Every summer, Pioneer football players disperse across the country for their exciting summer internships. Throughout the course of the summer, they will share their experiences here. Today's entry comes from defensive lineman Curtis McCoy '10:
This summer I am completing a research internship in Biology here at Grinnell College. The specific study site is the college-owned 365-acre prairie, the Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA). CERA is an amazing setting for both research and aesthetic appreciation. Purchased by the college in 1968, the area consists of remnant and restored prairie and forest, as well as a man-made pond (For More Information: http://www.grinnell.edu/academic/biology/cera/). The North Skunk River runs through a Northeast section of the prairie where a previously unstudied floodplain ecosystem is maintained. I will be examining multiple aspects of the Biogeochemistry of the floodplain and determining how human disturbance might be affecting the area. Immediately adjacent to CERA’s floodplain are multiple agricultural areas. Agriculture offers many benefits by way of food production, but it can also have multiple detrimental effects on surrounding natural ecosystems. One of the main issues involves groundwater pollution from fertilizer, specifically nitrogen, runoff. I will be installing a series of wells in the floodplain and along the river to determine the flow path of the groundwater in the floodplain. I will also be sampling the water from these wells and from the river itself to run nutrient tests for nitrate, ammonia, dissolved carbon, and phosphate. This data will give me an idea of how the agricultural areas might be affecting the floodplain groundwater as well as the quality of the river water in the North Skunk. At the conclusion of the study I will complete a paper for publish in a science journal.
