Lee Phillips: Good afternoon and i'll get us started with a brief introduction i'm the Philips.
Lee Phillips: stabilized step no middle geochemist university North Carolina greensboro where I serve primarily as the director of undergraduate research for the campus and it's my pleasure to welcome you today to the undergraduate research poster session.
Lee Phillips: And I will allow my co convener is to introduce themselves so Jeff.
Jeffrey Ryan: Jeff Brian hi i'm i'm at the University of South Florida in Tampa marine focus big news for travelers.
and
Okay.
Dogancan Yasar: Hello everyone i'm Diana show from.
department of geosciences auburn university my research includes Joe chronological and various geochemical applications.
Dogancan Yasar: And i'm working on different origin systems to understand their tectonic elation.
Lee Phillips: Thanks.
Lee Phillips: So.
Lee Phillips: I have a kitten in the background, who may be louder than I am I apologize for the distractions if if he happens to show up.
Lee Phillips: But with that said really glad to see such a great turnout of students and.
Lee Phillips: Particularly undergraduates who are getting involved in research early on and taking the opportunity to come in and be a part of this undergraduate research poster session, which is co sponsored by the Council on undergraduate research.
Lee Phillips: As part of the introduction, one of the things that I like to remind all the students that I have the opportunity to work with is the value of being involved in research and and I know that a lot of it kind of goes without stating, but some of the things I didn't learn until far later.
Lee Phillips: And those include.
Lee Phillips: that the experience of doing undergraduate research was more about building a relationship that has been tremendously meaningful for me throughout all of my fresh professional career.
Lee Phillips: That relationship that you build with your.
Lee Phillips: Your research advisor is incredibly important relationship and it's one that will serve you going forward, especially if it's a positive relationship because they're, the ones who can attest to your abilities to show up.
Lee Phillips: To be thoughtful to think critically to synthesize information to solve problems and to communicate effectively.
Lee Phillips: And I promise you, if you're able to do these things, then you will be able to find the types of success that you want going forward so that to me has been the value of having been involved in under as an undergraduate in research.
Lee Phillips: And I hope that you will take this opportunity to make the researcher.
Lee Phillips: And to use it to support you, as you move forward in your personal and professional lives, whatever they may include.
Lee Phillips: So the format today there's been some questions about format and the format is is, quite simply, we have your posters uploaded and I believe all of you have submitted a five minute summary of that.
Lee Phillips: will launch those here from from my computer and if we have any issues with that then then we'll find a backup way to do this, and then there will be five minutes for you to respond to questions from each other.
Lee Phillips: Are there any questions before we get started.
Lee Phillips: please feel free to use the chat or raise your hand feature I think we're all pretty familiar with the zoom format these days.
Lee Phillips: Trying to be attentive to time and I will go ahead and begin to share my screen and get started, our first presentation is that.
Lee Phillips: Edward southward from guilford college and edwards just turn on this camera great i'm going to share this.
Lee Phillips: Oh, my goodness, I say i'm going to share here we go.
Lee Phillips: And we'll get started.
Lee Phillips: Dr Phillips, I think you didn't share i'm sorry what's the question.
Dogancan Yasar: I think you didn't share.
Lee Phillips: i'm working on that Thank you.
Sorry.
Jeffrey Ryan: hey good afternoon i'm browsing self worth and working with my.
Lee Phillips: Co author Dave dobson we conducted a statistical analysis using data pulled from the Paleo biology database.
Lee Phillips: And online resource includes 218,000 semitism 51 listings past life compiled from 542 million years of fossil specimens.
Lee Phillips: Inspired by the complexity of pelling to logic records to potential biases we examine these listings looking for trends biases and discrepancies.
Lee Phillips: Our first topic was geographic distortion killing to logic research.
Lee Phillips: The body of paleontological it as a major geographic biases some of these are paleontological as rocks with fossils are only President exposed in certain locations.
Lee Phillips: And rocks representing certain ages or ecosystems are only available in some areas.
Lee Phillips: Also paleontological research can help a be affected by human history politics and social issues.
Lee Phillips: at different times different areas, been open or close to research to the local government policy or local or international conflicts.
Lee Phillips: level field support roads airports supplies etc available for field based paleontology.
Lee Phillips: also varies based on political and economic factors we expected to see disproportionately high representation of European and North American specimens in the fossil record across all taxonomic divisions.
Lee Phillips: Furthermore, we expected to see disproportionately low representation of African South American and Australian specimens and, as you can see, there was a substantial difference in number of records available from each continent.
or depiction of general by content over human history is a particular interest as an addition displaying significant continental biased towards Europe and North America.
It provides a clear view of the impact historical events have handled paleontological research.
Additionally, there's a clear clustering of sample locations and areas of more population or economic activity nations with democratic governments and in more accessible geographic regions and climate zones.
Our second topic was the nature of taxonomy classification over geologic time.
Because the nature of taxonomic classification high level clients will tend to appear earlier in the geologic time scale than the more numerous lower level plates.
A new tax and pairing later time is more likely to be assigned to an existing clade and be given a new classification.
We expected to see more low level taxonomic leaves us from more recent geologic time periods and the reverse to be true for higher level clients.
As we suspected, there was a market increase the number of lower level tax on the claims us more recent geologic time periods which supports hypothesis see the first percentile figure.
or third topic covered Pele latitudes and the lab toodle diversity gradient in the modern world biodiversity is dominated by the ld g.
Multiple studies have shown bldg in the modern world is such that as one moves in the polls to the tropics species Christian school increase.
We expected that we would see similar grains throughout geologic time, possibly with differences caused by climate of sea level changes or tectonic shifts.
We extracted all animated taxonomic records from the Paleo biology database with our geologic ages and the modern latitude and longitude coordinates attached.
Within run each record through Paleo latitude or degenerate Paleo latitude locations.
Finally, we broke the species records into 100 million year intervals and pile set of latitude based histograms.
Unfortunately, as we proceed with our investigation, there were several indications in the analysis that special distribution of the database samples was too skewed who score a lot of diversity gradient in any meaningful way.
The geographic concentration of database samples in North America, Europe means that we do not have even sampling but Paleo latitude.
Our final topic was looking to variability and taxonomic assignments over the history of zoological exploration.
Hailing to logic taxonomic categorization for newly discovered fossil organisms are normally based on trade shared between the new organisms and existing clouds.
When traits of shared organisms replacing existing leads all and pretty unique organization replace a new clients.
We suspected that with an increasingly robust fossil record described in the scientific literature, we might see fewer introductions of new High Level taxonomic divisions and more assignments into lower level techs network divisions.
And as you can see, we did find the expected increase in new species blue and general green over the historic time relative to hire taxonomic levels.
However, exploring the data at a log scale, the rate of exponential growth for new tax each taxonomic level was relatively consistent, which does not support our offices.
Our research proves several interesting findings from the Paleo biology databases data.
We identified clear geographic by some research activity, including likely impacts from politics, economics and accessibility.
And we demonstrated fundamental trends and taxonomic classification over the course of book The history of zoological exploration and over geologic time.
We were unable to overcome the skewed special distribution of the database samples in order to produce meaningful Paleo latitude diversity curves.
This remains a potential avenue for further investigation, we might be able to address geographic biased or sub sampling or augmenting the database records to allow the study of the geologic history of the ld G more effectively.
Based on our study we recognize the database as a tremendously useful resource for paleontological data analysis.
We must also recognize that the collected data or not without limitations driving from the history of paleontological research and the nature of tax on the classification.
And that some of this inconsistency and distortion undoubtedly affects our understanding of the history of life, thank you very much.
Lee Phillips: Thanks, we have time for questions, for I believe Edward doesn't go by Edward but rather brownie quite possibly.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): Yes, that's right it's a nickname.
Lee Phillips: All sorts often and i'm curious did you take into consideration and possibly say this, if you did not apologize for for not catching it but.
Lee Phillips: Just the rates of.
Lee Phillips: accumulation, with respect to the longitudinal.
Lee Phillips: or Paleo Latin deposition.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): Oh that's a great question i'm you said a rates of accumulation in relation to the latitude correct yeah.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): I am not sure that we took that into account.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): David Dave if i'm off base here feel free to chime in.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): But I do think.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): That the the skew histograms we're seeing are primarily due to the.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): Like I said this, the spatial bias in the payload salvage samples, but I think if someone was to continue this research and maybe take a new angle on it, that would be a really good method to approach it with.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): Thank you.
Dave Dobson (he/him): yeah just to follow up on that we did with the Paleo latitude effect we actually did see an interesting effect in the breakup of pangea and the migration of continents.
Dave Dobson (he/him): So that was pretty cool, but there were just too many samples in Europe and North America to really get at a global distribution nearly.
Lee Phillips: I thought, so I mean there's so many variables that go into this.
Lee Phillips: Other questions.
Lee Phillips: So i'll ask just another question here to kind of follow up on that, and you stated, if someone did continue to study, so the question that I would have for you is what's next in your in your plans.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): So as right now.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): i'm it was my original plan to attend Grad school in the fall and just for a variety of reasons that's not working out but i'm hoping in the future.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): I can continue working on these kind of spatial and temporal trends and biases i've really enjoyed doing this kind of statistical work.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): So i'm hoping in my graduate career at some point I get to maybe pick this up, you know continue it look at some data i've really enjoyed the statistical work, so I think i'll almost likely continue something on that line ever good.
Edward B. Southworth (He/Him): that's.
Lee Phillips: a really good plan.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you, Brian.
Lee Phillips: There were a couple of things that were placed into the chat that were really good reminders do keep your self muted if you're not speaking.
Lee Phillips: And you're welcome to have your camera on or off it's it's up to you, but it uses a little less bandwidth if it's off and then brad.
Lee Phillips: suggested that you can also open the posters from the session, if you want to be able to zoom in and look posters, while the presentations going on, I found that to be very helpful earlier.
Lee Phillips: Today in some sessions, that I was in too so again thanks and we'll move on to our next poster, and this is by Anna surely we get opened up.
Lee Phillips: Of course i'm opening it the wrong way.
Lee Phillips: Here we go.
Lee Phillips: And i'll share my screen with that.
Good afternoon, my name is Anna surely.
Lee Phillips: i'm Robin maloney and we conducted research at James Madison university under the advisement of Dr lukens focusing on tender Clement ology of chestnut trees in the shenandoah valley Virginia.
The study of dendur climatology focuses on identifying past climate conditions, as recorded and with tissue by investigating tree rings.
The thickness of each tree ring indicates the growth rate per year and is associated with external factors affecting the occupation site.
We can use carbon 13 isotope ratios of what tissue as a proxy because increase response to climate conditions are recorded in these isotopes.
For this study we focus on chestnut trees from the shenandoah valley and Virginia, which is she was collected from a decade's worth of tree rings per tree than prepared for isotope analysis.
Local climate data obtained from the Dale enterprise weather station was used to correlate relationships between tree growth and climate factors, including temperature and precipitation.
The goal of this study is to develop a local seasonal climate record for the shenandoah valley by comparing what tissue data and time of data.
shown on figure a you can see the shenandoah valley that sits in central Virginia to the west of the blue Ridge mountain range.
image be shows are to study sites, the Dale enterprise weather station and they eat at J carrier arboretum at James Madison university.
