Welcome to the Helton Lab at the University of Connecticut's Department of Natural Resources and the Environment & the Center for Environmental Sciences and Engineering. 

We are interested in how water and elemental (primarily carbon and nutrient) cycles are linked across landscapes and how human activities and global climate change alter these cycles and their interactions. Our research focuses on a range of freshwater ecosystems - streams and rivers, floodplains, and wetlands using a variety of field and simulation modeling approaches.

Please explore the research and publications pages for more information, and see a brief overview of our research area in this short video.

We acknowledge that the land on which we live and work in Connecticut is the territory of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett, Nipmuc, and Lenape Peoples, who have stewarded this land throughout the generations. We thank them for their strength and resilience in protecting this land, and aspire to uphold our responsibilities according to their example. See the University of Connecticut Land Acknowledgement.

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Lab News!

1/10/2022: Former PhD student Barclay leads paper linking measured and modeled groundwater inputs to streams.  Read here. 

6/25/2021: Welcome new lab members!  Ariana Dionisio (MS) and Madeline Kollegger (PhD).

6/22/2021: Helton is a co-author (along with former MS student Ooi) on a paper focused on salt marsh soil carbon dynamics, see press release here. 

3/4/2021: PhD student Danielle Hare's research on shallow and deep groundwater contributions to streams across the U.S. published today in Nature Communications and featured in UConn Today and The Conversation

2/15/2021: Helton award funding from the Long Island Sound Research Fund for two projects (on watershed legacies and salt marsh restoration), see press release here.

Click here for the lab news archives!