Assessing the health of national parks by sampling fish and aquatic invertebrates for mercury, PCBs, DDT, flame retardants, and other legacy and new contaminants that accumulate in food webs.
This may seem confusing to some, but to the UW-L faculty and staff involved in the River Studies Center, this is the goal they will be working to accomplish thanks to a $1.5 million grant they received.
The River Studies Center has been awarded a $1.5 million cooperative agreement with the National Park Service for monitoring contaminants in national parks within the Great Lakes Region.
“All of the faculty involved in the project were very excited to learn that we had been awarded the funds. This is the largest single award for research that the university has received to date and is recognition of the quality work in science that is conducted by faculty and students at UW-L,” said according to Dr. Mark Sandheinrich, director of the RSC and professor of biology. Throughout its history, the RSC has received over $17 million in funding to support their ongoing research.
“We have had a collaborative relationship with the National Park Service for the past 10 years and have been conducting a biomonitoring project in six national parks within the Great Lakes region for the past two years. This funding will allow us to intensify our biomonitoring activities for mercury and organic contaminants within these parks and expand our research to include potential effects of climate change on mercury uptake in food webs in these lakes as well as the effects of mercury on fish,” said Sandheinrich.
Arguably as a direct result of the increased amount of funding the RSC has received over the years, it has provided them with the opportunity to grow, develop, and expand the educational benefits and research efforts that go along with the center.
“The RSC, created in 1972, is a non-curricular unit focusing on research and informational programs pertinent to the Upper Mississippi River and its related resources. During the past 30 years, the RSC has expanded its research program to other aquatic resources, including rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands across Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest, and the Nation,” said Sandheinrich.
Over the course of the next four years Professors James Wiener, Roger Haro, Kristofer Rolfhus, and Sandheinrich will work along with more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students to complete the research.
“This summer nine students will be employed full-time to assist in the collection of samples from six national parks during three weeks of field work. They will spend the remainder of the summer processing and analyzing those samples for mercury and methylmercury using new, state-of-the-art equipment that was purchased specifically in support of the project,” said Sandheinrich.
Ultimately, this provides students with the opportunity to surpass everyday classroom curriculum requirements in order to prepare them for a successful future.
“This will give students an unprecedented opportunity to develop field and laboratory skills beyond those taught in the classroom and to be part of a dynamic and exciting research project. These experiences are possible because of the student-focused approach that all faculty at UW-L share with regards to research and scholarship,” said Sandheinrich.
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