SAFL on PBS: A Look into Dr. Emily Fairfax’s Research on Beaver Ecosystem Engineering

August 20, 2026

Dr. Emily Fairfax is a renowned researcher in the field of beaver ecosystem engineering as well as an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Minnesota specializing in ecohydrology. Additionally, she is a faculty member at the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory and currently utilizes an on-site beaver flume in the lab. The Fairfax Beaver Lab, hosted at SAFL, uses a combination of remote sensing, modeling, and field work to understand how beaver ecosystem engineering can create drought- and fire-resistant patches in the landscape under a changing climate.

On August 19, 2026, PBS premiered a new miniseries called Resolve to Solve hosted by Miles O’Brien, an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist and documentary filmmaker. The Fairfax Beaver Lab and the St. Anthony Falls Laboratory were featured in its premiere episode titled “Dam It: Beavers to the Rescue”. In the episode, Miles interviewed Emily about failures, particularly what occurs when a beaver dam is hit with a ten-, hundred-, or thousand-year flood, and showed the beaver flume in action. The episode also featured the greater Fairfax Beaver Lab team, including geography master's student Keitreice Kirksey, geography PhD candidate Alyssa Connaughton, Emily’s postdocs Jessie Moravek and Nevé Baker, former SAFL-based research staff member Michelle Andruss, and SAFL researcher Andy Riesgraf.

In addition to the appearance in Resolve to Solve, Emily was also featured on PBS NewsHour’s special live program, Tipping Point: A River Reimagined. In this segment, she hosted Miles O’Brien in Wyoming to show how wetlands help store and release water gradually to sustain downstream ecosystems as the climate becomes less predictable. These wetlands can also help curb the causes and effects of wildfires, which is a large component of Emily’s research.

Emily Fairfax is no stranger to the limelight - her research has been featured in National Geographic, BBC, NPR, Scientific American, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times, to name a few. Additionally, she served as a science consultant and “beaver expert” for the new Disney-Pixar movie, Hoppers, which came out earlier this year. In this role, she was able to comment on the scientific accuracy of various versions of the movie during production, and even hosted Pixar’s art team in the field to show them real-life beaver ponds.

In addition to her work inside of SAFL, Emily’s team is hard at work building an outdoor beaver stream lab next to SAFL’s current Outdoor StreamLab. The purpose of this new space is to model beaver dam engineering and collect data with multispectral and optical drones, field study equipment, and wildlife cameras and microphones. It is expected that this lab will be operational by the end of summer 2026.