We are correlating the data from the arboretum with the records at the weather station so with them being approximately four and a half miles apart the data is consistent with each other.
figure see shows six of our study say at the arboretum where the two trees were sampled want to collect data here, since this type of analysis hasn't been done in the shenandoah Valley.
Each of us sampling our own cores that are extracted using an increment bore from the chestnut trees from Margarita.
Each rate of one represents a year of the trees life and for each core we sampled 11 years of late would from 2009 to 2019.
The growth direction of the trees is shown with an upwards arrow figure bait just going from the innermost to the outermost ring.
identified late would based on the presence of denser tissue as compared to early one that contains larger vessels.
be excluded early would to avoid analyzing 13 carbon 13 signals that may reflect the trees use of storage sugars from the previous year.
This excludes the poorest part of the wood, which is an accurately recording signals, because it contains recycled sugars from the previous year and doesn't show active photosynthesis information.
We took about five slices from each tree ring totaling to 110 samples for both of the course each sample is measured to wait around 120 micrograms numbers fold it into 10 capsules that prepares them to be analyzed with the isotope ratio mass spectrometer.
they'll enterprise weather station records show precipitation in millimeters from 1893 to 2019 as seen and graph a by focusing on the last decade 2009 to 2019.
Driving what summers in the shenandoah valley were identified as seen in graph be which can then be correlated with carbon 13 isotope ratios as key dates.
This region experiences increase precipitation in the summer too late fall as seen by intensifying peaks later in the year, also in graph be overall the shenandoah valley experiences peak rainfall and temperature in the summer, when active photosynthesis is taking place.
analyzing carbon 13 stable isotopes data will further eight in developing a seasonal climate record in the shenandoah Valley.
By identifying dry and wait years in late would and correlating data sets trends in the region can be observed, this research is important because relationships based on past climate conditions can be applied as a predictable model to future trends.
Lee Phillips: Yes, absolutely Nice, where.
Lee Phillips: We have time for questions.
Ron: I believe there's a question in the chat from Sandra or rickets I believe your.
Age.
Ron: So, what was the reason for using chestnut oak versus other trees, the reason why we chose chestnut trees was due to our locality, we wanted to test local trees, and so the two main options at the.
Ron: Data collecting site or wider trees and chestnut trees, they were the largest trees, which indicate more growth, more rings and more data that we can investigate, so we ended up choosing chestnut trees for our research.
Ron: yeah, and so my core had 100 years total I don't know about though i'm so it's cool we only did the 11 years we could go farther back.
Lee Phillips: Mr benny efforts to comparing retrieving data between different species.
Ron: For our research we haven't gotten to that point yet, however.
Ron: We are open to continuing the research and focusing on others in the area.
Ron: For the shenandoah valley there hasn't been much.
Ron: type of vendor one policy work done so we kind of wanted to sort of set the stage and begin to close that gap of.
Dogancan Yasar: Dr wayda I think you.
Dogancan Yasar: raise your hand.
Ann Ojeda: I did this is a fascinating study things for presenting, so my work is in contamination, so I don't know much about tree rings, but my question is what any air contamination like particulate matter be trapped in your tree ring.
Ann Ojeda: record So could you analyze for like mercury or arsenic or chromium in your sample as well.
Ron: I think for our study you would see maybe if I wasn't just like a slowing of growth or and I hope signal would be there that we can compare and we knew of an event or lot talking about how we would actually see it in luxury room what.
Ann Ojeda: You would see it, or you wouldn't see it sorry I didn't quite catch that.
Ron: I don't believe we would study yeah.
Ann Ojeda: cool thanks.
Lee Phillips: So what's the closest.
Lee Phillips: region to the shenandoah valley valley that has some tree ring data.
Lee Phillips: or baselines established.
Lee Phillips: And are you able to compare across basins or across regions.
Ron: yeah so we use mostly data within the noaa website and.
Ron: tracking information on the type of unemployment holly research that has to be done and based off that.
Ron: We did notice that the.
Ron: Valley, to the east of the shenandoah valley has had some work done so.
Ron: Basically, the surrounding valleys we've seen that but not specifically within the shenandoah Valley, we haven't considered going beyond or correlating.
Ron: With those other datasets yet.
Lee Phillips: there's a lot more work to be done caitlin has a question.
Caitlyn Herron: yeah I know in Virginia, a lot of the trees have issues chestnut trees have issues with blight did you have any issues with.
Caitlyn Herron: The disease on choosing your specimens or how that potentially could impact your core samples.
Ron: We didn't specifically encounter increase our site.
Ron: Is a well tracked site it's either speaker agrium here at the University, and so the trees are tracked and they're actually checked for diseases like that.
Ron: During the collection of the sample we take precautions to make sure that we didn't encounter these problems, the only thing we did encounter that was quite interesting was.
Ron: We did try to extract the poor from a wider.
Ron: wider tree, and it was.
Ron: rotting on the inside a little bit which actually got the view from a auger stuff, and so we had it we had to use a rope and like five of us had to get on it to get it out, but other than that we did not see any major.
Lee Phillips: Thank you, both for this presentation and we'll move on to our next, of course, if there are other.
Lee Phillips: Questions you can always use the chat function.
Lee Phillips: To address the authors directly.
Lee Phillips: So next we're moving to.
Lee Phillips: Some work on contaminants in Alabama and I believe our next presenters are Emma Parker possibly shot.
Lee Phillips: Charlotte i'll go ahead and begin to share the screen and.
Lee Phillips: for students attending auburn university person mill creek is subject of great mystery.
Lee Phillips: A fun fact that freshmen are often told is that there's creek that runs underneath the mathematics, building on campus there is some truth, that is, but the main tributaries fan adjacent to the little this kitchen.
Lee Phillips: dining Hall, on campus and the former freshman I was also told this which created a lot of intrigue about the creek surprisingly enough i'm not a geoscience major.
Lee Phillips: But I have a headache have you interested in sustainability and it chemistry background, I know I wanted to get involved with the research project and was introduced to her for a collaborator Dr angel hayden.
Lee Phillips: Who recently introduced a lab pertaining to geochemistry in hydraulic powder jude geology and knew I wanted to get involved.
Lee Phillips: During your first meeting we glanced out the window her office to see the dilapidated Greek and decided we wanted to begin at projects surrounding purpose and know Greek.
Lee Phillips: Just like me i'm not a geoscience major but instead of biomedical sciences major with a pre MED concentration.
Lee Phillips: When I began looking to do research, I want to do something that intrigued me but also included skills that I learned in my chemistry labs.
Lee Phillips: After finding out about Dr heinous contamination projects that research fair.
Lee Phillips: I knew I wanted to work with her personal creek has been identified as it appeared body of water, according to the EPA standards for eco Ly, which is 61 to 151 colony forming units per 100 milliliters as a single samples a reading.
Lee Phillips: or research saw to identify the source of these contaminants.
Lee Phillips: For some quick definitions emerging contaminants can be described as chemicals that have been shown to produce a potential environmental or public health risks.
Lee Phillips: Including hormones and steroids personal care products and pharmaceuticals.
Lee Phillips: or analytical methods included quantifying vcs, also known as volatile organic compounds which are essentially compounds that provided miserable tool to identify concentrations of these emerging.
Lee Phillips: contaminants in our water samples alright offices was as follows the number of eco line and measure concentration of ucs.
Lee Phillips: will be elevated at sample size, with more potential human contribution, there were three main stages of the parkinson's mill creek project sampling preparation and analysis.
Lee Phillips: Five sampling sites long parkinson's mill creek were purposely chosen to be analyzed.
Lee Phillips: site one was chosen, because it is the headwater of the creek site to needed to be sampled because large sewer line and stormwater gate ran out through the water.
Lee Phillips: right there was selected as a good comparison to site to.
Lee Phillips: site for was PICs because of its location next to the football practice field, which could lead to potential pesticide runoff and also large sewer line cross revenue stream.
Lee Phillips: Lastly, site five is chosen, because it is the farthest downstream adjacent to a road and next to soccer practice field.
Lee Phillips: On sampling day, however site number three was closed off due to offense so it became an accessible.
Lee Phillips: After the sampling stages completed for all the sites, the preparation stage for analysis would begin.
Lee Phillips: First, the preparation of equal I was completed by pouring the water sample and color skin easy gel medium mixture on a petri dish making sure to coat the entire bottom.
Lee Phillips: After letting it solidify for about 45 minutes, the petri dishes were incubated at 35 degrees Celsius for 48 hours.
Lee Phillips: The next condition that needed to be prepared, was the samples of water looking for vcs these samples of waters were prepared for analysis, using the purge and trapped gc Ms.
Lee Phillips: To prepare for analysis for the caffeine sample the process before analysis includes acidification filtering solid phase extraction type at fit Jason.
Lee Phillips: pumping data samples and running the gc Ms after running through older methods, the last stage of this project was analysis.
Lee Phillips: For equalize This included observing and counting the number of eco like colonies found on the plates BC samples were analyzed at the mass spectrometer.
Lee Phillips: For the business to present of contaminants shown and beaks Unfortunately we were unable to execute our method to analyze the caffeine samples.
Lee Phillips: But inclusion of a research statistical tests were utilized to conduct wilcockson text tests.
Lee Phillips: to determine the statistical significance of our findings, we ran through and methods for two rounds of sampling for more robust results.
Lee Phillips: But potentially do the heavy rainfall our second round of sampling yielded know quantifiable results for vcs.
Lee Phillips: The screen for at two different vcs but only chloroform would present at concentrations above detection limit.
Lee Phillips: chloroform, also known as track or methane was detected at site to and say five for round one sampling in figure one, you can see our readings for people to perimeter beater and equal accounts.
Lee Phillips: That site to be counted significantly higher number of equal I compared to the other sites, we bought it or data from the multiple perimeter meter to see any potential correlations between the.
Lee Phillips: figure two displays are equal, like counts, along with our VOC data Figure three is our gas chromatography data from site to during round one sampling.
Lee Phillips: We have highlighted the peak identified chloroform additional peaks we're tentatively identified as nano and economic.
Lee Phillips: But are not included in a calibration so they could not be quantified.
Lee Phillips: These compounds are known and components and Labor camps and could potentially be source from construction site directly across the street from our sampling sites.
Lee Phillips: With the p value of 0.125 according to wilcockson tests, there was no significant difference between the amount of chloroform and eco life around one, so the coloration is not statistically significant.
Lee Phillips: This can be attributed to our only detecting colorful format to sites potentially with more sampling, it could be shown that there is a statistical significance and not simply a concurrence.
Lee Phillips: Thank you so much for joining us, and if you have any further questions you're more than welcome to contact myself or Charlotte we'll do our best to answer.
Lee Phillips: We do have time for questions.
Lee Phillips: um.
Lee Phillips: You had heavy rain, with the second sampling, so what I understood and and it affected the vcs were any of the other measurements affected I.
