Sunset on the Delaware Bay.
A Blue Heron hunting on the banks of an estuary.
Horseshoe crabs are a critical part of the ecosystem in Delaware....
Cape Henlopen Lighthouse - a constant on the Delaware coastline.
Nicole Dobbs is junior majoring in Environmental Engineering concentrating in water quality and water resources, with minors in Civil Engineering and Economics. She has worked in the Bioresources Engineering Soil and Water Quality Research Lab since 2006 under the guidance of Dr. Anastasia Chirnside, helping with various water and soil quality projects, including the monitoring of the Cool Run tributary of White Clay Creek on campus. Working with Dr. Chirnside, she has contributed to the Water team by classifying land uses on campus, estimating pollutant loads, identifying storm water management practices, and doing weekly monitoring of Cool Run on South Campus. Her work will contribute to a watershed management plan for the Cool Run Tributary that will include recommendations for best management practices, which will promote a healthier, sustainable watershed.
UD WATER (Watershed Action Team for Ecological Restoration ) is a new, university-wide project, conducted in collaboration with the City of Newark, which seeks to develop and implement management measures to mitigate the stormwater runoff problems facing UD and the City.
UD's Department of Geological Sciences DWRC intern Cristina Fernandez tells of her experience working on her project, titled
"Spatial and Temporal Integration of Pollution
History in the Christina River Basin Using
Sediment Cores from Bread and Cheese
Island." She stated, "I have been working, with
UD Plant and Soil Sciences' (PLSC) Dr.
Kyungsoo Yoo's supervision, on the pollution
and soil erosion history within the Christina
River Basin. I am focusing on the time scales
from decades to century, using sedimentary
records from Bread and Cheese Island. The
first step was to get familiar with the Delaware
Geological Survey (DGS) well records and data
already published for Churchman's Marsh. Mr.
Scott Andres (DGS) and I identified two
potential sites based on the material type of the
sediments as well as the thickness of the
Holocene deposits."
"I collected two cores using a Russian Peat Corer with the help of Mr. Andres, Dr. Peter McLaughlin (DGS), and Dr. Yoo. We were able to retrieve a total 3.35-m length of sediment core. Dr. McLaughlin and I described the cores and recorded any major changes such as grain size, color, and organic composition. I am currently analyzing 10-cm thick slices from the cores for elemental chemistry using ICP-AES with help from PLSC graduate student Chunmei Chen in the pedology lab. The concentrations of many elements, including heavy metals, are being measured by three different extractions: sodium pyrophosphate, dithionite citrate, and ammonium oxalate. I will be conducting total elemental chemistry after dissolving the samples using lithium borate fusion, and will be determining mineral surface area and palynology. Once the data are analyzed, we intend to reconstruct the preliminary pollution history of the area, combining the sedimentary record with the pollutants complexed onto the mineral surface within the sediment"
Senior Civil and Environmental Engineering (CIEG) 440: Water Resources Engineering students were provided a unique opportunity this fall to study the Newark campus and provide valuable input on making improvements to the campus' storm water management systems. The mission of this study was to identify and develop a "Best Management Practices" plan the University can utilize to direct and guide future strategies and initiatives to improve the quality and reduce the quantity of the stormwater runoff. Course instructor, Professor Kauffman, embraces the idea of collaboration between the University and the students in an effort to provide valuable exposure and practical engineering experience to authentic projects.
To accomplish this endeavor, the class and campus were divided into 14 different groups and sub-watersheds, respectively. Each student group was tasked with systematically surveying their assigned sub-watershed to identify stormwater improvement opportunities. The students utilized specialized equipment, such as, Global Positioning System (GPS)/ Geographical Information System (GIS) software and computers to complete the project.
The water resources engineering students prepared conceptual designs of 83 on-campus watershed restoration projects in the Christina River and White Clay Creek watersheds. The concepts ranged from reforestation and stream restoration along a steeply sloped tributary to the White Clay Creek on the Piedmont Laird Campus, to a designed stream restoration project along the Cool Run at the UD Farm, to a porous paving retrofit project at the Delaware Stadium parking lot. The students applied classroom concepts to solve real world watershed solutions.
This segment of the study concluded at the end of the fall 2008 semester and the information collected is currently under review. The next step is to select the identified opportunities that provide maximum water quality improvement in highly visible and easily accessible areas. This will allow for the University to not only garner the benefits of an increase in water quality, but also allow students and visitors to have access for educational outreach as well.
The opportunities that will be implemented will be selected by a committee comprised of University Professors, staff and students who all have a vested interest in storm water quality and will narrow the scope of work that will ultimately be assigned to the CIEG 443 Watershed Engineering, Planning, and Design class in the spring of 2008-2009 academic year. This class will once more, apply their skills under the guidance of Professor Kauffman to provide engineering plans to the University from which future efforts and resources can be based.
