Kirk Jones is a MS candidate in Civil and Environmental Engineering working towards a Certificate of Graduate Study in Ecological Design. After receiving his BS in Chemical Engineering from Bucknell University (focusing on natural systems modeling, environmental sustainability, and global economics), he decided to live deep in the wilderness. Kirk became a backcountry ranger in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Wyoming and then at Olympic National Park in Washington. Having a newly developed sense of the imbalance between man and nature, Kirk and a few friends sought to harmonize the two by developing a biodiesel research program at UVM. After helping to get Green Technologies, LLC off the ground, Kirk turned to the ever-important job of educating our youth. He began teaching AP Calculus, Physics, Chemistry, and Environmental Science in Stowe, Vermont, before going on to teach Saving a Planet in Peril at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley. Very interested in the engineering problems of the developing world, Kirk traveled to India and Ecuador, researching and developing plans for small-scale community biogas/wetland systems. Then, Kirk took a teaching position in the highlands of Mayan Guatemala combining his passions of teaching with international community development. While teaching math and science at a progressive international academy, Kirk and his students were able to assist in several service learning projects. The nearby Lake Atitlan was receiving untreated sewage from many towns as well as agricultural runoff, and it had often turned green with potentially toxic cyanobacteria. Kirk helped a local team design a large treatment wetland for about 3000 people, and not knowing whether more nutrients were running off of farmland than sewer systems, Kirk’s students initiated a basin-wide nutrient monitoring program. Realizing that much of the world needed large-scale environmental and ecological engineering, Kirk came back to UVM to expand his knowledge and skills. He began working with the VT EPSCoR Streams Project to monitor nutrients in Vermont’s Basins, and his research is now focused on correlating stream geomorphic and habitat qualities, locating new vegetated riparian buffers, and filtering out water contaminants with activated biochar.

Research Interests: Wastewater Treatment, Linking Biodiesel & Compost
Thesis (working title): Relating Vermont Stream Water Quality to Habitat Quality