Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Units Program: Alaska
Education, Research and Technical Assistance for Managing Our Natural Resources

Dr. Muehlbauer received undergraduate degrees in Biology and Chemistry from Northern Arizona University and masters and doctoral degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He spent several years as a post-doctoral fellow and research ecologist at the USGS Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center prior to joining the Alaska Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit in 2021. His research is focused on linking hydrological and geomorphic conditions in rivers to the structure of aquatic communities. Most of his work focuses on aquatic insects and macroinvertebrates, salmonid fisheries and feeding ecology, and freshwater and riparian food webs. He has been involved in basic and applied research in a variety of river ecosystems worldwide, including dam removal in Fossil Creek, Arizona, wetland mitigation in North Carolina, food web studies on the Danube River in Austria/Hungary/Serbia and glacially-fed rivers in Italy. Presently his research looks into the effects of large dam impacts on aquatic communities in the Colorado River and on the impacts of climate change, mining, and other stressors in Alaskan streams and rivers. Dr. Muehlbauer teaches courses in Aquatic Food Web Ecology and Stream Ecology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.