Undergraduate Water Science Communication Fellowship Presentations
Friday, April 21, 2023
Kineo Memmer
Major: Environmental Science
Mentor: Dr. Laura Crossey
Monitoring Water Quality at the Valle Del Oro National Wildlife Refuge
Kineo Memmer
Major: Environmental Science
Mentor: Dr. Laura Crossey
Monitoring Water Quality at the Valle Del Oro National Wildlife Refuge
Kineo Memmer’s project abstract:
The growing population of Albuquerque continues to put pressure on groundwater resources, so it is important to understand how land-use changes impact groundwater quality, and if wetland reestablishment can be used as a tool to help protect the Rio Grande watershed from pollutants. The research that I am communicating to the public through this project is being completed under Dr. Laura Crossey in the UNM Earth and Planetary Science Department. The research focuses on how water chemistry is continuing to react to the reintroduction of riparian wetlands and subsequent construction at the Valle de Oro (VDO) National Wildlife Refuge. The VDO is in the south valley of Albuquerque, and was historically used for agriculture, before being reclaimed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. I will create a sign to be put up at the Valle de Oro that explains the groundwater portion of the water cycle, how land use and wetlands impact that cycle, and how scientists can determine what is happening to groundwater based on chemical testing. This sign will hopefully be printed and placed permanently at the VDO so that people who visit the area can read about the work that is being done with both wetland reconstruction and groundwater testing and understand it clearly. The sign may also be published on the UNM Bosque Ecology monitoring Program (BEMP) website, and in a few other locations.
Jack Dugan
Major: Civil Engineering
Mentors: Carl Abadam & Andrew Schuler
Earthships and their Sustainable Systems
Bio-Engineering Wastewater Treatment
Jack Dugan’s project abstract:
The issue of water reclamation is something that affects all of us on a global level. Under the direction of Dr. Andrew Schuler and Carl Abadam, I explored the relationships between water management and sustainable infrastructure. The decisions regarding where to capture water from and how to dispose of the waste water we produce are usually made on a municipal level. However, this project explores how sustainable water use and re-use can exist on an individual level. The Model Earthship constructed out of waste and earthen materials demonstrates optimal water reclamation, separation, and disposal tactics. It also exhibits higher thermal efficiency than traditional households, effective use of materials already at our disposal, and the means for viable food production.
John Caleb Orr
Major: Construction Management
Mentor: Eric Lindsey
INSAR Mapping and the Devastating Effects of City Subsidence
I was given the opportunity to present some of Dr. Eric Lindsey’s work surrounding the causes and consequences of city wide subsidence in the Indonesian capital city, Jakarta. Dr. Lindsey and colleagues were able to use InSAR satellite technology to monitor changes in ground elevation over an extended period of time, revealing just how rapid the sinking has become. The effects can be seen in real time with entire districts of Jakarta being flooded by the coastal waters of the Java Sea. This flooding has reached such a severity that nation officials are considering moving the capital city off the coast, to the nearby island of Borneo. Dr. Lindsey concluded this subsidence was the direct result of poor water management, mixed with city wide impoverishment. Due to a growing population and dwindling resources, the people of Jakarta Indonesia, desperate for water, have resorted to digging personal wells in their homes. This unregulated water siphoning has become widespread within impoverished communities, leading to massive displacement of the Earth below the city. Since the ground below the city is made up not from a bedrock material, but instead possessing more clay like composition, the ground underneath the city lacks the foundational integrity to support this displacement. During weekly meetings with Dr. Lindsey I was able to create a visual representation of the subsidence in the form of a replaying movie. My goal with this form of presentation was to convey the real crisis in Jakarta in a format that would be digestible for those outside of the scientific community. As is often the case, scientific terms and vernacular can often lead to a lack of comprehension for those who are unfamiliar with the terms and phrases used in scientific writing. However, with a short, easy to comprehend series of pictures, everybody should be able to grasp the weight of the situation in Indonesia. Especially when we take some time to realize this is something that may affect us worldwide if the use of water isn’t regulated appropriately.
Sara Atencio-Gonzales
Major: Communication and Journalism
Mentor: Becky Bixby
Making the Microscopic World More Accessible
Diatoms are a type of algae that are found in almost every aquatic environment including lakes, streams, and ponds. They are the food resource for many animals and make their own energy through photosynthesis. Nearly all diatoms are microscopic as they are the size of half a millimeter or smaller. It takes a high-powered microscope for researchers to be able to see them.
