I am an aquatic ecologist and biogeochemist interested in carbon and nutrient cycling between terrestrial and aquatic systems, the cryosphere and atmosphere.
Research Interests
I conduct research on methane and carbon dioxide emissions from arctic and temperate lakes and wetlands. I am interested in processes that govern greenhouse gas emissions from lakes, including thermokarst (permafrost) thaw, modern plant productivity, geology, and landscape scale changes lake area that result in both positive and negative feedbacks to climate change.
My research program uses environmental gradients, isotopes, and remote sensing as powerful tools for understanding basic patterns and processes in lake ecosystems. I use field, laboratory and modeling experiments to address research questions at the ecosystem scale, and environmental gradients and remote sensing to apply these results in a landscape-scale context.
UAF photo by Marmian Grimes--Katey Walter, a researcher with the Water and Environmental Research Center at the UAF Institute of Northern Engineering, watches methane burn as it escapes from a bubble in a frozen lake near the UAF campus in early November 2007.
Background & Recent Benchmarks
Walter was selected as a University of Alaska Presidential International Polar Year Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in March 2007.
Walter was lead author on a paper published in September 2006 in Nature titled “Methane Bubbling from Siberian Thaw Lakes as a Positive Feedback to Climate Warming”. She reported to the Royal Society in London in November, 2006 to present this work together with a first-order estimate of pan-arctic lake methane emissions for publication in the upcoming volume of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Another chapter of her Ph.D. dissertation was published in Science in October 2007 on the role of thermokarst lakes as an atmospheric methane source during Holocene deglaciation.
On behalf of the Northease Science Station in Cherskii, Walter works as project coordinator for Russian-U.S. collaborations for the International Polar Year as part of an effort to network arctic observatories in Alaska and Russia for long term monitoring of climate change in cold regions.
Walter is fluent in Russian language and has lived and worked in Russia since 1992.
Walter has M.S. in Ecology with a focus on biogeochemistry of invasive aquatic plants from the University of California, Davis and a Bachelors Degree in Biogeochemistry from Mount Holyoke College. She has conducted research projects in Russia, Germany, Central America and the United States.
Walter received her Ph.D. in Aquatic Biology in May 2006 from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. In December 2006 the United States Council of Graduate Schools presented her with the nation’s most prestigious honor for doctoral dissertations: First place in Science, Math and Engineering. This award is given every two years to recognize recent doctoral recipients who have already made significant contributions to their field.
Walter is a certified scientific diver; a mountaineer; skier; outdoor enthusiast and plays the cello.
