Michelle Busch

Dr. Michelle Busch is a Post-doctoral Researcher in Aquatic Ecology at the University of Kansas, affiliated with the Kansas Biological Survey and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Her research focuses on understanding how aquatic communities respond to human impacts on rivers and streams, particularly in non-perennial systems. She investigates drivers of macroinvertebrate assemblage dynamics and the functional consequences of drying-wetting cycles on stream ecosystems. Her work bridges ecology, biogeochemistry, and policy to address freshwater management challenges. Michelle is advised by Dr. Amy Burgin during her postdoctoral fellowship.

Her research interests include:

• Non-perennial river ecology
• Stream intermittency dynamics
• Biodiversity responses to environmental change
• Legacy effects in community assembly
• Ecological modeling and big data integration

Michelle has been recognized with prestigious awards, including the University of Oklahoma’s Nancy Mergler Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2023) and the Outstanding Graduate Student Award (2023). Her recent publications emphasize global patterns of inundation, biogeochemical responses to drying, and the development of standardized terminology for non-perennial waterways.

Her collaborative projects include the AIMS initiative (Aquatic Intermittency effects of Microbiomes in Streams), which integrates microbiome data with ecosystem-level processes. She actively participates in interdisciplinary teams to design environmental flow frameworks and improve monitoring strategies for non-perennial systems.