For this science communication project, we worked on making the microscopic world more accessible so people who don’t have the tools to be able to look at diatoms can get a sense of what they are and why they are so important to our environment. For this project, we collected some samples from Tingley Beach at the ABQ Biopark. We looked at the samples under a compound microscope to be able to look at the diatoms.
For this project, I made a mosaic that highlights four types of diatoms. The four types of diatoms we focused on were Ulnaria, Encyonema, Diatoma and Craticula. Like said before, diatoms are important photosynthesizes and they produce 25% of the air we breathe. They are helpful to use as monitoring tools to test the health of water bodies. Diatoms react fast to changes in water chemistry, so researchers use them to understand if a water body is healthy or not. They are extremely important to the environment, but you would never really know because they are so small you need such a powerful microscope just to see them.
We wanted to make something that cannot be seen with the naked eye feel like something that anyone can learn about through this communication project.
Savannah Tapia
Major: Civil Engineering
Mentor: Taylor Busch
Learning from Fungi to Engineer Bioremediation
Derek Capitan
Major: Civil Engineering
Mentor: Eliane El Hayek
A Picture Can be Worth a Thousand Words
Derek Capitan’s project abstract:
Our research work with UNM METALS team and at the Center for Water and the Environment at UNM addresses community concerns on the Lands of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico, regarding metals exposure on agricultural lands near mine sites. Our research integrates laboratory and field experiment to investigate contaminant transport and remediation at the agricultural sites of the surrounding village of Paguate. We are focusing on any possible metal uptake by examining local crops and plants from the area. From our findings we will identify potential health risks from mine derived dust thus we then determine the safest agricultural practices that ensures food security for the community.
While there have been promising findings reported back, the team hopes to deliver in a new intuitive approach as they hope to tell stories through the essence of science and art. These stories shall live on as they will also serve a reminder in environmental justice. The goal is awareness.
Lila Goleman
Major: Environmental Science
Mentor: Taylor Busch
Bioremediation of Arsenic on Tribal Lands:
Song of the Mycorrhizal Fungi
Laguna
Little Girl Bird
Why are you crying
Down from the mountain
The miners stopped mining
U have a daughter
Unafraid she remains
Colonize your hyphae in the pit of the mine
The metalloid serpent has no diamond knife
Here lies a secret as old as the Earth
You'll find them singing in the sweet ugly dirt
Little Girl Bird
Where is your mother
Someone to hold you out in the desert
Nothing is over
It's only begun
Taylor Busch is a civil engineering master’s student who is currently conducting lab research using mycorrhizal fungi to biologically remediate toxic metals, like arsenic, that are left over from mining legacies, such as the Jackpile Mine on Laguna Pueblo, NM. It was a uranium mine run from 1953 to 1982, primarily for the element’s use in nuclear weapons. The legacies of dangerous radioactivity and toxic waste still exist and pose tremendous health risks for the nearby Laguna Pueblo people. For my communication project I wanted to create a piece of music that lyrically and poetically reflects the deep social, political and environmental issues faced by native people whose livelihoods are affected by sites like the Jackpile Mine, using inspiration from Taylor’s research. In my (bedroom) music studio, I used an electronic sound device to harness the noises translated from the electric currents of a living fungi solution to create synthesizer sounds which I used in the background of my audio piece. Overlain by beautiful guitar and vocals, I wrote and recorded a song called “Laguna”, which tells the story of a young girl called Little Girl Bird who is dealing with the social and environmental catastrophe brought on by mine waste. The lyrics recall the element uranium, Mount Taylor, resilience, the desert, and the maternal essence of the Earth. Music is an ancient medium that speaks a universal language, crossing all boundaries while uniting and connecting people. I hope that my project brings light to the vast and important interdepartmental research going on about Laguna Pueblo for the benefit of the people and the environment.
