2020 | Stroubles Creek Salinity Project
IGC Capstone Project | Interfaces of Global Change
Stroubles Creek Salinity Project
Student Members:
- Vasiliy Lakoba, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
- Lauren Wind, Biological Systems Engineering
- Stephen DeVilbiss, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences
- Mary Lofton, Biological Sciences
- Kristen Bretz, Biological Sciences
- Alaina Weinheimer, Biological Sciences
- Chloe Moore, Biological Sciences
- Collin Bacioco, Confluence REEU Undergraduate Student
Faculty Mentors:
- Dr. Cully Hession, Biological Systems Engineering
- Dr. Erin Hotchkiss, Biological Sciences
This group of students held a common desire to use their diverse skill sets to study impacts of global change on our local Stroubles Creek, which drains much of Blacksburg and Virginia Tech’s campus. They worked with faculty mentors to obtain a thorough dataset from the VT StREAM Lab, and then narrowed down their research scope to focus on a knowledge gap surrounding freshwater salinization in a complex watershed. Focused on freshwater salinization dynamics in Stroubles Creek as impacted by road salt and road brine applications of the urbanized, upstream watershed. The project and research resulted in a research paper published in the journal ACS ES&T Water in the fall of 2020, titled Salt Dilution and Flushing Dynamics of an Impaired Agricultural-Urban Stream, available online: https://doi.org/10.1021/acsestwater.0c00160.
The Interfaces of Global Change IGEP provides PhD students with a unique intellectual focus and training.
Each IGC Fellow gains depth in their specific scientific area of expertise (e.g. biology or engineering), while simultaneously gaining breadth in the multifaceted realm of global change and the science-policy interface.
