Julia Carr
Join us for a coffee hour with Julia on August 19th, 2025, 11am PST. Register here.
Tell us about yourself:
I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and earned my bachelor’s degree in Geology-Chemistry from Brown University in 2014. At Brown, I got interested in structural geology, remote sensing, and field geology. After college, I returned to Pittsburgh and worked in GIS at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and their ecological field station, Powdermill. I got involved in drone research early and used drones and photogrammetry to monitor forests at the field station.
I found geomorphology, which felt like the natural intersection of my interests in remote sensing, structural geology, and natural hazards. That led me to pursue a PhD at Penn State, where I studied how the tectonic history of Taiwan’s Central Range has shaped bedrock channel morphology and sediment cover. I’m currently wrapping up a postdoc at Simon Fraser University, where I’ve been looking at how landslides affect salmon migration. This August, I’m heading back to Pennsylvania to start a new postdoc at Franklin & Marshall College, working with the Chesapeake Watershed Initiative.
What is your research about?
I’m a fluvial geomorphologist interested in how rivers and hillslopes evolve through the interactions of fluid flow, sediment transport, and landscape form. My research often sits at the intersection of hands-on fieldwork and high-resolution remote sensing, using tools like drones, LiDAR, and multibeam.
I’ve had the chance to work in some incredible landscapes, including Taiwan’s Central Range and British Columbia’s Fraser Canyon. From my early days at Powdermill (where I was literally seeing the forest for every branch on every tree) I’ve been fascinated by how to capture fine-scale processes we can observe in the field and scale them up to understand broader patterns across entire landscapes.
I’m especially interested in how rivers reflect the long-term influence of tectonics, climate, and human activity, as well as how they respond to short-term, high-impact events like landslides or floods. One project I’m currently very excited about is exploring how flow structures in whitewater vary with discharge and different types of bedrock channel morphology.
What excites you about your research?
As cheesy as it sounds, I really love that I get to study and better understand the world around me. There’s so much potential to advance science just by carefully observing, measuring, and monitoring the landscapes we live in. When I first started studying geology, it was easy to think of landscapes as static. But by digging into the details, I’ve seen how incredibly dynamic it is. I’ve watched boulders the size of trucks move during single storms and seen entirely new rapids form in a river. There’s so much to keep learning for the rest of my life.
I also still geek out over the small things. My work is full of little wins, like finally getting a piece of code to run, spotting something surprising in the field, or working through a tricky scientific puzzle with a collaborator.
What broader importance does your research have for society?
Rivers are major hazard centers, and the modern hazard can be profoundly impacted by the legacy of tectonic, climatic, and anthropogenic history. Understanding the history of a landscape and monitoring active processes can help us better predict modern hazards, especially in response to extreme events.
For example, in my postdoc at SFU, I was a part of a large team working on the problem of landslide impacts on salmon migration. Even when a landslide doesn’t fully dam a river, it can create a ‘hydraulic barrier’, where the flow conditions are difficult or impossible for fish to pass. We need to understand where landslides are likely to enter the river, how coarse sediment from landslides will change the flow conditions for fish, and how long the sediment will last in the river. I’m interested in continuing to do fundamental research while applying these kinds of practical problems in my future work.
What inspired you to pursue a career in Earth Science?
I grew up broadly interested in so many different things: Chemistry, English, Math, History, Art, Languages ... I wanted to do them all. When I found geosciences in college, I found a single field where I could do ‘everything’. It also gave me the opportunity to explore meaningful, real-world problems with practical applications. Growing up in Pittsburgh, I had seen firsthand the impact of environmental remediation projects ranging from green infrastructure installation to the restoration of Nine Mile Run in my own neighborhood, and I was drawn to work that could have that kind of impact.
My path into geoscience was shaped by many fantastic teachers and communities along the way. I took my first geology course at Brown thanks to my advisor, the late Dr. Jan Tullis, who made a point of pulling in every student who showed any interest in the field into her advising group. She was instrumental to creating a welcoming community, and also supported my first time teaching (as an undergraduate TA for her structural geology course), and my first time in the field (Brown’s geoscience spring break field trip to Death Valley, then field camp with UNM). That supportive and collaborative community at Brown was followed up by many other communities that made geosciences a welcome and supportive place, including the ecologists and botanists at the museum, the overwhelmingly supportive Penn State department, the River Dynamics Lab at SFU, the EPSP community, and so many excellent friends and colleagues. So many mentors, colleagues, and friends have made geoscience a welcoming place for me, and I hope to pay forward in my own career.
What are you looking to do after you complete your PhD or postdoc?
I plan on continuing to work in geomorphology research and teaching.
Given unlimited funding and access to resources, what is your dream project that you would pursue?
I’d spend unlimited money and resources on permanent, interdisciplinary field stations to enable collaborative, long-term, and high-resolution monitoring. There’s so much to learn by monitoring beyond the scope of individual projects, and capturing both the exciting ‘events’ and the processes occurring all the time. With that kind of monitoring in place, my dream project would be to monitor boulder supply, abrasion, and transport across sites with different grain size distributions and discharge regimes.
What else do you do? Any hobbies or interests outside of work?
I’m always into getting outside, trying out a new restaurant with friends, or binging reality TV. I’m also really into D&D and am proud that my D&D group from grad school has been playing a regular, almost-weekly game for almost 6 years now across the pandemic, multiple international moves, and lots of job & life changes.
Find out more about Julia's work on her website: www.jccarr.weebly.com
Email: julia_carr_2@sfu.ca