Category: OSCAR

Categories
Blog OSCAR

The Plastics We Don’t Talk About

This picture is of the Mississippi Sound, a region in the Gulf of Mexico that I focused much of my research on.

Written by Monica Zaky

This is an example of the variety of microplastics that can be collected from bodies of water. Notice the diversity in shape, color, and size.

What if I told you that your facial scrub may be adding to the abundance of plastics in our rivers, lakes, and oceans? Those microbeads that exfoliate your face are often made of plastic. Plastics are everywhere. They are used for packaging, beauty supplies, agriculture, furniture, and even our cars. Sadly, a lot of plastics end up in water of some sorts; in creeks, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans, plastics are there, and they are becoming unavoidable. Large plastics break down into tiny pieces called microplastics, or plastics that are less than 5mm in length. Microplastics may come from anything such as clothing to beauty products such as a facial scrub. How many of these plastics are in our water systems, and how might they be interacting with other pollutants in the water?

Continue reading “The Plastics We Don’t Talk About”
Categories
Blog OSCAR

Microplastics and Pollutants in The Great Lakes

Written by: Mark Derco

The great lakes are the largest coalition of freshwater lakes in the world and paramount to the success of the cities that border the lakes. However, the success of the lakes depends on the cities around them. For years industry has been contributing to the pollution of the great lakes and with this research we are looking to fill a gap in knowledge that will help us track the movement of these pollutants throughout the great lakes and in other regions of the United States.

Continue reading “Microplastics and Pollutants in The Great Lakes”
Categories
Blog In the News OSCAR

Ecotoxicology of microplastics in the Potomac River watershed: Effects on Aquatic Organisms, Mechanisms of Fragmentation, and Vectors of Micropollutants and Microbial pathogens

Great falls
Great Falls Park. Scenic Potomac River waterfall. Photo by Maria Rumyantseva on June 19th, 2020.

Written by Maria Rumyantseva

There have been numerous discussions on the issue of water contamination, and one might ask what novelty could this project possibly bring about? Well, the pandemic summer of 2020 dictated a new twist as the faculty members as well as students must have adjusted and adapted to a new condition with resilience, enthusiasm, creativity, and flexibility. In this blog I will share my personal experience participating in the project, I will describe the research process for a meta-analysis and how we decided to attain that virtually.

Continue reading “Ecotoxicology of microplastics in the Potomac River watershed: Effects on Aquatic Organisms, Mechanisms of Fragmentation, and Vectors of Micropollutants and Microbial pathogens”
Categories
Blog OSCAR

Microplastics: In my backyard, and probably yours, too

Caption for picture: I took this picture while visiting Eld Inlet in Puget Sound. Despite the lack of visible plastic pollution, microplastics have been documented in this urban estuary.

Written by Grace Loonam

I took this picture while visiting Eld Inlet in Puget Sound. Despite the lack of visible plastic pollution, microplastics have been documented in this urban estuary.

Initially, when considering the possibility of toxic plastic pollution, images of ominous floating garbage patches in the ocean may come to mind, as it is easy to picture how this waste could disrupt and harm aquatic life. This summer, I am working on a remote group project concerning the ecotoxicology of a less visible, but no less significant threat: microplastics. Microplastics, defined as pieces of plastic less than five millimeters in length, have become a subject of increasing interest and study, and numerous investigations targeted towards mapping their concentration and distribution in the aquatic environment have been conducted. Although my fellow researchers and I were initially planning on characterizing this issue in the Potomac River ecosystem, the need to work remotely has led us to instead analyze previous research that contains microplastic concentration data of distinct regions around the United States. We also collected pollutant data in the same regions, and I specifically looked in San Francisco Bay, Puget Sound, and the Mohawk River for this information.

