Research/Internship

All earth science concentrators must complete either three credit hours of research under the guidance of a faculty member or an internship experience. Examples of recent student research projects include:

• Groundwater transport of P in an agricultural watershed
• The use of FC:FS ratios to determine the sources of bacteria in an urban watershed
• Distribution and mobility of Pb in the soil at an outdoor shooting range
• Relationship between groundwater and surface water quality in an urban watershed
• Trends in soil geochemistry using geographic information systems
• Land use impacts on groundwater and surface water quality
• Brownfield redevelopment and the role of geology in land use planning
• Chemical analysis of river sediments-Rouge River, southeastern Michigan
• Copper toxicity in lake sediments, Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan
• Ground water vulnerability and land use planning
• Statistical comparisons of heavy metal concentrations in river sediments
• Air-flow geometry in the sparging of fine-grained sands
• Particle size and chemical control of heavy metals in bed sediments of the Rouge River

Additional Faculty Research Sponsors include: Dr. Donals Bord, Astrophysics and stellar spectroscopy; Dr. Yiwei Deng, Chemistry of natural waters; Dr. Mao Huang, Contaminant hydrogeology, groundwater modeling; Dr. Mark Uhen, Paleontology.