Cities and urban areas are warmer than the surrounding landscape, mostly due to the large amount of concrete that absorbes heat during the day.  Urban streams are similarly warm and their temperature generates an stress on aquatic biota and ecosystem function. My goal is to understand how urbanization is increasing stream water temperature and how it is affecting ecosystems. This information can even help us understand how global warming might affect aquatic ecosystems in the tropics.  

Benthic sediments are important long-term traps of nutrients and other elements in aquatic ecosystems. Benthic organisms are key in resuspending those elements and making them available to the ecosystem, a process that can be expected to change under future climates. My main objective is to use a tropical urban aquatic environment to determine the effect of increased temperature on the bioturbation behavior of chironomids and their role in nutrient cycling and bacterial activity.  

Minor Hidalgo

- STREAMS project

- La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica

Kevin Santiago 

& Rafael Pérez 

- StreamFRE project

- Luquillo LTER, Puerto Rico