Lee Phillips: Probably missed that part um I think all that we mentioned in the video was that the VOC data was unquantifiable are equal, I was about the same so it was it didn't seem to affect equal I.
buy it did seem to affect the VOC data.
Lee Phillips: Interest interesting.
Lee Phillips: So were you looking for a presence of a call lie or were you looking for concentrations.
Charlotte Jannach: um well we knew there would probably be a presence of ecolab, but we are trying to see if it was above the EPA levels and seeing if there's extra human contamination that auburn university or students or construction is adding to the river.
Right.
Lee Phillips: i'm just trying to understand how then.
Lee Phillips: With a high run off or a heavy rain event and it decreased below VOC how you would not see a decrease in the call I but I i'm i'm a little slow sometimes so help help me help me understand that.
Charlotte Jannach: Well, I think, honestly we're not exactly sure what caused the decrease in VOC but there was a heavy rainfall right before and that's all we can really think would cause that because there seemed to be no other.
Charlotte Jannach: Differences between the other times we sample but, like me, and I said at the end.
Charlotte Jannach: There probably needs to be more done on this, there was only two samplings done.
Charlotte Jannach: So I think if there were more sampling Stan we would be able to see if maybe there's something else going on, or if Maybe it was just an error in our sampling or something like that, but we think it might be due to the heavy rainfall, but it could be something else completely different.
Jeffrey Ryan: Thank you, looks like there's a question in the chat.
Jeffrey Ryan: What is chloroform and why is it important for your characterization of the stream.
Charlotte Jannach: So, yes i'm addressing that question chloroform is, I think I mentioned is tried core methane, and so this can be considered a contaminated a contaminant to reverse.
Charlotte Jannach: it's not naturally there, and so one of the things that definitely since it showed up, and it was on our calibration like I said earlier, non on deck and i'll we're also on.
Charlotte Jannach: um showed up in our VOC data, but they weren't on our calibration so we can't really quantify if they were above the normal but.
Charlotte Jannach: For chloroform it was definitely present at site to and like earlier site to is the one that had the storm water gay and the sewer line running.
Charlotte Jannach: over it, so I think that kind of has an interest that I can definitely relate that to why that was very present at site to so definitely that shows that there are probably contamination coming in from the sewer line or the water date that is at site to.
Ann Ojeda: So, Charlotte i'll pick up on there for a second so One of the interesting things about our water supply here in auburn is that we have.
Ann Ojeda: elevated chloroform below the ncl so not toxic, but that is kind of our indication that that sewer line is leaking because it contains municipal water, and we see that municipal water signature.
Brennan van Alderwerelt: suppose my question is where's that chloroform coming from though what's the original source of that molecule as a contaminant.
Lee Phillips: And i'm sorry but that's got to be a really quick.
Lee Phillips: response, as we are at time so go ahead if you can answer that quickly otherwise do with it yeah.
Ann Ojeda: yeah brennan I think it's the municipal water source from the leaky sewer line.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you very much.
Lee Phillips: For that, and with that we're going to move on to our next presentation by Hannah Miller, and we are still looking at some water issues.
Lee Phillips: So I will share hannah's presentation with you will.
Lee Phillips: Hello everyone for this project, we wanted to examine two different reservoirs and see how the presence of a mixer would impact nutrient dispersion and the depth of the thermal climate oxy client within the water column.
Lee Phillips: For some background warm automatic bodies of water undergo one period of thermal stratification and one period of mixing in a year.
Lee Phillips: During the summer, the water is warm and strategize into three layers during the fall when the latter begins to cool at the surface, the water density changes, causing it to sink insert a cycling processes stirs up the biogeochemical dispersion.
Lee Phillips: which creates a homogenized temperature oxygen and chemical profile and the water column.
Lee Phillips: This project, especially wanted to examine nutrient dispersion because when stratified nutrient abundance can create you trophy anoxic conditions which makes for poor living situations for the reservoirs biotic organisms.
Lee Phillips: Climate change is already starting to impact average annual water temperature and therefore the stratification periods so establishing this project is intended to be a way for us to track the effects of climate change.
Lee Phillips: Our project examine two different Georgian lakes lake foreigner and hard Labor creek reservoir.
Lee Phillips: While they're both similar in size and depth like varner is an older lake and a solar powered mixers established in the top three to four meters of the water.
Lee Phillips: In harbor creek is a newer reservoir without the solar mixers the solar mixers aim to facilitate water mixing by mixing the chemicals oxygen and temperature evenly in the water column.
Lee Phillips: to test this goal, we collected samples monthly at both reservoirs and we use permanent billy's to ensure we were returning to the same spot each time.
Lee Phillips: hobo mobile sensors run down the buoys displays to every meter which click temperature readings every two hours.
Lee Phillips: When we voted out to the sites, we also use the horizontal water sampler to collect water samples a depths of 136 and nine meters.
Lee Phillips: We also use an icy water probe to record the reservoirs water chemistry at 136 and 10 year markings.
Lee Phillips: The results of our findings are depicted below the top or of graphs devoted to lake varner and the bottom devoted to hard Labor creek reservoir.
Lee Phillips: We have heat maps to determine when and what depth there mclain is established, and we also have line graphs and demonstrate the biogeochemical dispersion and the dissolved oxygen to temperature ratios.
Lee Phillips: Based on our study we came to two main conclusions, the first conclusion is that induced mixing does not impact the dispersion of biogeochemical.
Lee Phillips: According to figures, three and four there's similar patterns of both nitrate and phosphorus across both time in reservoir.
Lee Phillips: The nitrate decreases between one meter and three meters increases between three meters and six meters and then decreases again between six meters and nine meters for both reservoirs during the national October stratification period.
Lee Phillips: The nitrate also has a similar increase from one to three meters and then decrease from three to six meter patterns for both reservoirs during the natural period of March mixing.
Lee Phillips: The phosphate dispersion at both leagues, is also very similar across time and depth through both reservoirs.
Lee Phillips: This makes sense as possibly is absorbed into the underlying settlements and a solar mixers located in the upper four meters, meaning the phosphate is not getting released, and this is not controlled by the solar mixer.
Lee Phillips: The second conclusion reached is that the presence of a solar mixer does not impact the depth of that they're mcclain roxy fine, but does impact the range of the thermal climate oxy Klein.
Lee Phillips: According to figures, five and six both legs experience a wide range of temperature and dissolved oxygen.
Lee Phillips: During the stratification months and a much more compressed range in these factors during the natural mixing periods in March, which indicates that a solar mixer is not responsible for seasonal nutrient dispersion.
Lee Phillips: However, these figures also show that the presence of a solar mixer does limit the range of temperature dissolved oxygen during the stratification months.
Lee Phillips: We see here that for hardly ever creek which has no solar mixer the October temperature ranges from 53 degrees Fahrenheit 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lee Phillips: Whereas like varner which has solar mixer only ranges from 60 degrees Fahrenheit to 75 degrees Fahrenheit.
Lee Phillips: The dissolved oxygen also expressed similar patterns of a wide range of hard Labor creek between zilla zero milligrams per liter and nine milligrams per liter.
Lee Phillips: And a small range at lake barner between one milligram per liter and seven milligrams per liter during stratification periods.
Lee Phillips: These two details point to the fact that the dissolved oxygen and temperature are more homogenized string stratification want to still our mixer is present.
Lee Phillips: Looking at future work we acknowledge that the Sunday can be useful in helping us see how chemical temperature and oxygen behaviors change in the leaks, over time, which can help us track the impacts of climate change on like behavior.
Lee Phillips: We will continue to track them to lake nutrient data oxy clients and thermal clients to further understand the role of induced mixing.
Lee Phillips: and also to analyze more nutrients within the lake and within the surrounding watersheds to track it sourcing We also hope to begin examining biomass to gain more tangible insight of solar mixers and aquatic ecosystems, thank you.
Lee Phillips: Questions for him.
Hannah Miller: I see that there's a question in the chat from Joel asking where some of the figures only extend to six meters that's a really good question so we basically sampled.
Hannah Miller: During this project from each of the different depths at 136 and nine meters.
Hannah Miller: But there were some technical difficulties that made it impossible to read the lake foreigner nine meter data in March, the measurements, just like weren't translating effectively, so instead we just looked at the data.
Hannah Miller: Where it was very strong and reliant information and, in this case for lake varner during the month march month, it was just for one, three and six meters this doesn't impact any of the other temperature data or anything, it was just that one specific.
Hannah Miller: Like bit of information that we, that was a little bit compromised in terms of evaluating it in the lab so we just wanted to use the concrete data that we had.
Dave Dobson (he/him): I was wondering if maybe I You said this and I missed it, but what the intent of the solar mixing was and whether your research.
Dave Dobson (he/him): says anything about whether it's achieving that intended.
Hannah Miller: purpose yeah yeah absolutely so the solar mixers on it's still very early in the the period of time since it's been actually put into the reservoir is only one of the legs that we were examining actually has.
Hannah Miller: A solar mixer and the intention of it is basically to keep the oxygen the temperature and the nutrient dispersion in the water column.
Hannah Miller: homogenized throughout the year because there's a period where things are stratified and it can cause eutrophication in the bottom layers.
Hannah Miller: So to kind of prevent that from happening, the presence of these mixers just keeps the water turning constantly and.
Hannah Miller: Our results since sort of found that it does kind of work for examining the range of temperature data and.
Hannah Miller: And nutrient data, but it doesn't really impact the depth and we think this is because the solar mixer.
Hannah Miller: is only located in the top three to four meters, whereas these leaks that we're looking at are 10 meters deep, so it just might not extend all the way to the bottom yeah that's a good question.
Dave Dobson (he/him): or cool.
Hannah Miller: there's another question I asked if the solar mixers are not relevant, or just inefficient, so this is a very long term project and we're still in the preliminary phases of it.
Hannah Miller: It just started last year and it's intended to kind of be a very long term study on the effects of climate change, so I wouldn't say that it's effective, I do think that there are components of the solar mixer that we were hoping would.
Hannah Miller: show more information, this early on in terms of keeping the temperature and the nutrients a little bit more stratified, but it is effective in sort of.
Hannah Miller: Like narrowing down the the range of the concentration of the temperature and the dissolved oxygen that's one thing that it actually has been.
Hannah Miller: kind of doing effectively that we found in our study this year, but I think that it's just going to require a bit more time and a bit more investigation.
Hannah Miller: we're going to continue looking at these these water samples for the next bunch of years and see if anything changes so it just might be too early in to call for sure that make sense.
Lee Phillips: So really quickly What surprised you most.
Hannah Miller: What result.
Lee Phillips: or lack of results surprised you most.
Hannah Miller: yeah, I think, personally, I was expecting to see a little bit more information about the temperature being more homogenized throughout the.
Hannah Miller: Throughout the lake during these periods of mixing because these mixers are huge and there's not just one there's a bunch of different ones located around.
Hannah Miller: So we were sort of coming into this expecting to see more homogenization throughout the water column, and it didn't exactly turn out that way but.
Hannah Miller: Once again it's still more of a long term project and we're going we're going to keep looking and see if anything changes over time that's a good question, thank you.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you, thanks, Anna enjoyed that and we're going to stay.
