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Examining the Response of River Discharge to the Accelerated Hydrological Cycle in High Latitude Eurasia

by Eve Owens, Debjani Ghatak, James Miller, Marie McCrary  

"We wanted to focus our project on the evapotranspiration in the Arctic region and climate change on river discharge of freshwater into the ocean, affecting salinity, ecosystem biodiversity, precipitation, and global temperatures. You get an increase in evapotranspiration, leading to increased water in the atmosphere, accumulating in clouds and falling as rain or snow. Because of the increased temperatures, when it falls as snow, it is melting faster and much earlier in the winter months. When you get to the summer months in July and August, higher temperatures are increasing evapotranspiration. The water is drying out fast because there's not as much precipitation in the summer months, so we see precipitation and discharge changing. Temperature and precipitation directly correlate, meaning the transpiration process in the whole water cycle moves faster. Increasing freshwater going into the ocean is detrimental. If you have more fresh water going into salt water, it changes the salinity and disrupts natural processes for every animal, plant, and organism that relies on salt and salt water.”

—Eve Owens 

Minimizing the Willow Project to Prevent Extinction of Endangered Species and Harmful Emission

by Sophia Petrosino and Gilbert Michaud, PhD  

 "Our project is policy research on the big oil drill project in the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, NPR-A. Each year, the reserve project will release 9.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, releasing more than 260 million metric tons over 30 years. This kind of project is directly going against the Paris Climate Agreement. We will continue to see increased temperatures and threats to endangered animals, such as polar bears. Increasing temperatures will also have human effects. We will have less labor opportunities and will have less food. We identified four policy recommendations, but our most notable was the call for the Environmental Protection Agency to get involved and class these areas as a critical habitat for endangered species."   

—Sophia Petrosino  

Potential of Organically Sourced Fulvic Acid to Increase Bioavailability of Calcium in Hydroponic Lettuce (Lactuca sativa) and Reduce Tip Necrosis

by Ashley Klauck and Ray Dubinsky   

"My project was centered on the disease that I noticed in the red lettuce while working as an Urban Agriculture intern in the spring of 2024. It was part of my semester project to conduct tests to identify nutrients in the system. I decided to take it a step further by engaging in a capstone project. I proposed researching adding folic acid, a complex molecule that's part of the soil, into a hydroponic medium nutrient substrate. I think it is important to take note of this and further this research to keep testing different types of nutrients in the hydroponic system, especially for agriculture interns."  

—Ashley Klauck 

Impacts of Sustainable Turf Management on an Urban Campus Setting at ºÚÁÏÃÅUniversity Chicago

by Sofia Farias, Aaron Durnbaugh, and Megan Conway  

"I wanted to look at how to increase biodiversity on campus, especially because we are an urban campus. Most of our natural biodiversity would be in our quad areas, but turf is also all around. Turf has benefits, but I think it's important to look at water quality because it acts as a filtration system. It also sequesters carbon as a nutrient. But most of the natural space at ºÚÁÏÃÅis on the quad. With only 45 acres, Facilities works to have the space look perfect. As we continue down a sustainable path, the Facilities team is slowly switching to electric lawn equipment, but some older gasoline ones are still in use."

"So, instead of planting more natural space or putting in more turf to better regulate the stormwater on the quads, we looked at possible alternatives, including what if we just made everything permeable pavement. It's not super realistic, but it's an option, nonetheless. Then I compared Loyola's campus to similarly sized schools and I came up with three main options that are very specific to Loyola. The first one is to reduce pesticide and fertilizer use because even though we are composting everything in our dining hall, we're not composting our landscaping because of the fertilizer use. Another option is to decrease maintenance, which is just allowing grass to grow more naturally and not necessarily cutting in all the areas. I don't think many people would realize if the grass is 4 inches or 5 inches rather than three, and for areas where it is a little bit ‘wilder,’ putting up signage would allow students to know why we're doing this. But whatever they decide to do, we have 45 acres, and we have to use every acre in the best way possible."  

—Sofia Farias 

Trash Trap: Categorizing Plastic Pollution in Chicago's Montrose Harbor

by Aana Shenai, Thomas Botsford-Rhodes, Andrew Conover, Timothy Hoellein   

"Lake Michigan is such an incredibly important ecosystem, so this research lab focuses on macro aquatic pollution. To study this, we used a trash trap in Montrose Harbor. Every week, we categorized the trash, sorted it, and weighed it. We categorized it by item type, size, and material. Overall, we found the most common type of trash was classic plastic. The next most common type was Styrofoam, which is also a type of plastic, and the category of most abundant items was food-related or fragmented trash, which is just trash where you can't tell the original source. Even though it's not very surprising, the data is still impactful because it tells us where we need to focus prevention efforts and policy.    

—Aana Shenai 

Quantifying traces of Glyphosate and Paraquat in rural water springs in the mountain region of Guerrero, México

by Pablo Velasquez, Donatella Poveda, Amber Roegner, Bo Zhang, Gordon Getzinger, Marlene Brito-Millán  

"Our research focused on working with indigenous communities in Guerrero, Mexico. These communities are spread out in the mountain regions. We're doing water quality monitoring based on a community-based management approach, and their local leaders are the initiators of this project. They are concerned because their local community members are using herbicide spraying for agriculture to feed their families. Traces of these herbicides might leak into water springs that they use for domestic uses and drinking water, so there's a concern because research shows that the chemicals have different health effects. We wanted to look at concentration levels of specific chemicals to inform the local communities about their decisions on farming practices and remediation that might need to happen to heal the water. We found a very weak relationship between farmland percentage and chemical concentrations. This is great because it means the local farmers are not negatively impacting their drinking water through their farming practices. It's a positive thing to report back to communities. There are many other environmental factors to explore, so we will head back this summer to do more research."   

—Pablo Velasquez 

Interviews and photos by Avery Elowson