Anna Linn
Major: Environmental Science and Sociology
Mentor: Adrian Oglesby and John Fleck
Protecting the Resource of Our Past, Present and Future
Apart from being the most essential resource to life on Earth, water holds immense cultural and spiritual value across the American West. However, the consequences of climate change and unsustainable human practices have resulted in a threat to the resource within the region. My communication project models the campaign of a fictional political party, The Party to Protect OUR Water. Working with research done by Adrian Oglesby and John Fleck, I created a series of posters that represented various issues with water in the West. The posters themselves are simple, meant to make the viewer consider how they approach water in their everyday life and encourage them to look further into the subject. Every poster is presented in both English and Spanish to make them more accessible and effective with a wider range of people. After all, water is vital to the entire nation regardless of any demographic factor and everyone deserves equal access to any information that might impact it. Each poster includes a QR code that takes the viewer to a pamphlet describing in detail the meaning of the graphic – both in a scientific and social sense. The pamphlet also contains links for one to find the contacts of their local and regional representatives in the government. It is important that people know their voices and opinions are not disposable to those that are meant to act in their best interest. This communication project was focused on making water issues at every scale more accessible to the general public. The more informed a society is about their resources and the powers that govern them, the better they can preserve these resources for generations to come.
Marisol Chavez
Major: International Studies/ Chicana/o Studies
Mentor: Jami Nunez
Community Power
Marisol Chavez’s project abstract:
I will be presenting a Zine communication project based on Jami Nunez’s research which addresses the issue of not having proper support from the state in Latin America rural communities affecting their community based water management for clean drinking water. A better relationship between the state and rural community based water management helps give them more power and a system that will actually last within this community. For this to happen these rural communities need more agency and voice in politics that will affect them, especially with the rising cause of climate change. This information is important because we can create many innovative innovations and ideas on how to combat the challenge of clean water but it will only work effectively and efficiently if the communities it is supposed to support know how to use it and it works in the environment of the community
Arwyn Lewis
Major: Statistics
Mentor: Alex Webster
Interactive Data Visualization and Nutrient Dynamics in the Jemez River Watershed
Arwyn Lewis’s project abstract:
Interactive data visualization is a new tool rising in popularity, and I want to show the statistical power it can hold. It is important to make statistics accessible and approachable to everyone, even if they are not in a STEM field. Statistics are everywhere—it is important to understand and visualize them so we are not left with misleading results. The main research question here is if interactive data visualization is able to give new information by modifying present plots, and how accessible is interactive data visualization to the general public. I am working with Dr. Alex Webster, looking at research about nutrient dynamics in the Jemez River watershed before and after the Caldera wildfire. I will be creating a web application through the R programming language, specifically the package R Shiny, to create and alter existing plots and motivate new findings in the given data on the Jemez River watershed. I will use time series plots that the user can select based on different nutrient levels, pre and post fire data, and years. I hope to find new explanations for the ecological resilience after the fire, as well as why the biogeochemical responses in the area occurred. The goal is to analyze this data in a new way through the use of interactive data visualization, and create a new method for data analysis.
Katherine Leon
Major: Civil Engineering
Mentor: Anjali Mulchandani
Atmospheric Water Harvesting: How Alternative Water Sources Can Be Efficient in Our Environment
I had the opportunity to work with Anjali Mulchandani and learn about her research on Atmospheric Water Harvesting. I began with a goal of learning how atmospheric water harvesting works, how efficient and costly the process is, and why it’s necessary. To accomplish this goal, I read many articles and listened to interviews done by my mentor and her colleagues. Together, we decided the best way to communicate the importance of this research to a wider audience was to create an infographic displaying the costs of atmospheric water harvesting and how they compare to a common source of drinking water, bottled water. Atmospheric water harvesting is the process of taking water vapor from the surrounding air and cooling and condensing it to liquid water. Anjali’s research focused on using a dehumidifier for this process with three different power sources: the electric grid, pre-owned solar, and purchasing new solar. These three power sources were observed in three different climates: arid, temperate, and tropical. Depending on the climate and power source used, atmospheric water harvesting can be cost competitive with bottled water. Having insufficient water sources can lead many places, like New Mexico, to be in a drought for years at a time. Using this process as a source for drinking water can help many places throughout the world who normally struggle with unreliable water sources. In addition to being cost competitive to alternate water sources, atmospheric water harvesting can provide a necessary source of water in times of need when these other sources become insufficient.
Christina Klas
Major: Economics
Mentor: Jingjing Wang
Examining Consumer Interventions to Promote Conservation and Efficiency in Household Water Consumption