From Field to Model: Tracking AMR in Agricultural Watersheds with Moriah Brown

In this episode of Tales of the Resistance, Mara and Beth continue their exploration of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the environment—this time from the perspective of a graduate researcher doing the work on the ground.

They sit down with Moriah Brown, a PhD student studying watershed monitoring and modeling in agricultural systems. Moriah shares what it’s like to collect water samples in rural Nebraska streams, analyze antibiotic concentrations, and build models that help predict how antimicrobial resistance moves through the environment.

From early mornings in the field to the challenges of building entirely new modeling frameworks, this episode highlights both the hands-on and highly technical sides of AMR research—and why there’s still so much to learn.

This show is produced by the iAMResponsible project, a nationwide university outreach team led by Amy Schmidt at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Find out more about the project here. Funding for the iAMResponsbile Project was provided by USDA-NIFA Award Nos. 2017-68003-26497, 2018-68003-27467 and 2018-68003-27545. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.