioxide fluxes to the atmosphere from waters within flooded forests in the Amazon basin. J. Geophys. Res. – Biogeosciences 125, e2019JG005293. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019JG005293

Cohen, A. and J.M. Melack. 2020. Carbon dioxide supersaturation and fluxes to the atmosphere from high-elevation lakes and reservoirs in the Sierra Nevada, California. Limnol. Oceanogr. 65: 612–62. doi: 10.1002/lno.11330

MacIntyre, S., J.H.F. Amaral, P.M. Barbosa, A. Cortés, B.R. Forsberg and J.M. Melack. 2019. Turbulence and gas transfer velocities in sheltered flooded forests of the Amazon basin. Geophysical Research Letters. doi.org/10.1029/2019GL083948.

Sadro, S., J.M. Melack, J.O. Sickman and K. Skeen. 2019. Climate warming response of mountain lakes affected by variations in snow. Limnol. Oceanogr. Lett. 4: 9-17. doi: 10.1002/lol2.10099

Augusto-Silva, P.B., S. MacIntyre, C.M. Rudorff, A. Cortes and J.M. Melack. 2019. Stratification and mixing in large shallow lakes along the lower Amazon River floodplain. J. Great Lakes Res. 45: 61-72.

Aguilera, R. and J.M. Melack. 2018. Nutrient fluxes as a function of hydrologic variability, land cover and fires in coastal California catchments. J. Geophys. Res. – Biogeoscience 123: 2568–2589. doi.org/10.1029/ 2017JG004119

Goodridge, B.M., E.J. Hanan, E. Wetherley, R. Aguilera, Y.-J. Chen, C.M. D’Antonio and J.M. Melack. 2018. Retention of nitrogen following wildfire in a chaparral ecosystem. Ecosystems, doi.org/10.1007/s10021-018-0243-3

Rudorff, C.M., J.M. Melack and T. Dunne. 2018. Recent increase of river-floodplain suspended sediment exchange in a reach of the lower Amazon River.

Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 43: 322-332.