Recent Achievements:
Supported through the 2001 South Carolina EPA/EPSCoR Program, Miguel Goņi and George Voulgaris, researchers at the University of South Carolina, have developed an outreach program to provide undergraduate students with an opportunity to conduct hands-on research in contaminant transport and deposition in Winyah Bay, the largest estuary in the southeast.

Students participating in the activity measure the fluxes of water, sediments, organic matter and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) along three transects in the upper mid-section of Winyah Bay. Students also measure sources and reactivity of the contaminants in the environment. Based on the collection of this data, the research has moved on to calculating a contaminant budget for the study area, including fluxes across the boundaries and short-term pollutant deposition in bay sediments, with the expectation that they will be able to estimate the residence time of PAHs in the system. After these tasks are accomplished, students participating in the project will assist in integrating the measurements into a three-dimensional EPA water quality model that will be applied to other environmental conditions and estuaries in South Carolina.

In addition to the research implications of this activity, the teaching and learning component of the project is extremely valuable. The project serves to expose students to the design and execution of scientific research, demonstrate the applicability of theory learned in the classroom to real life studies, and also teaches them how to apply scientific knowledge to marine environmental problems.