Road Salts and Research in Water Quality
By Brynnen Beck
My name is Brynnen Beck and I’m a senior Environmental, Soil, & Water Science major in Bumpers College with minors in Geology & Sustainability. My mentor is Dr. Shannon Speir in the Crop, Soil, & Environmental Science Department in. We focus on water quality research, and my undergraduate honors thesis investigates how road salts and their “eco-friendly” alternatives impact an important ecosystem process, denitrification. I was funded for the Spring 2024 and Fall 2024 semesters. My future includes pursuing graduate school and getting my master’s degree to continue research with water quality and water resources.
My research is on how urban streams are impacted by anthropogenic activities. Specifically, how different types of road salt impacts stream ecosystem processes, such as nitrate removal via denitrification. This research directly involved anthropogenic impacts on stream ecosystem nutrient processing, which is a still developing research area. I have learned a lot about nutrient cycling in streams and how unique streams are in the way they transport nutrients. It is very complex as the streams are flowing and the rate of consumption/transformation can easily be impacted by a multitude of influencing factors. That is what I have learned to love about stream ecology and water quality. There are so many components and interacting factors that create a very complex and interesting puzzle to put together. I like how everything interacts with and impacts everything else. I’ve learned a lot about denitrification, lab work, machine analysis, and data analysis through this process.
I knew that I wanted to do a project related to water quality, so I reached out to Dr. Speir as she is the only water quality lab within the department. I was really interested in the biogeochemistry and nutrient cycling projects her lab does. Dr. Speir is extremely knowledgeable in her field and is a very hands-on mentor. She has guided me through researching my topic, through the experiment/field work preparation, and through the sample and data analysis. She is readily available and wants to be very involved with her students and their well-being. The culture in her lab is very supportive and when Dr. Speir wasn’t available to help, I felt I could ask any lab member, and they would help in any way they could or were willing to learn with me. I would recommend everyone interested in working with Dr. Speir because she not only has very interesting research areas, but she also has high expectations of her students that have only made me grow as a scientist, researcher, and writer.
Many mistakes have been made and many things have not gone according to plan through the course of my thesis work, but I have learned that it is always best to talk about it. Talk through problems and solutions, admit when mistakes have been made, and rely on your support system to get you through it. Next, I plan to defend my thesis and graduate in Spring 2025 and attend graduate school.
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