Lee Phillips: With the presentation from emory.
Lee Phillips: University and move on to some pH levels by Joel is it learner.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Yes, okay.
Lee Phillips: Great so look at your presentation started now and have questions for you, following.
Lee Phillips: Hello everyone Thank you so much for coming to my poster presentation this afternoon.
Lee Phillips: Before we begin i'd like to thank the event coordinators of the geological society of America southeastern section for putting this virtual conference together.
Lee Phillips: And then during everything goes smoothly during these unprecedented times, my name is Joel learner and i'm here today to present research I conducted as an Oxford research scholar at Oxford college of emory university.
Lee Phillips: on behalf of myself my partner Leah hard tongue and doctors agent como.
Lee Phillips: As you can see, and figure one iron enters fresh water systems as pyrite either naturally through a roshan or anthropogenic lead through mine tailings.
Lee Phillips: oxidation then occurs informed sulfuric acid shown in figure to which lowers the pH of the system and effects plant nutrient uptake.
Lee Phillips: In order to mitigate this harmful effect on ecosystems plant uptake and storage or phytoremediation can be utilized as an alternative for more destructive and waste producing strategies.
Our research focused on the effect of pH and the phytoremediation of iron by water hyacinth.
We expected for mediation to occur across all pH ranges tested, but it was expected that greater efficiency would be observed in acidic trials, because the prior research in the copper remediation.
By water hyacinth in addition to the assumption that the two metals would behave similarly.
In order to test this water high symptoms exposed to standardize iron solutions adjusted to three different pH ranges.
Representing acidic your drill and basic conditions with each range containing three replicant trials, as seen him Figure three, where each column represents a different pH range.
samples were collected every five minutes for the first 40 minutes every 20 minutes, following that for a total of 180 minutes and then again after 24 hours.
The samples, for then treated with an ethylene to form a colorful complex that could then undergo visible light spectrometry in order to determine the iron concentration in each sample.
figure for describes changes in iron concentration and each pH range of the first 180 minutes of the sampling period well figure five describes how phytoremediation by water hyacinth.
Affected up iron concentrations after 24 hours but remediation in the acidic trials.
lowered iron concentrations by 80% in the neutral trials by 67% but resulted in an increase of 20% in the basic trials compared to the initial concentration remediation was most effective in the acidic solution, but was not effective and basic solutions.
The fighter mediation environment by water hyacinth different from the remediation of copper by water hyacinth.
As was determined by prior research has seen them figure six or copper was remediated by each pH range consistently over the hundred maybe minute sampling period.
The literature suggests that this could be attributed to differences and the processes through which water hyacinth absorbs the two metals, which is indicated by prior studies that suggest that iron copper are located in different parts of the route after remediation.
As previously stated remediation did not occur in the basic solution instead resulting in an increase in iron concentration.
Well, this could indicate a release of iron from the water hyacinth It could also be an indication of sampling error.
formations of breast colored material were observed in the basic solution which could be attributed to the formation of iron plaques that could both inhibit the absorption of iron.
By water hyacinth and when collected in the basic trial samples increase the reported iron concentrations present.
This research provides a plethora of paths forward to better understand the processes play during phytoremediation by water hyacinth.
In order to improve future experiments sampling methodology will be modified to accommodate for the heterogeneity the solution, in addition, it will be an integral to improve the measurement of iron concentrations in the solutions.
Each of research will also include a wider diversity of conditions that will examine the effectiveness of phytoremediation of acid my drainage.
On top of possibly testing remediation on field samples of acid mine drainage.
This will include investigating how water hyacinth remediate solutions contaminated with both iron and copper in the lab and varying concentrations.
In could also include investigating the effectiveness of plants that are native to the environments affected as water hyacinth is a highly invasive species.
I would like to take time again, to thank everyone involved in seeing this research project to the end, including the Oxford research scholars program in my shop.
A student who initiated prior research on this topic, through the RS program Thank you so much again for attending this presentation and so excited to answer some of the questions you all have about this research.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you Joel.
Lee Phillips: kind of questions to do we have for Joel today.
Brennan van Alderwerelt: I have a question for Joel which he may have answered and I may have missed but i'm wondering why why water hyacinth all plants.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Water hyacinth is a plant that's very traditionally used in studies for phytoremediation because.
Joel Lerner (he/him): it's a hyper accumulator for heavy metals, so that means that when water hyacinth isn't solution with heavy metals present it'll absorb those metals, through its root structure, I mean because of that.
Joel Lerner (he/him): That just it's a very clear indicator that it might be a good species for you so phytoremediation.
Joel Lerner (he/him): But because of the invasiveness like I mentioned, there at the end it wouldn't be something that could be used in mass in actual like field studies, because it's very like it would spread very quickly into the local environment.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Thank you Joel.
Joel Lerner (he/him): I see a question from Hannah in the chat where.
Joel Lerner (he/him): She says, would you be able to talk a bit more about what the individual points in the figure for line graph and, yes, I could so for the could you actually share screen for the poster again just so we can have a visual.
Joel Lerner (he/him): But for the line graph each point represents on a average of the three separate trials that we did for each pH range and then for each of those trials, we ran the sample collected in triplicate through the big visual spectroscopy harsh.
Joel Lerner (he/him): d 390 Dr 390 machine and we also did as I learned yesterday and the isotope short course that we participated in standard simple bracketing.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Where we ran a standard of the Ionized water between each of those triplicate samples to ensure that the precision of each reading was very small or was very tight and that that's indicated by the error bars there.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Thank you so much for that question Hannah.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Are there any other questions.
Jeffrey Ryan: i'm curious about the.
Jeffrey Ryan: The pH sensitivity of the iron here.
Jeffrey Ryan: That the that the the acidic environment now I you know, and I guess I part, my question is wondering what the natural situation is likely to be.
Jeffrey Ryan: That the acidic environment is seems to be quite efficient, but things get a little bit start you know they move toward higher pH and it just sort of falls apart, so what what what what chemically speaking is going on there.
Joel Lerner (he/him): So if you could zoom in to figure one.
Joel Lerner (he/him): um it, so the environment that we're actually investigating this and application wise is areas that are subject to acid mine drainage from mining operations, so this is actually going to be a low pH environment that's expected because of the arm the addition of i'm.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Sorry i'm sulfuric acid, the addition of sulfuric acid from the oxidation of pyrite, so we are already expecting that to be an acidic environment, so I guess you could see the results of this study is kind of good news like yay that phytoremediation is operable at these low pH levels.
Joel Lerner (he/him): and
Jeffrey Ryan: But, but you know the other thing i've heard about water hyacinth is you know I live in Florida, and we see that as sort of a pest feces.
Jeffrey Ryan: And so, if you're if you're thinking about a natural system, do you think about a non mind drain system is is it going to be effective at all is it you know what what are what are sort of normal later vhs I guess.
Joel Lerner (he/him): I think that's such a wonderful question and I think that perfectly highlights the future directions of the research that we want to investigate.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Specifically, with looking into other species that might be more commonly found in those lake systems, so we would hopefully in the future.
Joel Lerner (he/him): investigate system like what possibly what hyper accumulators exist in native ecosystems and then working from there to further investigate if they would be effective as a fighter mediation species.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Well, thanks Joel.
Lee Phillips: i'm she's.
Lee Phillips: I so with with.
Lee Phillips: 20 seconds here just a reminder to all of us Oxford at emory is that the first two years of college.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Yes, it is so.
Lee Phillips: So you're getting involved in research very early on, so congratulations see that's fantastic.
Joel Lerner (he/him): Thank you, it was a very, very valuable experience.
Lee Phillips: it's great.
Lee Phillips: Alright, well, we will move on to our next presentation and I believing apologize it's not as fluid as it could be, but this is this one is by Sydney squared R square engine.
Lee Phillips: From.
Lee Phillips: Davidson college here in North Carolina here i'm recalling that i'm at unc greensboro and it's, the first of a couple of presentations from Davidson so without further ado we'll have this one and get started, you can ask me some questions here at the end.
Lee Phillips: Everyone, my name is Sydney scranton i'm with the Davidson college department of environmental studies i'm working with my advisor brad Johnson on this project.
And today i'll be presenting on flooding and headwater streams of the Piedmont, and the implications for emergency management.
So i'm at Davidson college, which is located in Davidson North Carolina and my project is looking at headwater streams in the region.
And these streams are located in the watershed of the PD river and this area is in the Piedmont of North Carolina which is underlying underlying by clay soils.
And the land uses typically suburban and forest it.
So understanding the flood risk helps emergency management crews prepare for emergencies in large weather events such as floods or other extreme precipitation events.
And so the Davidson town police and fire departments asked that we examined the flood risk at five locations that were deemed critical to emergency management in town.
They were mostly concerned because they had seen change of land use from agricultural and forth to Atlanta to suburban land.
And we can see that with impasse studies, we have seen that suburban suburbanization increases impervious surface, which in turn.
makes watersheds more flashy and.
Increases the flood risk.
So the methods.
That I use or I calculated manning's velocities for these locations using.
A slope I calculated from metric D and lidar data, and I also drive cross sections from lidar data.
which I then calculated the discharge to flood the certain locations that we looked at so three of the locations or four of the locations are bridges.
And the fifth location is a fire station so for the bridges, we I looked at how much water, we need to fill up a certain area to flood the bridge and for the fire station I looked up how much water would need to fill up the area below the fire station, so that it would start flooding.
The fire station and potentially emergency crews could be inhibited by that.
And then I compared the discharge calculated to the.
To historical data from a stream gauge that was on one of the sites and that was a usgs key stream gauge that had been recording data for the past 16 years.
And so I wanted to determine the flood risk and estimate approximate recurrence intervals for floods.
And during my reading of this paper, there was actually a very large flood i'm actually the first time I presented on it, the morning of that day, there was a very large flood.
Where the stream gauge hit its highest peak in the past or its second highest peak in the past 16 years, so I used field observations from that day to compare it with the actual numbers coming out on the stream gauge and to get a feel for what a flood of that magnitude would look like.
And so, at one location Robert Walker drive the flood risk, because actually it's very high so that location floods several times a year it's definitely a problem.
And then there were two locations where the flood risk is moderate maybe a 10 to 20 year recurrence Interpol, being a concern and then for the last two locations which one was sheer road and the other was the Davidson fire station number two the flood risk was very low.
And that is good, because obviously the Davidson fire station does not want to be inhibited by a potential flood, so I concluded that fire crews in the case of a large scale precipitation event should not be hindered by.
Large precipitation However, one thing I did see was that the maximum discharge was increasing in the past 16 years at the stream gauge, which means that potentially the development in town is actually worsening the Flash flash flood risk and Davidson.
So we can see that this system does produce considerable flash floods and that the risk is increasing.
However, undercurrent land use, I will note that these events are unlikely to impact emergency management crews.
Lee Phillips: Exceeding um we have time for questions.
Lee Phillips: we'll get started.
Lee Phillips: When you look at the risk for the fire station and for flooding that would cause some issues with respect to the fire sorry i've got it.
Lee Phillips: needs to go there, we got nothing like a cat to interrupt a poster session but.
