Posted on May 22, 1998
“Lakes are good places to look if you want to study pollution
contaminants,” says senior Jessica Newell, a geology major. “Contaminants
accumulate faster in lakes and are not as disturbed by human activity,” she explains.
Newell should know, because she did her senior thesis on Ballston Lake,
the long, narrow lake in Saratoga County that has been of major interest to scientists as
well as local residents. The honors student from West Charlton looked for evidence of
pollution in layers of sediment at the shallower north end of Ballston Lake.
Newell's project is part of the “Ballston Lake
Initiative,” the College's new research and teaching directive focusing on
various aspects of environmental science. The program has just received a $160,000 grant
from NSF and the College for a “floating classroom” pontoon boat, seismic
profiler for measuring lake sediment thickness, side-scan sonar for high-resolution
mapping of the lake floor, and a global positioning system. Prof. John Garver is director.
What makes Ballston Lake a valuable study site? It is at a kind of
crossroads of human activity, explains Newell. “Not far from Albany, Schenectady,
Saratoga, and Amsterdam, the area around the lake is highly developed. There are also a
lot of farms, and the lake is heavily used for recreation in the summer. So studies of the
lake can accurately reflect the impacts of recent human history and the industrial age.
Newell did all lab work and research herself, going out onto the ice to
collect a core last January. “We have to go when there's ice,” she
explains, “because the equipment for taking cores is so heavy”. Taking a
five-meter sample core from the north basin, where the water is about 20 feet deep, Newell
went back to the lab and looked at the uppermost segment, analyzing surface sediments. She
was looking for levels of metals, specifically, lead, zinc, copper and nickel.
Perhaps not surprisingly, in the upper layers, corresponding to the past
150 to 200 years, she says, “we're finding very high values – large
increases, in other words, with concentrations much higher than farther down in the
core.” She points to a particularly high measurement for copper, which could reflect
the fact that not too long ago, copper sulfate was used to treat the lake for algae.
Researchers in other parts of the world are finding a tenfold increase
in metal contaminants in the past 200 years, she said. This is a dramatic indication of
how great an effect humans are having on their environment, especially in lake systems.
Newell describes how she became interested in the project: “I took
a lakes course last winter with Prof. Donald Rodbell, and I knew I wanted to do lakes for
my thesis. It turned out that another professor, Paul Gremillion, was focusing on Ballston
Lake.” Gremillion served as her adviser. She recently presented her research at the
Steinmetz Symposium.
Her research is evolving into a longer-term project, which she plans to
continue next year while she pursues a master's degree at Union. She would like to
study the much deeper south end of the lake, and will be comparing her findings for the
north and south ends.
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