Continue reading “Microplastics: In my backyard, and probably yours, too”
Categories
Blog Education OSCAR

First Generation Student Turned Researcher

As a kid, Tom Hutchinson never thought he’d get to be a scientist. Hear him talk about the thrill of DNA extraction and research, all conducted while he is an undergraduate, through the Office of Student Scholarship. Tom was the very first student researcher in Dr. Jen Salerno’s lab. He continued working with her, through the Undergraduate Research Scholar Program, with Dr. Salerno as his mentor.

With the support of George Mason’s Office of Student Scholarship the PEREC team is able to provide students with unique and life-changing research experiences.

Want to know more about Tom’s research? Here’s his video from the 2020 GMU Research Symposium.

Categories
Blog Education OSCAR

Katie Russels Wins Student Excellence Award

Undergraduate Katie Russell conducted research on river herring with Dr. de Mutsert. She presented at the GMU Spring 2020 Symposium, where she was also award the OSCAR Student Excellence Award.

Categories
Blog OSCAR

Ben Rhoades Wins Student Excellence Award

Advised by Dr. Amy Fowler and Dr. Dann Sklarew, ESP undergraduate Ben Rhoades won the 2020 OSCAR Student Excellence Award for his research on microplastics in the Potomac.

Categories
Blog OSCAR

New Tools, New Techniques, New Technology

Dhanush and Tom processing samples in the lab

I am very excited to share what our lab has been working on for the 2019 Summer Impact Research Project: Microbial Communities as Indicators of Ecological Health. Dhanush Banka (a student from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology) and I have been working in Dr. Salerno’s lab at the Potomac Science Center, George Mason’s research center on the Occoquan River. Our environmental samples have been collected by Dr. van Aken’s lab, where fellow OSCAR student Nick Mills is working on the sediment samples. My focus is on the water samples taken from Cameron Run and Hunting Creek in Alexandria, VA as part of the environmental monitoring project that GMU does in association with Alexandria Renew Enterprises, the local wastewater processor for that area.

This is the first year that water samples are being surveyed to determine the microbial population. We have learned how to perform DNA extractions from the samples, how to quantify our results using two different methods, and also how to amplify the DNA in preparation for submitting the samples for DNA sequencing. We’ve been waiting patiently for the sequencing data, which will allow us to identify not only the types of bacteria present, but also the relative abundances to be able to get an idea of the composition of the microbial community. We’re correlating those results with rainfall, water flow, river height, and temperature data to build a profile and possibly model how changes in the environment will affect the microbial community. Since Cameron Run parallels the Capital Beltway and Hunting Creek adjoins Alexandria, the water samples are from an urban environment, and we expect the composition of the microbial community to reflect that.

Preparing for a DNA Extraction in the lab

As with most things regarding our environment, we don’t know where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been. Without some initial information, surveys, or records, we don’t know what affect our changing climate or other anthropogenic activities are making in our own environment. The unseen microbial community far outnumbers all of the life that we can see, and because it grows so much more quickly than other visible organisms the microbial community is the ‘pulse’ of the environment. Our ability to identify microbial families through the use of environmental DNA is a breakthrough, a new tool that we’re only beginning to learn how to use. We now have the genetic tools available to discover far more detail about the world around us than we have ever had in our history. As an older, non-traditional student, I’m excited to be part of this research, even as an undergraduate student. These new tools, this new technology, and these new techniques are what inspired me to pursue a degree in biology. That’s what I wanted to learn and that’s why I’m at George Mason University where I am part of a team using these tools to conduct real field research in my own community.

Categories
Blog OSCAR

2019 OSCAR Student Summer Impact Project

By: Jeremy Williams

This a male Banded Killifish (Fundulus diaphanous). This picture was taken during my first day sampling in Gunston Cove.