Lee Phillips: Did you take into account the roads that were in the vicinity of the fire station, with respect to the creeks as well.
Sidney Swearingen: yeah so um Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how to zoom into certain places, but I had on my poster I had a map of the different locations that I looked at, but the main so the.
Sidney Swearingen: What so yeah the fire station was right next to actually a bridge over the stream.
Sidney Swearingen: And the bridge was at a lower height than the fire station.
Sidney Swearingen: And it was directly adjacent to it so.
Sidney Swearingen: It was it was at a lower height, but not much lower basically, the answer is no, the the flood.
Sidney Swearingen: The flood risk isn't very high at that bridge there, but I did I did take a look at that.
Sidney Swearingen: And then, for the other, the one where the flood risk is pretty high that one is kind of nearby to the fire station, but you can make an alternate route around it, so if that bridge is flooding than a fire truck can go in a different road and not be.
Sidney Swearingen: inhibited by a flood.
Lee Phillips: That was my follow up question, so thank you for go ahead dance answering that other questions.
Sidney Swearingen: I see bailey's said, would you be able to mitigate were you able to mitigate the situation and prevent floods, so I think the main takeaway is that the bridges that are have a higher flood risk, there are routes around them so.
Sidney Swearingen: You know, floods are going to happen there are certain.
Sidney Swearingen: Things that are being done in the area, so there's a park right next to the creek that.
Sidney Swearingen: Instead of being development instead of being houses it's just a part that kind of provides a nice buffer zone there for water to.
Sidney Swearingen: fill up there's also a golf course next to the creek and another place so they're definitely buffer areas where you know the when there's flash floods, the flood won't be totally detrimental.
Sidney Swearingen: um, and so the recurrence interval yeah so those were kind of just determined based on.
Sidney Swearingen: Like there was that yeah my classifications are kind of just random not random but.
Sidney Swearingen: The low risk was something that was not in the 500 year flood zone.
Sidney Swearingen: And I would say, a high risk would be you know something of one year recurrence or less than one year and then the medium risks were around the like 10 year recurrence zone.
Lee Phillips: Thank you.
Lee Phillips: We are at a point where we need to move forward, but I did have another comment that's my kid comes back to say hello, everyone i'm.
Lee Phillips: You know we're seeing 500 year flood intervals flood real schools, become more and more common and it's forcing us to reconsider the way we we do these recurrence intervals.
Lee Phillips: interesting and I hope that that will be useful to the towel Davidson going forward, thank you very much Sydney our next presentation, as I stated before it's also from.
Lee Phillips: A Davidson college student and that's Lucy Dixon we're in should be looking at slightly different aspects with respect to understanding settlement variability so without further ado i'll have that one.
Lee Phillips: Good started for us here.
Lee Phillips: hi my name is Lucy Dixon and I am presenting research on sedimentation patterns and coves and lake wylie North Carolina.
Lee Phillips: Recently residents who live along these codes are experiencing coven phil is upstream development causes sedimentation rates to increase.
Lee Phillips: land development is known to increase sedimentation rates by causing more erosion and run off, but the degree of downstream impact is less understood.
Lee Phillips: So the studies purpose was to gain a better understanding of segmentation rates patterns and variability between codes associated with various levels of upstream development.
Lee Phillips: Because sand erosion occurs during high energy hydraulic events we expected to see sand in codes associated with.
Lee Phillips: Developed watersheds, on the other hand, we in undeveloped watersheds we expected to see smaller sentiment particles like silt and clay.
Lee Phillips: Additionally, we found that sand had an inverse relationship with organic matter and because organic matter is added to the lake bed and almost constant rate we took this to mean that sand represents a faster sedimentation rate.
For our methods we looked at five core five coasts and we looked at him and satellite imagery for each cove to determine whether the watershed was developed developing or undeveloped.
Then, with the help of Mecklenburg county we went to each cove and two cores using a livingston scoring system.
Back at the lab we identified sediment layers by defining characteristics and for each identified layer, we ran tests to determine the ratio of sand so and clay, as well as the percent of organic matter present.
For the results section i'm going to focus in three on three of our 15 course the three associated watersheds for these cores are pictured on the left.
The cores are in the middle there oriented vertically, with the shallowest being the top and the deepest being the bottom.
The graphs are on the right and they represents the organic matter content and the sand content for each core the y axis is depth and it is oriented like the course are and the X axis represents percentage.
On the first car, I want to talk about is the core from McDowell cove which excel cove is associated with an undeveloped watershed and picture here in green.
This core was particularly interesting because we did not expect it to be so sandy if you look at the core sand and organic content, which is represented by the green line on the graph you'll notice that the middle third is almost 100% sand and the organic matter is very low.
There are several explanations for this, including the steep terrain and sandy soils of Mecklenburg McDowell watershed.
Another explanation, maybe that this layer of sentiment is from us certain it significant hydraulic event in the past.
And if this is the case, the sentiment layers and the top third of the core may have been accumulating for a significant amount of time.
And the whole core could represent most of the sedimentation that has occurred in this cove since lake wylie was flooded in 1924.
The next question when talking about us from big Paul cove and it's this particular core is associated with the smaller sub watershed so it's pictured here in orange next to the larger blue watershed.
The Orange water shed had just recently been developed into a dense residential area, if you look at the red line on the sand organic matter graphs which represents this core.
you'll see that there are significant pulses and high same content and low organic manner.
This these pulses represent active fluctuation in sediment and correlate development with faster rates of sedimentation.
The final four, I want to talk about is from boyd cove which is associated with a developed watershed and pictures at the bottom of pink.
All the course from boyd cove had very clean yellow course sand and very low organic rates together the strongly suggests a correlation between development and increased rates of sedimentation.
However, this course particularly interesting because it has these cool silty enter beds that may correspond with seasonal weather patterns suggesting that weather is another significant factor to look at and sedimentation patterns.
Overall, we found that there are lots of natural variation between coves and within coves the types of sediment we found vary greatly depending aware on the delta we sampled.
Because of this, we believe that we need to measure the total depth of accumulated settlement to give an overall sedimentation rate to make a comparison between coves easier.
Additionally, coring and a set pattern each coach will help to fully characterize the delta and enter code comparisons will be made more significant.
Our primary search has adopted these two suggestions as we conduct more in depth studies on to coves and like wiley.
And in addition to coring we now probe for total settlement depth to find a total sedimentation rate, as well as sample and strategic locations throughout the coast, for a more holistic understanding of the Delta.
Lee Phillips: Thank you Lucy.
Lee Phillips: you're sitting outside enjoying this good.
Lee Phillips: Taking a conference.
Lucy Dixon: Why time they kind of funny i'm actually right outside the vaccine clinic just got my vaccine so.
Lee Phillips: So we have some time for questions for Lucy.
Lee Phillips: And i'll get started.
Lee Phillips: I see you know with McDonald cove big PA and boyd you've got course one, three and three.
Lee Phillips: Are these course that you're showing us the representative or the most representative of the story that that is being unveiled here.
Lucy Dixon: Yes, and no um we saw lots of variation within coves um which was hard to capture when we just had five minutes and I had 15 different course.
Lucy Dixon: So I selected the ones that were the most interesting, I would argue, the one that I would say really shows a correlation between development and the presence of sand.
Lucy Dixon: In coves would be the boyd poem in general, they were also clean such clean look course sand that it must have been lots of significant hydraulic events that brought down that much sedimentation.
Lucy Dixon: But, in general, there was a lot of variation and you would look at two cores taken 30 meters apart, and they would look completely different.
Lucy Dixon: So it's definitely an exploratory study and that's why we're continuing this research in a much more in depth way within.
Lucy Dixon: The cove that we're looking at now so we took 15 cores across five different codes last semester, and now we're taking 22 cores across two coasts So hopefully that'll give us a little bit better clarity about how the different variation between coasts.
Lee Phillips: Thank you for that, and can you remind us what your age control is how you knowing how to stack these one against another.
Lucy Dixon: So there isn't that is one of the problems with this and what we're trying to figure out how to how do we make them directly comparable.
Lucy Dixon: And we, this is controlled by depth so not we don't know what the age is for each of these, the overall sediments accumulation would be from 1924 but we don't have a way to match it with specific hydraulic events, yes.
Lee Phillips: I like the optimism here.
Lee Phillips: What do you think you'll be able to hang some lines on.
Lee Phillips: Are there certain events.
Lee Phillips: Well horizons significance.
Lucy Dixon: it's a little bit difficult because it's a reservoir and the depth, I mean the depth is controlled by the dam so, at least, we do know what the depth of the reservoir looks like.
Lucy Dixon: So maybe past droughts, would be a great thing to look at, because that would both impact what sentiment is coming in and how the delta forms, so we would see this sentiment on lower lobes of the Delta.
Lucy Dixon: But again, this is, this is something that we might have to observe as it's happening to really see what the impact would be on the delta formation.
Lucy Dixon: If that makes it does that answer your question.
Lee Phillips: Yes, it does, thank you.
Lee Phillips: I am looking to see if there any questions in the chat and I don't believe i'm seeing any.
Lee Phillips: Any other questions for Lucy.
Lee Phillips: was a guy who likes to push plastic into delta France have fun with that looks looks like a lot of fun and and we'll continue with our next presentation also one that has to do with some.
Lee Phillips: Some.
water.
Lee Phillips: Chemistry temperature issues we're going to move on, up to the State of Virginia so.
Lee Phillips: We get the my screen shared and we'll have now presentation.
Lee Phillips: By Bailey o'brien.
Lee Phillips: From Virginia tech.
Lee Phillips: This research project is based in the valley and rich region of Southwest Virginia our site is a head water catchment on brush mountain.
Lee Phillips: we're specifically studying the junction of a tributary with the main stem during fieldwork we noticed that the tributary which has a much smaller watershed.
Lee Phillips: appears to have significantly more flow the mainstream channel we use to room temperature and it field investigation to study the mixing of the two streams and the cause of the elevated discharge in the tributary.
sensors replaced in the main stem the tributary and at the junction where the water combines these sensors measured every 10 minutes and measured in degrees Fahrenheit which was later converted into degrees Celsius.
During the field investigation we identified a flooded abandoned mine shaft connected to the tributary.
After the field work when looking at the temperatures of the main stem and tributaries we noticed that the temperature of the combined water was closer to the tributary than expected.
When looking at watershed size and figure to this watershed size of the tributary is 24 hector's which is less than one third, the size of the larger watershed that of the main stem which is approximately 80 hector's.
to identify the water coming from the smaller tributaries or the main stem we performed an end Member mixing analysis.
To do this we assume that the that Ms is equal to one and then solve for the discharge of the tributary this yielded discharge of the tributary as a proportion of the mainstream discharge.
The analysis was consistent with the observation that the tributary temperature was closer to that of the mainstream temperature.
seasonally we also looked at differing behaviors of the water in figure seven you'll notice that, in the summertime tributary one is contributing about 80% to Ms one this is surprising because the size of the watershed again is less than one third, the size for the whole stream.
Additionally, the temperature of the tributary is colder than that of the main stem indicating that the stream flow is likely more from groundwater.
