A bit about my science (May 27, 2011)

          Now that I’ve given you a small tidbit of a blog about my adventures in Africa, I am going to introduce you to a topic that interests me a lot but might cause some of you to skip to the next blog - - the details of my science (buahahaha).  Even if you are tempted to stop reading, I challenge you to press on.

            For those of you who don’t know what I’m studying here in Lake Naivasha, allow me to give you a brief introduction.  My project is part of an ‘ecosystem health’ project.  The exciting thing about ecosystem health is that it is research that believes that human health and environmental health are related.  A healthy environment means that the humans that depend on its meat, water and other resources will also be healthier.  On the other hand, healthy people are much more likely to care about and have the resources to protect their environment.  For this reason, ecosystem health projects study the link between human health and environmental health.  Now that I’ve got you on the edge of your seat, I’m going to tell you how my project falls under the umbrella of ecosystem health.

Metals and persistent organic pollutants (or POPs) are two harmful types of chemicals that often find their way into ecosystems that have been polluted by humans.  Persistent organic pollutants is a fancy way of describing a group chemicals that includes pesticides and some industrial chemicals that take a really long time to break down.  They stick around for a long time and they build up in places like lake sediment and animal tissue.  The concern with both POPs and metals is that if they end up in a lake, humans can be exposed.  Remember how I mentioned that environmental health influences human health?  So, in steps my project.  I will be looking at where the POPs and metals are located in Lake Naivasha and how their levels have been changing over time.

I have already predicted your next question: “Chelsea, how will you do this??”  Well, wonder no more.  I am going to collect sediment and fish from different areas across the entire lake.  These samples will be analyzed in a lab to determine the levels of POPs and metals, which will allow us to see if some areas of the lake have higher levels of contamination than others.  I am really curious to see if different types of land use around the lake, such as flower farms, cities, slums and wildlife conservations will actually differ much in the amount of contaminants that the release into the lake.  Stay tuned over the next year for more exciting details on that!

So, that gives you an idea how I will look at where in the lake POPs and metals are living, but I will also be looking at how these levels have changed over time.  To do this, we will be using the lake sediments.  Sediments are kind of like tree rings.  Each year, another layer is laid down and the sediment in that layer can tell you what was going on in the lake at that time.  If you take a core of sediment, you can slice it up into layers and figure out the age of each layer.  You can then look at the amount of contamination in each of those layers to determine how much pollution was loaded into the lake that year.  Neat stuff!

This site was so shallow that we had to get out of the boat and walk towards shore to collect our water sample!

So finally, I’m sure you’re wondering how this is all progressing?  Afterall, I’ve only been blogging about the boring stuff like hippos and slums to date.  Over the last two weeks, me and the 3 other students studying the lake have been out sampling water.  We have a piece of equipment that instantly measures a variety of water quality characteristics such as pH, dissolved oxygen, the amount of algae and more.  Our goal is to see if the water quality is different in different areas around the lake.  Because what’s going on in the water is related to what’s happening in the sediment, if we see differences in the water it will tell us where we should in interested in collecting our sediment and fish samples for the rest of this summer.

Last week was the week that Melissa very patiently taught Vincent and I how to use the YSI.

And voila, there you have the story of my research.  This coming week will be dedicated to practicing using the equipment I have to use and hopefully the week after I can begin the real work of collecting all the samples for my project.  I can’t wait to get my hands dirty!