Urban Water Sustainability: Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU)
When:
9 weeks over Summer 2021 (likely May 28 to July 30)
Where:
University of South Florida, Tampa, FL
***The recruitment for the 2021 Urban Water Sustainability REU was completed and the finalists were notified.
Students are paid a $600/week stipend along with free housing, food
stipend, travel allowance to/from Tampa, FL, and a travel allowance to
present their research at a national conference
REU participants must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or permanent
residents of the United States.
COVID-19 provisions:
If travel to USF is not possible due to the continuation of travel
restrictions caused by COVID-19, the REU will be offered online
although applicants may be moved to research projects that can be
hosted remotely.
For the Summer of 2021 the University of South Florida has received funding
from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to host
eight undergraduate students who will be starting their junior or senior year in Fall 2021
to work on an interdisciplinary Research Experience for Undergraduates
(REU) program focusing on Urban Water Sustainability (UWS). The
students accepted into the program will be paired in a team and work with
research mentors on specific topics that address environmental concerns
related to UWS.
The REU consists of five components, 1-4 occurring during the nine week
summer REU and the fifth in the following spring: 1) mentored research
project; 2) research methods course; 3) a short course on water
sustainability; and 4) experiential learning field trips and 5) all REU UGs
presenting their findings at one regional or national conference in Fall
2021 or Spring 2022 depending on conference.
There will be four research projects as part of this REU:
Project 1: The seasonal flux of contaminants into lakes and
groundwater.
Septic tanks are significant reservoirs for environmental contaminants such
as pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs).These
contaminants are flushed from the soil as they become saturated during
Florida’s wet season, and consequently, they end up in lakes and
potentially in well water. In a karst environment, the houses surrounding
these lakes not only produce these PPCPs via septic tanks, but they also
use the well water recharged from the lakes and surface percolation waters.
The project will measure the assemblages and quantities of these PPCPs
change in both the lake water and residential wells. Students incorporated
into this project will assist with sample collection, analyses, data
interpretation, and writing findings into an academic presentation
framework. REU students will be encouraged to present at the American Water
Resources Association, and the American Geophysical Union.
Faculty mentors:
Dr. Philip van Beynen and
Dr. Kamal Alsharif
Project 2: Arsenic Mobilization.
Worldwide, nitrate and arsenic are among the most common groundwater
pollutants. In some groundwater aquifers, such as in West Central Florida,
nitrate-contaminated groundwater comes into contact with arsenopyrite, a
natural mineral that contains iron, sulfur and arsenic. The presence of
nitrate stimulates the activity of microbes that “mobilize” arsenic or
release it into the groundwater. This threatens the drinking water of many
communities. This project seeks to understand the factors that limit or
promote arsenic mobilization. We will obtain aquifer cores from Florida
wells that are contaminated with both nitrate and arsenic. The students
will set up experiments that mimic aquifer environments under varying
conditions and will monitor changes in nitrate and arsenic concentrations,
as well as other indicators such as sulfate. The project addresses a
worldwide environmental and public health problem that is also significant
in Florida. REU students working on this project will present their work at
local or national conferences: the American Water Works Association, the
American Chemical Society, or the American Geophysical Union.
Faculty mentor:
Dr. Sarina Ergas
Project 3: Oil Spill Modelling.
Managing and cleaning up groundwater contaminated by oil spills requires us
to understand the way that the water and oil flow together through the
ground. The large-scale behavior of an oil spill is controlled by processes
that occur at small scales, such as how the water and oil flow through
narrow spaces between grains of sand in an aquifer. Describing the
small-scale movement of immiscible fluids is challenging, but it is
possible to do this using computer programs and computer algorithms based
on a method called lattice Boltzmann modeling (LBM). Researchers at USF
have been developing LBM computer programs to model the behavior of oil
spills under different conditions. Summer REU students will extend the
capabilities of our existing LBM programs, with the ultimate goal of
developing tools that can be used to assess risk and design efficient
clean-up strategies. REU students working on this project will present
their work at local or national conferences: the American Water Works
Association, the American Chemical Society, or the American Geophysical
Union.
Faculty mentor:Dr. Jeffrey Cunningham
Project 4: Plumbing Poverty in Underserved Communities: Exploring Water
and Sanitation Insecurity in the University Area Community, Tampa,
Florida
Water and sanitation (wastewater) infrastructure (WSI) in the United States
is aging and deteriorating, with massive underinvestment over the past
several decades. Lack of attention to WSI has combined with racial
segregation and discrimination to produce uneven access to water and
wastewater services across the urban landscape. In many metropolitan areas
in the U.S., those that suffer most are residents of low-income, minority
communities located in disadvantaged unincorporated areas on the margins of
major cities where residents typically lack the benefit of municipal
citizenship and live without piped water, sewage lines, and adequate
drainage or flood control. Through active engagement with the residents of
the University Area Community neighborhood (39% Hispanic, 33% Black, 40%
below the poverty line), REU participants will work with environmental
anthropologists and other social and health scientists to document the
experiences of WSI insecure residents, how they negotiate their daily lives
with water and sanitation challenges, and what steps can be taken to
address these problems. Some of the main research questions are: What
social, cultural, historical, political, and economic conditions impact WSI
insecurity? What are residents’ perceptions and understandings of the
equitability, sustainability, and health risks associated with current WSI
services? What are preferred approaches for managing cumulative risks
associated with chemical and microbial pollutants?REU participants
will engage in this community-based participatory action research project
by performing onsite observational assessments, ground-truthing
environmental data, conducting surveys and interviews, transcribing and
coding qualitative data, analyzing the results, and producing actionable
knowledge to affect change. Students will present their research results at
multiple regional and national professional venues, including the annual
USF Undergraduate Research Conference, the UF Water Institute Symposium,
the Florida Academy of Sciences Conference, and the Institute of Industrial
and Systems Engineers Annual Conference in Orlando.
Faculty mentor:
Dr. Christian Wells