Conversely, in figure eight the temperature of the tributary in the winter is warmer than that of the main Stat.
This finding is another indication that the stream flow is from groundwater in the wintertime the proportion of flow from tributary one hovers right around 50%.
We believe this is due to the process of transpiration stopping so the mainstream is producing more water, but the tributaries contribution remains consistent.
These findings have led us to conclude that the flooded abandoned mine shaft is contributing most of the flow to the tributary leading it to produce far more water than would be.
Lee Phillips: apologize for that i'm not sure how that stopped i'll see if I can get started again.
The analysis was consistent with the observation that the tributary temperature was closer to that of the mainstream temperature.
Lee Phillips: seasonally we also looked at differing behaviors of the water in figure seven you'll notice that, in the summertime tributary one is contributing about 80% to Ms one this is surprising because the size of the watershed again is less than one third, the size for the whole stream.
Additionally, the temperature of the tributary is colder than that of the mainstream indicating that the stream flow is likely more from groundwater.
Conversely, in figure eight the temperature of the tributary in the winter is warmer than that of the mainstream.
This finding is another indication that the stream flow is from groundwater in the wintertime the proportion of flow from tributary one hovers right around 50%.
We believe this is due to the process of transpiration stopping so the mainstream is producing more water, but the tributaries contribution remains consistent.
These findings have led us to conclude that the flooded abandoned mine shaft is contributing most of the flow to the tributary leading it to produce far more water than would be expected from its watershed area alone.
Lee Phillips: Thanks.
Lee Phillips: Again i'm not sure how that disruption happened, but I apologize hope to set us off too much questions.
Lee Phillips: Alright, so i'll get started.
Lee Phillips: You know i'm rarely surprised when I see groundwater contributing significantly streamflow.
Lee Phillips: But i'm just curious what was surprising to you, within this study and if I need to pull up the image and share it again and show anything just just tell me to do so, and I can but.
Lee Phillips: there's a lot going on here.
Bailey O'Brien: yeah I think one of the most like interesting things that really surprised me was how on how much the ground, the mine was contributing to it.
Bailey O'Brien: One of the things that we were thinking about is that it would the water was actually pressurized when they were mining and then they hit and it's like consistent blood pressure is still so high that it's still contributing so i'm consistently.
Lee Phillips: And what kind of implications positive or negative could have.
Bailey O'Brien: On there's a variety on for future work, we could definitely look at you know metal in the water, and how.
Bailey O'Brien: The temperature, because it is more consistent could be beneficiary to organisms that are living in the stream that are more sensitive to water temperature so that would be I guess one positive of like you know buffer temperature and then a negative of heavy metals.
Lee Phillips: Other questions.
Lee Phillips: So you mentioned future studies.
Lee Phillips: Are you in a position where you can contribute a future studies or would this be something you hand it off to another student.
Bailey O'Brien: yeah i'm a software right well on so I definitely have a few more years to get in and look at it um.
Bailey O'Brien: It was definitely interesting because I just sort of like tagged along with my professor and he already had the site setup and then we were looking I was just kind of data hunting and found the whole.
Bailey O'Brien: You know temperature differences and stuff like that so there's definitely a lot of opportunity there to for further studies to look at you know different things more chemically involved.
Right.
Lee Phillips: So, since you have that that room for reflection, you have to have quite a bit of room for reflection and I now that's that's probably where we do most of our growing so when we get a chance to think about what we've done.
Lee Phillips: And particularly what we would have done differently, so what at this point, do you look at it go well, I wish I had the chance to go and do that in a different way.
Bailey O'Brien: I would probably say looking at i'm measuring the the proportion of flow the end Member mixing analysis, it was done as best we could, but if you.
Bailey O'Brien: In my poster there's fluctuations in the fall that you can't really tell it just bounces back and forth between like high proportion of flow and low proportion of flow and that's because the groundwater temperatures so closely close close to the means done.
Lee Phillips: interesting work, and if you do continue with it, we look forward to hearing an update next year.
Lee Phillips: Thank you, thanks for.
Lee Phillips: taking the time to be part of.
Lee Phillips: The undergraduate poster undergraduate research poster session and we'll move on to our next poster.
Lee Phillips: And presentation and this one is also by Virginia tech student Kelly crum and looking at again.
Lee Phillips: Some water temperature.
Lee Phillips: variables, let me get that shared and started.
This study we determine flow presence or absence with temperature data to see if colonial deposits inhibited surface flow.
We got the idea for this study, while visiting field site we noticed, there were some section of the stream where surface flow seem to disappear.
We wondered why this was happening, since we expected to see flow in those areas.
After looking into stream expansion and contraction a little further we noticed that clearly deposits, maybe what was causing the absence of service flow in the sections.
We then started by mapping some clinical deposits in the area, similar to the method us to create the geologic map trend and figure to.
Lisa digital elevation model to locate clean fuel deposits, the key things we looked for were areas for the stream was incised and the slopes on the sides of the street or shallow.
These locations were checked in the field for accuracy.
Lee Phillips: The next step was to install 30 temperature sensors throughout the stream network their locations are shown in figure for their place in areas of permanent flow fluctuating flow and in the air tied to trees, as shown in Figure three.
We then created plots with this temperature data showing small groups of sensors that were near each other.
figure five shows the relationship between a sensor in the air, since afford read in a sensor with fluctuating close since or five and blue.
And they're five starts out in the air, because it fluctuates more than sensor for than it is in the water late August, when it is more in line sensor forward.
You can see the same relationship and the other plots where the sensors in the air deviate more than the sensors in the water.
From these plots we determined to sit deviation that determines whether a sensor is in or out of the water.
We use this deviation to create a heat map that shows, whether it is in or out of the water on a certain day.
A blue rectangle represents the sensor that was in the water on a given day and a red rectangle represents sensor that was out of water on a given day.
The plot above the heat map shows the water level of the stream on the same time scale, as you can see from Ms nine the most upstream sensor during the water level peaks in the fall the sensor remains dry.
As a stream gets water in the winter and this 19 is what during the peaks in the water level plot, this is what we expected to see as a stream expands in the winter.
Additionally, there are two two vertical lines on the water level plot, these represent two dates that are depicted on the following two maps.
It first map shows locations of what you dry sensors on the State shown in blue and red like the heat map cloverfield deposits are shown in purple.
As you can see the areas of the street network that do not have flow or movie will sections.
Another pattern we noticed was that the lower level deposit received less frequent float in the upper clivia deposit this global deposit is broader and probably deeper, therefore, it has a higher capacity to transmit water below the ground.
Another factor controlling stream wetness maybe this mineshaft located on the right trim of the lower colonial deposit.
The mine shaft rides a consistent flow of groundwater into the stream.
From this study we have concluded that temperature sensors can be used to accurately map surface flow also stream sections underlying with collegial deposits may inhibit flow and the degree to which they do so is rightly like the related to their subsurface depth in with.
Thank you for listening to this presentation feel free to contact me if you have any comments or questions.
Lee Phillips: Thanks Kelly.
Lee Phillips: So we have time for questions for Kelly.
Lee Phillips: We study seem to build with each other is that, am I interpreting it correctly.
Kelly Crum: Please, the same data in the same site location, but we are looking at different types of things.
Lee Phillips: Absolutely.
Lee Phillips: And are you are you beginning to see.
Lee Phillips: Some.
Lee Phillips: correlative types of.
Lee Phillips: Indications between the different things that you're looking at with respect to your individual studies.
Kelly Crum: um do you mean like the connection between our two studies.
Kelly Crum: Yes, so.
Kelly Crum: We did think that the mine shaft that Bailey mentioned might be impacting the lightness of the stream.
Kelly Crum: You could see that in.
Kelly Crum: think it was figured 10 or 11.
Kelly Crum: Because that map showed on the blue dot first sensors that were what on a given day and those sensors.
Kelly Crum: Around the mine shaft were busy what.
Sidney Swearingen: So did that mean that the water was going down underneath like into the mind chefs rather than in the streams.
Kelly Crum: We think that it was coming out from the mine shaft and contributing groundwater into the stream.
Sidney Swearingen: cool Thank you.
Lee Phillips: I think this is the image you, you were looking at is that right.
Lee Phillips: So what surprised you most.
Lee Phillips: What has surprised you most so far.
Kelly Crum: i'm lower cool the old deposit was receiving left flow and.
Kelly Crum: That was sort of surprising, but we think that may be due to a difference in subsurface depth and width and since the lower colonial deposit has a larger Center for volume, we believe that it may inhibit more flow.
And quickly build upon it.
Lee Phillips: So, are you to a point where you you've got a couple more years that you can spend working on this.
Kelly Crum: I only have one more semester, but I am putting together a project to investigate a water chemistry.
Kelly Crum: caused by the mine shaft so we're going to look at upstream versus downstream of the mine shaft what the trace trace metals in the Ion concentrations are the if the mine shaft had an effect on that.
Lee Phillips: That sounds like that would be a pretty interesting state of being part of much thank you yeah definitely.
Lee Phillips: Well there's some other questions for Kelly.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you very much for sharing this with us.
Lee Phillips: We do have a couple minutes.
Lee Phillips: Before we can get started on the next presentation.
Lee Phillips: If you have anything that you'd like to add, please feel free to do that.
Lee Phillips: Okay, so we're going to.
Lee Phillips: do a little transition here mid poster session.
Lee Phillips: When i'm going to handle hand off the introductions to my colleague on university and he's going to introduce.
Lee Phillips: The next few and then we will be wrapping up the session here in in a little while and about 35 minutes or will have some concluding remarks and.
Lee Phillips: certainly want to make sure that if you have questions comments for the end of the session that you stick around because it's always need to to think about what we've done today and what we're going to do tomorrow with our second undergraduate research closer session so.
Lee Phillips: Passing the MIC off.
Lee Phillips: Thank you.
Dogancan Yasar: Dr Phillips.
Lee Phillips: And now we will continue with the validation of the.
Dogancan Yasar: Data to rate on risk map of Williams williamsburg Virginia and Joe is going to tell us about our research.
and share my screen.
Here we go.
Lee Phillips: got your wallpaper here.
Dogancan Yasar: oops sorry.
Lee Phillips: quite all right.
Lee Phillips: Here we go.
Lee Phillips: Oh, one more little technical when you hit share screen before you hit the play so stop sharing and go back to the share screen.
Lee Phillips: And on the lower left there's a share audio box that you'll need to check to and then click share screen.
Lee Phillips: Sorry.
Lee Phillips: What happens when you hand things off mid stream but it's all good.
Hello i'm fine and i'm a senior majoring in geology from the College of Lehman I posters about the validation of a derivative.
Work routine.
Is a naturally occurring radioactive uranium to cancer cells and bedrock this gaskins even know homes are exposed or an opening and closing and safely.
odorless and tasteless it's particularly dangerous as it can cause lung cancer and other serious health effects.
average rate on levels in some ways, precarious homes have been found to exceed EPA safe parameter for Pico curious per liter of air alpha energy treat on test kits and compile the results from testing by zip code, as you can see figure one from.
40% of the work you're doing 28 or above for people curious currently you're joining zip code 23185 which covers the rest of the city waves because less data, but still 15% of homes tested or above for pisco curious.
