Water Center Undergraduate Research Fellow begins long-term water monitoring

I'm going to be helping the water center conduct any measurements that they need down here in McDonough Hollow, but also eventually conduct my own independent research study. Today we're doing a little bit of training. We're doing some salt dilutions in the stream. We're also looking at some seismic work, but ultimately my goal here is to take some long-term measurements on pH and conductivity. We really want to make sure that we're collecting data continuously, that there's continuity between all these projects so that there's always this spot in your campus where students can come, do some research projects of their own, contribute to the long-term monitoring efforts, but that there's always a continuous record and we like kind of hand things over. Having ownership over a site is really important for developing their own hypotheses, getting a good understanding of like the way that we do data-driven science. One of the fundamental things that we want to know in hydrology is you know how much water is there in the stream or in the rivers and for like all management that is something that is important if you're thinking about water quality like how much water versus how much contaminant is really important and dictates you know the decisions that you make it's really interesting because I get to know a lot more about how things interact with each other out here and how let's say the soil is interacting with this stream and how the trees are impacting the stream and the old coal deposits are impacting the stream and to me that's really interesting to think about how everything is very interconnected here it's been really important for us to have sort of a field site where we can we can play a little bit we can do adventurous data collection and try some things out develop our methods this is one of the best things I've done since coming to Virginia Tech I personally think that this opportunity has helped me grow a lot academically but also just like out in the field learning new skills because I'm around professors and students that have been doing this type of work and know a lot more than me. So I get to know a lot more on their side of what they're doing and what their expertise is and what they're doing out here in McDonald Hollow. And that's really important for me because it builds my skill set and broadens my horizons.