Amanda Stahlke
Scientific Advisor for RiversEdge West
Amanda Stahlke, PhD has been studying tamarisk beetles for over a decade. She started genetic monitoring of tamarisk beetles as an undergraduate researcher with Zeynep Ozsoy at Colorado Mesa University. She supported biocontrol field monitoring and experiments at the Palisade Insectary with Dan Bean and CABI in Switzerland before earning a PhD in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Idaho, where she developed genomic techniques to study rapid evolution in tamarisk beetles. She is now an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Colorado Mesa University, where her research on tamarisk beetles and their genomes continues.
In her role as scientific advisor for RiversEdge West, she helps connect academic and governmental research on biocontrol and on-the-ground practice. She curates the iNaturalist observations of tamarisk beetles for the Annual REW Beetle Map, is Co-PI on an APHIS-funded project to monitor tamarisk beetles, their hybrids, and their impact on southwestern willow flycatchers, and supports the genetic identification of SWFL in potentially overlapping ranges.
Joel Sholtes
Technical Partner for RiversEdge West
Joel Sholtes, PhD, PE, teaches water resources engineering with the Colorado Mesa University - University of Colorado, Boulder Engineering Partnership Program and is a principal engineer with Wash Water Science and Engineering, LLC. His professional and academic experience focuses on physical river processes (river hydraulics, hydrology, and fluvial geomorphology) with applications to stream rehabilitation, riverine infrastructure management, and flood hazards.
In partnership with RiversEdge West, Joel has worked to develop the Grand Valley River Corridor Initiative (RCI) and mapped the Fluvial Hazard Zone for the Grand Valley in support of the RCI. He is also a co-Principal Investigator on the Dolores River Adaptive Management Support (DRAMS) project, for which REW is a partner.