This post is if we can help desk and led to the creation of a raid on risk, based on the geologic not always located in the coastal plain of Virginia.
Lee Phillips: So is your logic map a good predictor for radon risk.
Lee Phillips: Recent research has shown a correlation between unsafely high radon gas levels in homes in williamsburg Virginia two homes built in and slightly above sediments the place in your town formation.
Lee Phillips: geologic map show where these your tents, that of interview fat and williamsburg homes that elevations between 60 4050 feet seem to have moderate risk of unsafe radon.
Lee Phillips: homeschool below 58 feet are predicted to be at the greatest risk, the risk map showing figured three has made using the depth of the yorktown formation, as well as passport and conducted with in williamsburg.
Dogancan Yasar: It shows low moderate and high risk areas, the interactive risk map.
Dogancan Yasar: can be used to assess risk get any location within the boundaries of williamsburg and during address and the map will show your expected risk at that location.
Dogancan Yasar: locations within the red area are predicted to be at high risk of read on exposure greater than four people curious per liter locations within the yellow are predicted to have.
Dogancan Yasar: Moderate risk and locations within the light blue area are predicted to be a low risk, the purpose of this research was to validate the rate on top of williamsburg by administering.
Dogancan Yasar: rate and detection test in homes throughout williamsburg in each of these areas so How did we validate the radon risk.
Dogancan Yasar: In October 2020 during radar no Awareness Week we publicize the opportunity for Homeowners to have their homes tested for rate on via the local newspaper and a campus announcement.
Dogancan Yasar: radar detection kit donated by Virginia Department of Health were provided 27 Williams for commoner owners as depicted in figure for.
Dogancan Yasar: After the 48 hour tests that detectors were collected and returned to alpha energy laboratories for results.
Dogancan Yasar: Results are compared to expected risk return and validation error things cranium pro long term detectors shown in figure five workplace in three of the homes to verify the accuracy of the short term detectors.
Dogancan Yasar: Measured radon concentrations from the overlapping 48 hours of testing or extracted averaging compared to the short term results.
The results generally match the expected risk, as shown in figure 613 of the homes tested as expected 12 tested lower than expected into tested higher than expected.
One home that was expected to be at low risk kind of activity of 11.5 because cheers per liter the highest of the 27 tested helps.
tested homes or added to the radon map as shown in figure seven in order to visually support validation red circles indicate results were as expected and greater than.
For PQ curious per liter orange circles indicate results are lower than expected in less than four Pico curious per liter and blue circles indicate results are expected.
But below for Pico curious purveyor as shown in figure eight average concentrations taken from the long term detectors were point 1.5 and 1.9 years.
Later higher than their respective short term detector indicating targeted towards me under report rate on concentrations.
While I read on results generally match the expected risk, there were both lower and higher than expected results as well.
lower than expected results are non issue as construction of the home, a a pre mitigated rate on entry in addition lower than expected results may be due to participant air to follow directions.
It was found that people struggle to follow simple directions, such as record the time that test was stopped worrying make sure, nothing was on top of the detector even when reminded at these instructions.
Homes testing higher than expected me to just the risk map isn't accurate, but further research shows there's a geologic explanation.
Subsequent auger samples taken around the home with the highest rate on activity contain abundant.
heavy metals analysis of the minerals shows uranium and dorian concentrations 10 times the crystal average and reading activity 20 times the cost will average.
The geologic and risk Apps will be amended to include this information.
While the chocolate detectors were found under report concentrations, they are cheap accessible can still give a homeowner the information they need.
That the test is returned with moderate rate on activity and maybe worth investing in a long term detector in case of a more serious rate on hazard.
Overall, the rate on this map was validated up most locations, we found that the use of a derivative geologic map is a reliable.
way to predict rate on race, within the boundaries of the city of williamsburg more research needs to be done to determine the extent of these mineralized In addition, this method should be validated in areas with different and normal more complex geology such as damn city county.
Dogancan Yasar: Thank you Zoe I hope everybody was able to hear after the.
Sound is fixed.
So.
Dogancan Yasar: Are there any questions or Zoe.
Dave Dobson (he/him): I had a question I wondered if you controlled four houses.
Dave Dobson (he/him): With mitigation systems i'm actually sitting in a basement right next to a mitigation system, right here, so I was just wondering, is that obviously would affect your sampling.
Zoey Mondshine: yeah so we weren't able to control because a lot of medication may have been pre pre medication just due to construction and that we are not we weren't able to know, but there was one home that did have a medication system and we used values from pre medication for validation.
Dave Dobson (he/him): And, did you urge anyone to.
Dave Dobson (he/him): To pursue mitigation is that common in williamsburg it's right on it's pretty rare down here but there's some houses that habit, so I don't know what it's like.
Zoey Mondshine: yeah so it's a lot more prevalent here, then people assume and so as far as the homes, we tested, we did send everybody their results, along with an explanation and if they had unsafe levels we suggested mitigation and sent them resources to find that on their own.
Zoey Mondshine: But it's definitely something that also needs to be encouraged for the wider community in this area, as I discussed how it's a lot higher than it should be and has been previously assumed and on a more regional scale.
Zoey Mondshine: So it is definitely we did try to encourage mitigation, but would need to continue that further in the area.
Dave Dobson (he/him): cool thanks.
Lee Phillips: I wanted to ask what maybe you mentioned this and if you did i'm sorry.
Dogancan Yasar: What are the minerals that you analyze specifically.
Zoey Mondshine: So it's just a raid on levels and raid on it comes through the uranium it forms of the uranium decay process, so we were really just testing the level of radon gas in the air.
Zoey Mondshine: But.
Zoey Mondshine: There every part of the uranium decay process can can contribute to this.
Dogancan Yasar: Yes, so which minerals specifically.
i'm asking about the minerals.
Do you think they're getting their source from.
Zoey Mondshine: There is um.
Zoey Mondshine: It just heavy metals in general, we cannot specifically.
Zoey Mondshine: We don't specifically know all of the minerals, because there can be a lot in the sediments, but that is something that further testing of the soil, would help to this got figure out.
Lee Phillips: So I got it, this is an example of a.
Lee Phillips: Partnership with.
Lee Phillips: The City of williamsburg is that is that a correct understanding.
Zoey Mondshine: I began working on this project through the geology department of geology at William and Mary.
Zoey Mondshine: With one of my co authors and advisor rick bergquist who does work more closely with Virginia, but specifically for this, I was not working with Virginia.
Lee Phillips: Thank you.
Lee Phillips: Dr Phillips, maybe it's better if you share, just to be safe share your screen sure we can stop sharing.
Lee Phillips: And I will go ahead and share.
Lee Phillips: So thanks again Zoe.
Lee Phillips: and
Dogancan Yasar: For our next poster is going to be presented by dorian Miller again on break right on risk map.
From the same area.
let's hear from him.
Dogancan Yasar: hello, my name is dorian Miller and i'm a junior at women married double.
Dogancan Yasar: majoring in geology and environmental science and policy I primarily do research using GIs such as this poster in which we use the relationship between geology and home rate on levels to predict risk areas in williamsburg Virginia.
let's get started with an introduction to the project.
rate on as a colorless odorless radioactive gas that can lead to serious human health issues, as highlighted by figure, one which compares rate on related deaths to other sources, the EPA said a safe limit for radon gas levels in homes and for Pico curious per liter.
figure two shows a previous interpretation of radar risk and Virginia by the EPA and also divides the state into its geologic provinces.
This shows the coastal plain is being low risk but 40% of radon testing Virginia exceed the safe limit of four people curious per liter.
This data is highlighted and Figure three, which shows the distribution of 425 test results in brooklyn williamsburg between 2001 and 2021.
We have been testing homes for rate on in williamsburg for many years and i've pared results with each homes geologic setting.
The outcome identifies the pliocene yorktown formation as a raid on producing geologic unit.
sediment course from coastal plain units contain elevated concentrations of radon related radio nucleotides in the greater than two millimeter sediment fraction of lower yorktown.
sandy sediments containing fossils and marine mammal bones have up to 300 barrels of radium to 26 per kilogram and them, which is 10 times the crystal average indicating that the lower yorktown can be a source for radon.
Results from radon test show higher radon gas levels in homes built in and slightly above the yorktown formation that and other formations.
The goal of this project was to predict areas and lawyers very that could have a higher rate on risk, based on the underlying geology and to present these results in the map and create a tool for residents to use to identify their predicted risk.
Moving on to our methods, the availability of highly accurate topographic data building footprints and infrastructure GIs data from the city of williamsburg provided a means to add geologic information and make a raid on risk now.
We used field observations for whole data and the one to 24,000 scale geologic map of williamsburg to determine the top of the yorktown formation, to be 58 feet above sea level in this region.
Areas below 58 feet, therefore, were math is higher risk because of their proximity to the yorktown formation in areas between 58 and 64 feet were map does moderate risk.
Areas above 64 feet were math is low risk because there is no evidence of overlying units producing right on.
We created polygons using the contour data that the lineage of each of these risk areas, these polygons were clip, to the extent of the williamsburg city limits.
The final map is embedded in an interactive art GIs story map that allows residents to input their address and identify the associated risk.
Here you can see a static version of our final math which shows the moderate rate on risk areas and yellow and higher rate on risk areas and read, based on the parameters that in our methods section.
This project allowed us to create the map, we just saw and also identify individual homes in each region using address data and building footprints We hope that this interactive tool help residents identify whether or not they could be at risk of harmful radon gas levels.
The building data I mentioned also helps us identify where the highest concentration of happiness buildings are which can help target areas for testing.
One region of high density can be seen in figure five which shows at risk, homes and yellow and red depending on if they fall into the moderate or high risk areas.
to test the validity of the rate on risk map another woman married geology major is currently testing homes within each risk area and comparing these results to our predictions.
Our next steps are to publish this interactive map for residents to use and continue to monitor the rate on trends in this region, to see if they continue to show a relationship to geology.
We have been sampling from various portal sites throughout williamsburg a testing for radiation to provide additional evidence for our research.
I encourage you all to use the qr code in the bottom right hand corner of the screen to visit our interactive story maps that you can explore the product of this project and look more closely at our risk now.
Thank you very much for attending my presentation, I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Dogancan Yasar: Thank you dorian.
Dogancan Yasar: Very well prepared I especially love the GIs map well done.
Dorian Miller: Thank you any questions.
Lee Phillips: So i'll ask a question that.
Lee Phillips: Really, I would have to take responsibility for as I organized the session should I have put your presentation before as always.
Dorian Miller: I think it works either way we definitely they're both related i'm talking about making the map she's talking about the validation, but I think it works, we all know that they're connected.
Dorian Miller: And, to answer your question earlier actually about working with williamsburg that's something that we are in the process of doing.
Dorian Miller: More on this side of the project with publishing the story map I through the link in the chat for you guys to check out if you'd like as well.
Dorian Miller: And that that is hopefully going to be published to the entire city for people to check whether or not they're predicted to be at a higher risk of rate on based on the.
