E.P.A. Declares Awards to College Students in National Water Quality Challenge
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Category: WaterType: News
Source: EPA
Date: Tuesday, August 19th, 2014
WASHINGTON - Today the E.P.A. (EPA) announced 7 undergraduate and graduate student winners for phase one of the National Aquatic Resource Surveys (NARS) Campus Challenge, recognizing exemplary research in the area of water quality and ecosystems. Announced in February, the NARS Campus Challenge encourages students to develop proposals for research plans that find innovative ways to use NARS data about the condition of the nation's rivers, streams, lakes, and coastal areas.
"The National Aquatic Resource Surveys are helping our states and tribes effectively and accurately monitor the ecological condition of our surface waters, which in turn helps E.P.A. better target plan efforts to meet our Clean Water Act goals," said Ken Kopocis, Deputy Assistant Administrator for EPA's Water Office. "These students are working to protect America's surface water resources and bring to this challenge energy, innovative perspectives, and cutting-edge knowledge."
The National Aquatic Resource Surveys are a series of statistically representative surveys conducted by state, tribal and federal partners about the condition of the nation's waters using core indicators and standardized lab and field methods. In addition to providing national assessments of key water body types such as coastal areas, rivers and streams, lakes, and wetlands, NARS also helps to enhance the states' capacity for water quality monitoring and assessment.
Winners of the Phase one awards are:
Anna Palmer, SUNY-Purchase, New York, for her suggestion to use statistical analyses for assessing socio-economic factors related to water quality;
Lauren Reuss, University of Saint Thomas, Minnesota, for her suggestion to develop a new system for identifying the condition of shallow lakes and factors that affect the quality of lake condition such as land use, lake size and depth;
John Lombardi, SUNY-College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry, Syracuse, New York, for his suggestion to combine citizen science data with National Lakes Assessment (NLA) data.
Kelly Heber and Lain Dunning, Ph.D. candidates, MIT, Massachusetts, for their suggestion to link between stakeholder communities and coastal ecosystem health;
Kevin Meyer, Ph.D. candidate, Iowa State University, Iowa, for his suggestion to estimate land use effects on water quality using spatial econometrics;
Amanda Winegardner, Ph.D. candidate, McGill University, Canada, for her suggestion to explore biological diversity changes across the U.S.; and
James Wood, Ph.D. candidate, University of Georgia, Georgia, for his suggestion to assess major trends in river plants and measure the bioaccumulation of heavy metals in highly urbanized watersheds.
The Phase one winners each received an award of $2000 for their proposals. After completing their suggested work, these students may apply for Phase two of the NARS Campus Research Challenge. The Phase two winners will be awarded $5000 each.
More information on the National Aquatic Resources Surveys Campus Research Challenge is accessible at:
http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/monitoring/nars-challenge.cfm
More information on the National Aquatic Resources Surveys is accessible at:
http://water.epa.gov/type/watersheds/monitoring/aquaticsurvey_index.cfm
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