Getting Started in Connecticut

             Now that Kelly has gotten our blog off to a great start, I’ll tell you a bit about myself and my summer geology project in Connecticut- a beautiful place but definitely different from Bend, Oregon!

            I’m Liz George. I’m a rising senior majoring in Geology and Environmental Studies. This summer I’m doing a project with the Keck Geology Consortium, a program that joins eighteen universities in an effort to provide enriching research experiences in the geological sciences to undergraduate students. I’m working with geology professors at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT as well as five other students from Beloit College, Wesleyan University, Boston College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Our project is a study of the dynamics of the lower Connecticut River in terms of salinity, tidal characteristics, and sediment transport. We’ll all end up doing slightly different projects using the data that we’ll be collecting together during the four-week program.

I'm here! 

            I’ve been here for a whole week already (sorry for being so slow to blog!) and the experience has gotten off to a great start. After a painfully long drive up here from Atlanta, GA, I got settled in the dorms and familiarized myself with Wesleyan’s beautiful campus. We spent the beginning of last week learning about the river, hearing about previous research projects, and figuring out all the high-tech equipment that we’re using to collect our data.

            The Connecticut River is 650 km long, flowing from Quebec to Long Island Sound. We’re studying the lowest section of the Connecticut River, the tidal river channel and estuary, where the salt water from Long Island Sound and fresh water from the river mix. Environmental organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy, protect some stretches of the river, but the 400 towns and cities along the river’s banks have taken a toll on the quality of the river, despite it maintaining a remarkably pristine appearance. The area that we’re studying contains important biological habitats but suffers from human efforts to make the channel navigable for boats and resistant to flooding as well as from pollution due to the extensive industrialization that has occurred in New England in the past two hundred years. Hopefully our research this summer will help us to better understand how the Connecticut River functions and responds to human activity, which will be useful in efforts to protect it.  

A marsh on the bank of the river, home to Osprey, eagles, and many other species of wildlife

A marina near the mouth of the Connecticut River

A lighthouse near the entrance to Long Island Sound

            Finally, on Thursday, the real fun began- spending the day on the river collecting samples! Since we still haven’t picked which individual projects we’ll be working on (I’m hoping to study the amount of plastic and other man-made materials being transported as sediment in the river), we all got to have a turn using all of the equipment.

To collect dredge samples, this clamp is lowered using a pulley. When it hits the riverbed, it fills with sediment which we then pull back up to the surface and take to the lab to analyze.

The CTD sensor which takes temperature, salinity, and depth measurements.

            After collecting over 200 water and sediment samples as well as CTD data, we got to work analyzing it in the lab. Hopefully we’ll get through the lab work quickly and have another day out on the water again soon!

          Liz