Dorian Miller: Underlying geology, so this is not published yet, but this is just kind of a sneak peek of what we're hoping to get out there, because we start to add the data about the outliers that Zoe mentioned, where you have those heavy mineral concentrations.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you for that, I mean as a.
Lee Phillips: As a director of undergraduate research for for my campus when I see projects like this and there's such a an opportunity for Community engagement.
Lee Phillips: And it is a community based research project because we wouldn't be looking at right on levels if we weren't inserting housing houses and or asking people to contribute to it so it's it's kind of a science in space or in public space kind of thing and it's very important.
Lee Phillips: This issue of radon as you articulated there at the start of your presentation, with a number of deaths per annum, as compared with other things now is that just in Virginia, is that nationwide.
Dorian Miller: that's nationwide yeah.
Dorian Miller: that's a data for the entire country yeah.
yeah.
Dogancan Yasar: This would also be.
Dogancan Yasar: Very good source for further sentimental ology work as the course must have zircons and mana sites and so on, which will have a lot of rain in them, which will in time decay to write on it something.
Dorian Miller: Absolutely and that's one of the things we're working on now is taking borings around bladensburg to further tests and kind of pinpoint the source of this radon and uranium decay.
Dorian Miller: So we've done a couple borings and we're in the process of gamma counting those samples to see what kind of radiation is coming out of those.
Dorian Miller: And right now, it looks like that lower yorktown with that the greater than two millimeter core samples are really the issue where you have Shell fragments and all that.
Dorian Miller: But that's something that's currently that we're currently working on to really pinpoint the source of that rate on.
Lee Phillips: Are you able to determine if there's a correlation between.
Lee Phillips: Older homes in the williamsburg area and the high risk or lower risk regions versus younger homes or newer homes in the region.
Dorian Miller: that's definitely an interesting thing that we could look at it's it's more about elevation so maybe there are older homes that are built at a certain elevation that could be.
Dorian Miller: On so and then case if there's a link between the age of the home and elevation then there certainly would be a risk because of that proximity to the information.
Dorian Miller: But that's not something we looked at before but Zoe talked a lot about mitigation and everything so that would probably play a factor there as well, and that would definitely be interesting to look at.
Lee Phillips: Looking at your map right now, it seems that much of colonial williamsburg is well above the risk area.
Dorian Miller: Right, so we have we have a lake it's called lake minnetonka kind of behind our campus year.
Dorian Miller: And so the elevation there's lower so some of the buildings on campus here and homes built in that area are predicted to be at higher risk based on that elevation trend and where you see those formations cropping out.
Lee Phillips: Well, I have no questions or just one final comment interesting story looking forward to seeing how progress is going forward thanks.
Dorian Miller: Thank you.
Dogancan Yasar: awesome so our final roster as numerical modeling of compound flooding in charleston South Carolina i'm assuming during hurricane queen presented by brand malden Nada.
And let's hear from her.
Lee Phillips: hello, my name is brianna maldonado and my research entails numerically modeling compound flooding in charleston South Carolina from hurricane hurricane.
Lee Phillips: So from October 1 to October bids hurricane hurricane dropped 25 to 30 inches of precipitation in charleston.
Lee Phillips: which created a significant flood from Members combining with storm surge.
Lee Phillips: The purpose of this research is to verify that the storm surge and precipitation induced England compound flooding can be tested by them schism.
Lee Phillips: Numerical model and that it can produce accurate tide storm surge and reasonable compound flooding results when compared to know what and usgs gauged data.
The four major rivers in the charleston harbor watershed or the Cooper one dose dunno and Ashley rivers.
There are 13 usgs stations in this watershed that we used to analyze streamflow engage hype.
All of the gate high data was converted to the nad at three horizontal datum and the nav 88 vertical data for comparison.
Using this data, we see that there is a rod period of high water elevation over about 10 days after hurricane hurricane hit.
This tells us that the storm surge is not the only factor driving the inundation because if the flood we're.
Only due to storm surge the water level would peak and then stabilized quickly, but since there's this broad flood signal, it is likely, due to a combination of factors that helped maintain the flood.
So combination of storm surge and hydrological processes are likely driving this flood and that's known as compound flooding.
Using a 3D coastal ocean model, known as schism coupled with the national water model, we were able to simulate the event from the 23rd of September to the 15th of October 2015.
We generated an unstructured grade with an open boundary at 60 degrees West launched today in the open ocean and a 10 meter above the sea level land boundary.
The grid was generated for the entire us east coast and Gulf coast with final resolution along the South Carolina coast.
The streamflow input for the model is from the national water model and the wind and pressure atmosphere inputs are from the European Center for medium range weather forecast.
So, first we needed to verify the tide, which has shown here as being stimulated accurately with a bottom friction of point 025.
Then we ran a storm tied simulations increasing the amount of inputs, beginning with just tied with velocity and pressure.
And then we added the national water model upstream watershed flow and then we added the usgs gauge data for riverine inputs below 10 meters for our final run.
Looking at the results, the run without us just gauge data under predicted the water elevation by about half a meter which is outlined by a blue circle where the model data is in blue and the observational data is in the red.
Then, when all of the influential inputs are added the model more accurately predicts the flood, and we can see the prolonged flooding period outlined here in green.
Looking at the area inundated in the model on the left, we see that it reasonably compares with the observed area in undated during the flood is shown on the right.
Overall, we have found that the schism model is capable of simulating tied in coastal storm surge involving oceanic processes.
The schism model on its own under predicted the flood during hurricane hurricane inside of the charleston harbor by about half a meter out of the 1.5 meter peaks flood.
But adding the national water model and usgs data, we were able to correct the prediction, and this prediction compared well with the observed people at level.
Dogancan Yasar: Thank you, Brian.
very interesting work.
Dogancan Yasar: I was wondering if this flooding.
happens regularly or this was just a.
Breanna Maldonado: Specific event that happened in a certain time yeah so this hurricane hurricane is an example of a historical flood that happened in charleston charleston does regularly flood, but this event was.
Breanna Maldonado: Particularly very large and was caused by this category three hurricane, and we are there are other hurricanes that have also caused.
Breanna Maldonado: Flooding but not to this extent.
Thank you.
Sidney Swearingen: I hadn't quick question because my project was also focusing kind of on flood modeling so.
Sidney Swearingen: What were the factors you think that threw off the model, the most because you said it under originally under predicted the model by about a half a meter so i'm wondering like what you think you contributed to the under prediction and how.
Sidney Swearingen: You think in the future, you could work through that correction.
Breanna Maldonado: yeah that's a great question um the model originally was under predicting because it did not have all of the factors of the flood, it was just modeling the storm surge and when we added the.
Breanna Maldonado: watershed flow from greater than 10 meters coming down the riverine flooding it helped.
Breanna Maldonado: fix that.
Breanna Maldonado: difference in the results, and when we also added the usgs gauge data that is the inundation that the riverine inundation that occurred below the 10 meter boundary line that also added to the flood and helped correct our results so both of those.
Breanna Maldonado: added on to the storm storm surge helped really create the most accurate results.
Sidney Swearingen: yeah that makes sense.
Dogancan Yasar: Any other questions.
Lee Phillips: So what is it about the schism.
Lee Phillips: perspective.
Lee Phillips: That adds value what.
Lee Phillips: i'm asking you to re re answer what you just would you just answered, but I was the specific thing with schism that makes it do so much better.
Breanna Maldonado: yeah so schism is actually a very special model because most other models either just model, the.
Breanna Maldonado: coastal flooding or just model, the inland flooding there's not really a model out there that can do both.
Breanna Maldonado: And cross that domain so it's really helpful because you can model inland flooding and add it on the coastal flooding, so you can create that compound flooding effect to act more accurately.
Breanna Maldonado: model, the floods that occur from hurricanes.
Lee Phillips: Thank you.
Lee Phillips: i'm sure the whole town charleston's interested in flooding, as you all get nervous when sprinkles forecasted.
Lee Phillips: Thanks for sharing that and especially when a hurricane is on its way.
Lee Phillips: Well, as there don't seem to be additional questions on thank all of the speakers today all of the presenters today for taking.
Lee Phillips: The time, not only to to do the research, but also to to come to this venue and to present it to an interested audience, we are very interested in what you're doing.
Lee Phillips: I do hope that it's been a pleasure for you to have had this opportunity and I hope that you will.
Lee Phillips: rust well, knowing that to each of you did a really nice job of presenting your research and that you have now an opportunity to demonstrate that you have a communication skill set that is somewhat verifiable, as you have an abstract.
Lee Phillips: line on your CV from this point forward so congratulations congratulations to each of you.
Lee Phillips: Tomorrow afternoon the undergraduate poster session will continue and.
Lee Phillips: will be here if if if weather and and antivirus shots allow.
Lee Phillips: For some items.
Lee Phillips: Please do join us and support your fellow undergrads do enjoy the rest of the meeting, and I hope that you'll.
Lee Phillips: take the opportunity to get the most out of the southeast geological society of America hosted by auburn University in a way that i'm sure they would for us all to be there and we would certainly rather be there, but take good care and we'll see you tomorrow.
Sidney Swearingen: Thank you.
awesome.
Lee Phillips: Well, thank you.
Lee Phillips: don't hope you.
Lee Phillips: got it occurred to me about halfway through that.
I would.
Lee Phillips: ask if you wanted that opportunity so thanks for taking that opportunity.
Dogancan Yasar: Thank you, Dr Phillips I originally also did my when I was doing my undergrad my first research project was there was then, and I also had a chance to present it as a poster in a conference, and I know how important this is so, it was a great pleasure for me to be a part of it.
Lee Phillips: Yes, it is it's amazing I did my first undergraduate presentation, while.
Lee Phillips: A long time ago.
Lee Phillips: 30 I think it was 30 years ago at this very meeting, which was Winston Salem just actually right up the road from where I currently live amazingly who would have thought it.
Lee Phillips: And you're from Ankara.
Dogancan Yasar: yeah.
Lee Phillips: i'm from Turkey from Turkey.
Lee Phillips: My doctoral advisors first student is from Turkey from anchorman.
Dogancan Yasar: University i'm.
Dogancan Yasar: Working in the least technical universe.
Lee Phillips: You know I he ended up being.
Lee Phillips: i'd have to look to see perhaps i'll take a peek tonight and see he's retired now because that was his first PhD student I was his last pH.
Lee Phillips: So it was always really interesting to.
Lee Phillips: To be together the three of us.
Lee Phillips: And my doctoral advisor would say i've got the alpha and the omega here and i'm like, how do you know i'm the last PhD student he's a because i'm not taking any moral and after you know.
Lee Phillips: I said Oh, I hope I haven't ruined it for us enough it's time for me to retire but anyway it's good to work with you and I will be in tomorrow.
Lee Phillips: i'm getting my second dose of the vaccine, I think you may have caught.
Wind of that yeah.
Lee Phillips: i'm getting that tomorrow morning, and you know if I can be here i'll be here.
Lee Phillips: Otherwise, and I think Jeff is going to take the lead, tomorrow, so yeah should be good good to go, but thanks so much for being part of this and helping itself, thank you.
Lee Phillips: bye. 879