REU Site: Interdisciplinary Watershed Studies at the College of William and Mary

这个REU站点将创建一个夏季研究项目，包括在校园环境现场实验室进行的流域科学的范围。每年将从全国各地选出八名优秀本科生和威廉玛丽学院的两名学生参加由环境地质学、生物学、社会学和经济学教授指导的学生研究项目。这批学生将与麻省理工学院的导师合作，确定在科学和社会经济背景下不断变化的流域土地利用的影响。学生们将在16公顷的Lane Matoaka（弗吉尼亚州最古老的人工蓄水池）和学院拥有财产的两个流域的溪流和相关高地上完成研究项目。对这两个流域的水文地质和生态现状的调查将通过确定河流排放特征和对暴雨流的反应、水质的空间变化、全湖的水、沉积物和营养收支以及流域水生和陆地部分的人口/群落结构来完成。由于流域系统的现状是土地利用历史变化的结果，因此将利用对居民对发展、环境保护、水和产权的看法的社会学和经济学检查来确定人口和市场强迫功能的当前方向和强度。通过对威廉斯堡殖民地地区丰富详细的历史的了解，可以制定流域土地利用变化的时间表，作为分析流域结构和功能的背景。

This REU Site will create a summer research program encompassing the scope of watershed science conducted at the campus environmental field laboratory. Each year eight outstanding undergraduates from across the country and two from William and Mary will be selected to participate in student research projects mentored by faculty in environmental geology, biology, sociology and economics. The cohort of students will work with W&M faculty mentors to determine the impacts of changing watershed land use in scientific and socio-economic contexts. Students will complete research projects on the 16-ha Lane Matoaka (the oldest man-made impoundment in Virginia) and in streams and associated uplands of the two watersheds in which the college owns property. Investigations of current hydrogeologic and ecological status in the two watersheds will be completed by determining stream discharge characteristics and responses to stormflows, spatial variation in water quality, lake-wide budgets for water, sediment and nutrients, and population/community structure in aquatic and terrestrial portions of the watersheds. Because the status of the watershed systems is the result of historical changes in land use, sociologic and economic examinations of residents' perception of development, environmental protection and water and property rights will be used to determine the current direction and strength of population and market forcing functions. Access to a richly detailed history of the Colonial Willliamsburg region will allow development of a timeline of changes in watershed land use as a context for analysis of watershed structure and function.