This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
This MRI-R2 award provides $129,854 in funding over 12 months to acquire sedimentology facility instrumentation at Drew University. The core instrument will be a particle size analyzer which will be used to measure stream, lake and eolian sediment samples over a wide particle size range (0.04-2000 µm). Particles will largely be selected from sources which will allow establishing climate change and watershed-scale dynamics proxies. Also requested are a balance, a polarizing microscope with digital camera system, a muffle furnace, and a convection oven. The particle size analyzer will allow fundamental sedimentological measurements on proxy materials to better understand climate change and watershed-scale dynamics. Projects include developing climate change records for Glacier National Park since the last glacial maximum (~18,000 years ago), establishing fine-scale contaminant input histories for sediments in Lake Tahoe and determining the efficacy of treatment or mitigation strategies, producing high-resolution aerosol measurements to better understand climatic impacts, and reconstructing environmental conditions leading to prehistoric trade routes in coastal Ecuador. The institution has a strong background in collaborative research for Earth and environmental science and has recently established an Environmental Studies and Sustainability program. The requested instrument produces rapid results and will be incorporated into the classroom setting. Students will be used in field sample collection and will be given access to the equipment for undergraduate research projects. A program for 25 gifted high-school students will also be served by the instrument. The instrument will be housed in existing laboratory space. The instrumentation requires minimal training, therefore the PIs will check out new users. Operational costs are thought to be minimal (very few consumables) and will be covered by departmental budgets. Outside users will be charged to run samples.
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Funding from this grant established the Drew Sedimentology Lab, which now serves as a research facility across a number of disciplines at Drew, including environmental science, geology, chemistry, and anthropology. Ongoing projects at Drew that have used the purchased instrumentation include 1) developing records of environmental change in Glacier National Park, Montana, since the Last Glacial Maximum (~18,000 years ago), 2) measuring the sources of fine sediment contamination to Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada, and predicting the impacts of mitigation strategies, 3) enhancing measurements of the climatic impacts of aerosols using model aerosols in a laboratory setting, and 4) reconstructing environmental conditions and trade routes in prehistoric coastal Ecuador. The primary instruments purchased for the lab are a particle-size analyzer (Beckman-Coulter LS 13 320) that can measure stream, lake, and atmospheric sediment samples at low concentrations across a wide particle size range, a research-grade polarizing microscope (Leica DM2500P) with digital camera and side-by-side station that allows multiple viewers of specimens at a time, and a microwave digester (Milestone, Ethos EZ) that supports sample preparation for elemental analysis of environmental samples, including soil and sediment. While use of the lab instrumentation will be ongoing for years to decades, specific outcomes thus far include numerous undergraduate projects, from senior honors theses to independent studies to class projects. For example, in summer 2010, Dr. Riihimaki co-led a team of 7 undergraduate students on a project, sponsored by the Keck Geology Consortium (http://keckgeology.org/), to collect lake sediment cores from Glacier National Park, Montana. The team collected 26 meters of sediment from four lakes, including four surface cores for high-resolution studies of sediment from the last 100-200 years and three longer cores to document the Holocene environmental histories of each lake. Students spent the 2010-2011 academic year at their home institutions (Bryn Mawr College, Franklin and Marshall College, Union College, Wesleyan University, and Macalester College) working on undergraduate theses focusing on a combination of geochemical, mineralogical, and sedimentological measurements of the lake sediments. The Drew Environmental Sedimentology Lab provided logistical support for the projects, and will begin grain-size analyses of the sediment cores in Summer 2012. Reports from each student project are available at http://keckgeology.org/symposiumvolumes as part of the 24th symposium volume. A summary of results was also presented at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2011. Thus far, the polarizing microscope has been used extensively for archaeology projects at Drew, supervised by Dr. Masucci. During the 2010-2011 academic year, Drew undergraduate Janine Billadello completed an honors thesis developing alternative and cost-effective methods for extracting starch grains from ancient artifacts. In spring 2011, 13 additional students from the course "Advanced Laboratory Methods in Archaeology" conducted various independent research projects with ceramic collections from Ecuador. In the 2011-2012 academic year, undergraduate Michelle Bettex conducted analyses of Chalcolithic and Bronze Age ceramics and sediment samples from Portugal for an investigation of ceramic sourcing and technology. The results were presented at the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meetings in Memphis, Tennessee, April 2012. Finally, the newly purchased microwave digester will support sample preparation for elemental analysis of environmental samples, including soil and sediment. This equipment enhances the environmental instrumentation available for Environmental Chemistry curricular needs and environmental science research projects supervised by Dr. Hinrichs, and is now available for use by faculty in the Departments of Chemistry and Biology and the Environmental Studies program. Laboratory experiments are being developed for "Environmental Chemistry," "Toxic Chemicals: Great Challenges in Environmental Science," and "Analytical Chemistry II."
