Meet EPA Wetland Ecologist Amanda M. Nahlik, Ph.D.
EPA researcher Dr. Amanda Nahlik works on understanding how anthropogenic disturbances, including climate change, affect wetland biogeochemistry across regional and national scales. She is the Office of Research and Development’s Technical Lead for the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) program, under which annual, field-based condition assessments of the nation’s aquatic resources are conducted in lakes, rivers and streams, coasts and estuaries, and wetlands on a rotating schedule. Over her career, Dr. Nahlik’s research has spanned many different aspects of wetland and aquatic ecology – including water quality improvement, carbon storage, greenhouse gas emissions, ecosystem services, and development of indicators and metrics of aquatic ecosystem condition.
What are you working on right now?
I have many concurrent projects, all of which utilize data produced through the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS). The wealth of data produced through NARS since its inception in 2007 provides unparalleled opportunities to answer questions about our aquatic ecosystems at national and regional scales. One of the most exciting questions I’m currently investigating relate to carbon storage in wetlands across the conterminous United States. Wetlands can be incredible carbon sinks, but changes to our landscape, changes in policies, and changing climates can have impacts on stored carbon, resulting in transformation of stored carbon into the atmosphere as potent greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide, methane). Understanding how much carbon we currently have stored in our nation’s wetlands and temporal changes to carbon stores is important for protecting and managing wetlands across the nation, especially in consideration of climate change mitigation.
What is your education/science background?
As an undergraduate, I studied biology and environmental studies at Kenyon College, a small but renowned liberal arts school in Gambier, Ohio. I conducted several years of independent wetland research during my summers with Dr. M. Siobhan Fennessy, who greatly influenced my life under her mentorship through her contagious enthusiasm for wetlands. After graduating with my B.A. in 2002, there was no question I would continue onto graduate school. I studied wetland ecology and biogeochemistry under Dr. William J. Mitsch at The Ohio State University in Columbus for both my M.S. (2005) and my Ph.D. (2009). During my doctorate research, I spent several years in Costa Rica, studying greenhouse gas emissions (methane in particular) and carbon cycling in tropical wetlands. Dr. Mitsch made great efforts to introduce me to other influential scientists. One of those influential scientists was Dr. Mary Kentula, a wetland ecologist at EPA’s Pacific Ecological Systems Division (PESD) in Corvallis, Oregon, with whom I worked as an EPA Post Doctoral Fellow from 2009-2013. Under Dr. Kentula’s mentorship at PESD, I helped to plan and analyze the first National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA) in 2011. For a few years, I continued to work on NWCA research under a Cooperative Agreement as a Research Associate at Kenyon College until I was hired permanently at PESD in 2016. I assumed the role of the Office of Research and Development’s Technical Lead for the NARS program in 2023.
When did you first know you wanted to work in environmental science?
I was one of those five-year-olds that knew what they really, truly wanted to “be” when they grew up. The natural world, and later ecology, always interested me. My parents fostered my curiosity as a young child through frequent outings to the many zoos, museums, and botanical gardens that Chicago has to offer. Throughout my early teens, I spent many summers and evenings taking ecology and field biology classes and even traveled to Belize as part of an intensive marine biology course in high school.
What do you like most about your job?
My job is not a job – it is my passion. At EPA, I am encouraged to be curious, to investigate scientific questions that have long gone unanswered, and to reach managers and policymakers to make real-world impacts on our environment and for the public. NARS, is an amazing program to be part of because of the unparalleled quality, quantity, and longevity of the data, but also because of the amazing team of scientists with which I collaborate. They inspire me every day.
How does your science matter?
The NARS program is crucial to meeting Clean Water Act (CWA) goals to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the Nations’ waters” (CWA§101(a)). NARS is the only program in the United States that produces aquatic ecosystem data using a national-scale survey design and consistent, field-based methods. The NARS program provides critical information about the state of our aquatic resources, but perhaps even more importantly, the cyclic nature of NARS allows us to track trends in ecosystem condition over time to assess whether the nation is meeting objectives of the CWA to maintain or improve the integrity of our water resources. The datasets produced through the NARS program support myriad of research, both within EPA (e.g., in the Office of Research and Development, Office of Science and Technology, Regions) and outside EPA (e.g., in state agencies academia, non-governmental organizations).
Despite the many critical functions wetlands provide on the landscape, such as flood amelioration, climate change mitigation through carbon storage, groundwater recharge, nutrient storage and transformation, and wildlife habitat, wetland loss across the United States is occurring at substantial rates, with net losses increasing over 50% over the two decades (Lang et al. 2024). The National Wetland Condition Assessment (NWCA) is arguably the most comprehensive wetland dataset that exists for the United States, with data collected from approximately 1,000 sites every five years that span from nutrient concentrations in the water column, to plant species lists and abundances, to human-mediated physical alterations, to soil profiles and soil chemistry. Understanding the how wetland condition and wetland functions are affected by stressors, such as anthropogenic disturbance, climate change, and nutrient inputs, is important for protecting and managing wetlands across the nation.
If you weren’t a scientist, what would you be doing?
I can’t imagine not being a scientist – it is so engrained in who I am. But when I’m not actively working on research, I love to read (I’m currently on a science fiction kick), knit, and hike. I spend lots of time outdoors – especially at wetlands – with my two young children, who are just as curious about the world as I was at their age!
What advice would you give a student interested in a career in science?
I have gotten to where I am through a lot of hard work, persistence, and adaptability, but most of all, through connecting with already-established professionals in the field I wanted to pursue. In some cases, that meant a simple email to a lead author on a journal article I read. In other cases, it meant volunteering for an event or a short internship. Setting yourself apart in your prospective field as early as possible – by introducing yourself and getting your name out to others – will help gain you recognition that makes it easier to find your path. Lastly, it’s important to recognize that the path isn’t always clear; after my undergraduate degree, it took a year of working at bookshops and answering phones at an office before I decided what I specifically wanted to study in graduate school. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have all the answers right away!
If you could have dinner with any scientist, past or present, who would you choose and what would you talk about?
I would love to have dinner (or even better, a field trip) with Dr. Henry Chandler Cowles, a botanist, conservationist, and one of the founders of modern ecology. In a lot of ways, it was specifically his theories that ignited my interest in ecology; in third grade, I took a dunes ecology class at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, where my interest in ecology was ignited by the same ecosystems that inspired his publications on succession. I would ask Dr. Cowles about his strategies for convincing a seemingly intractable public to preserve natural systems. I imagine we could talk about changes in ecology and succession in response to anthropogenic disturbances and climate change for hours!
You are stranded on a desert island; how do you use science to survive?
I lived on a tropical island for about six months to conduct coral reef surveys! Granted, I was not stranded and had many modern amenities, but water was always a primary concern as we received less than 20 inches of rainfall per year. Every drop of water that reached the rooftops was captured in a cistern and saved for drinking and cooking. So, the first thing I would do if I was stranded on a desert island would be to set up a system to catch rainwater and/or a simple system to evaporate and desalinate water. Even though much of our U.S. population is fortunate enough to not have to think about clean drinking water on a daily basis, it wasn’t all that long ago that our water quality in some areas of the U.S. was so poor that rivers were catching fire. Clean drinking water is still humanity’s most basic need, and under the Clean Water Act, EPA and states are responsible for ensuring that we have drinkable, fishable, swimmable waters now and into the future.
Editor's Note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the researcher alone. EPA does not endorse the opinions or positions expressed.