Luke Hunt, Ph.D.
Director, Headwaters Conservation
Department: Conservation
Area of Focus: Sierra Meadow Restoration and Low Impact Development
Background: Luke joined American Rivers in 2010. Prior to American Rivers, Luke helped start an innovation and engineering design group, where his favorite project was developing a low-cost surgical machine for treating cataract in the developing world. He also worked on the antifreeze proteins found in Antarctic fish (including 100 under-ice scuba dives), and on habitat change in the Columbia River basin (including countless kayak surveys of the steeper tributaries). Luke has a Ph.D. in biomechanics and ecology from Stanford, where his dissertation focused on the nonlinear ecology of sea-level rise and climate change. Luke loves critically relevant science, testing strategies and stretching molds.
Education: B.S. & M.S. in Earth Systems from Stanford University
Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University.
Favorite River: Stanislaus River
Blog Posts By This Author
Native Youth Restore Headwaters
February 27, 2013 | Floods & Floodplains, Water Supply
On Sunday, Native youth from the Sierra foothills and American Rivers' staff got into the mud and planted hundreds of willows along an eroding stretch of Wolf Creek. Wolf Creek is the most recent in an 8-month series of teaching and restoration projects we have worked on with the Sierra Native Alliance Youth Conservation Corps. Youth measured stream flow, bank stability and beaver activity in Hope Valley. We also cleared invasive plants from an infested floodplain, and repaired trails on tributaries to the Yuba River.
Read more »Owl Moon Near the Tuolumne River
December 7, 2012
Somehow I heard it take flight as we stepped from the wet brush into the autumn meadow. It was the afternoon before Thanksgiving and I had enlisted my dad, son Jake, and a dear friend to help survey two twin meadows at the edge of Yosemite National Park.
Read more »Indian Valley Meadow Restoration project
September 20, 2012 | Water Pollution
This fall, to reduce the water footprint of their bottling plant east of San Francisco, Coca-Cola is teaming up with American Rivers, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, the US Forest Service and others to restore the Indian Valley meadow on the Sierra Crest, in the headwaters of the Mokelumne River. The Mokelumne River flows from Indian Valley meadow at 8,000 feet elevation and supplies clean water to people, fish and wildlife on its course to the bay.
Read more »Loving a Meadow Back to Life
August 17, 2012 | Floods & Floodplains, Water Pollution
Fifteen years ago Snow Creek Meadow Preserve was a nameless discarded place, the undevelopable floodplain around Mammoth’s Snow Creek Condos in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. Then in 1996, a group of friends including a landscape architect, two civil engineers, an Olympic gold medalist, and a graphic artist, decided to restore the area.
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