Life in the aquatic environment has always had my interest since I was young. It’s just something about life under water that fascinates me. My OSCAR research project this summer has been a phenomenal experience so far. Learning about fish communities and assemblages has shown me a different perspective of life. I never really knew how dynamic and complex a fish’s life could be until I came here. Now, I have developed appreciation, care, and respect for all fishes. In addition to studying about fishes, I also learned how to identify fish on the adult, juvenile, and larval level. I believe that identifying fish can be rewarding because it can get difficult trying find the intricate details to identify each fish at different stages of their lives. Also, being able to go out on the boat every week and seeing the natural scenery of both sample sites is something that the “Average Joe” doesn’t get to see every day.

Our first week at PSC, Ben and I dissected a Remora AKA “Shark Sucker” in Dr. de Mutsert’s fish lab.

Being around other people that are passionate about science and love it just as I do makes me feel right at home. Coming to work and being able to sit in the lab to doing science every day is feeling that I cannot explain. I love every second of arriving to the Potomac Science Center and looking out the window to see that awesome view of the Potomac River. Furthermore, the people in the building are all friendly and are willing to help anyway they can. This might seem small but having key card access to your lab is so awesome! It makes you feel like you are entering in a TOP SECRET room, but it’s just your lab. All this fun and excitement comes with hard work as well. I have taken pride in my research and study and cannot wait to present my project findings at the poster presentation to show what I’ve been working on this entire summer. If I could give advice to future student researchers, it would be to apply to not only just OSCAR internships but to any internship. I guarantee that it will be an experience you will never forget.

In the midst of all this happiness and joy, the entire room smells like fishes!
Categories
Blog OSCAR

Undergraduate DMV Microplastics Study

By: Ben Rhoades

I can see plastic everywhere now– and not just the water bottles on the side of the trail or the plastic bags in branches, but the tab you pull off of a disposable squirt bottle and the tiny corner torn off of a granola bar. The most visually impactful part of this summer has been picking through fully processed microplastic samples as we work to quantify just how much plastic pollution is present in the Potomac River and the streams that feed into it.

Microplastics are pieces of plastic, either fragmented or intentionally produced, that are between 5mm and 0.3mm in diameter and are the center of increased media and academic attention. My lab partner and I have spent this summer studying these small bits of plastic in local waterways hoping to build off of the work of Mason PhD student Doreen Peters and the published work of Yonkos et al. (2015) who reported on microplastic in the Chesapeake Bay. Despite the work of both scientists, no data has been published on the presence, abundance, or concentration of microplastics in the Potomac River. This is where Han and I enter the scene.

Most microplastics research focuses on those plastics found floating at the surface of aquatic environments using a buoyant net named after its look-alike a Manta Ray. Using one of these Manta nets housed at the Potomac Science center, we’ve sampled Hunting Creek in Alexandria, VA; Gunston Cove in Woodbridge, VA; and the Anacostia River in Washington, DC. However, we also have used a novel stream sampling approach that uses a round-mouthed net anchored to either side of a stream and left for an hour to passively collect microplastics. Our lab’s principle investigator, Dr. Foster, and I sampled Accotink Creek, Cameron Run, and the Northeast Branch of the Anacostia River using our self-engineered technique. Finally, in an attempt to see if there is movement of microplastics into the food web, we extracted and analyzed the digestive tracts of four catfish.

Manta net collecting plastic near National Harbor, DC

Through this project, I hope to have some idea of an ideal sampling method that is representative of the who ecosystem a researcher is investigating, whether it is surface water sampling, sediment sampling, or fish-gut analysis. Also, am testing whether these sites differ in each of those sampling methods, and if so, what contributes to those differences. We have just finished our sample processing, which involved hours of drying samples, chemical digestion, picking at and counting plastics under a microscope, and finally I will have a chance to crunch our numbers and test these hypotheses.

Looking back, I thought I would know what to expect with this summer: sampling, processing, analysis, etc, however, I’ve learned that each research experience is unique and rewarding in its own way. First of all, becoming familiar a with a completely new and ever-growing field of literature has been an exciting challenge. Also, working with old and new faces in the lab and in the field, I have learned that all PIs and lab partners are different and that relationships and expectations are always… plastic.