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Water Quality of
Eastern Iowa Watersheds
- For the past eight summers, student researchers have sampled
and analyzed waters from 10 streams in the Cedar River watershed.
In general, we are attempting to better understand the sources,
sinks, and flows of nutrients in these waterways. We are also
exploring remediation methods for excess nutrient inputs into
these streams. This work has
been funded by the City of Cedar Rapids Water Department and by
the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. A presentation
on this work can be found at the IDNR-Water
Quality Monitoring web site. A
fact sheet published by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources
also has a nice summary of our work. More information on
one of our sampling sites is available at the
McLoud Run web
site.
Reactivity of Reduced Iron
- This is a collaborative project with Professor Michelle
Scherer of the University of Iowa’s Department of Civil and
Environmental Engineering. Reduced iron (both Fe(II) and Fe(0))
plays important roles in both remediation and geochemistry.
Of particular interest is exploring the effect of particle size
down to the "nano" level. Our work uses techniques such as voltammetry with a rotating disc
electrode, Raman spectroscopy, and Mössbauer spectroscopy
to understand the fundamental nature of these processes. This
work is currently funded as part of a
Nanotechnology
Interdisciplinary Research Team grant from the National Science
Foundation..
- I am also interested in incorporating electrochemical techniques
more widely in the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. For more
information, see my website Electrochemical
Education.
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