College of Science

 

First Place Winner

Alyssa Anzalone 

“Understanding the risk of microplastics in the Pajaro and San Lorenzo rivers” 

“Microplastics are an emerging pollutant type present in every ecosystem and environmental medium. While plastics have many beneficial uses for people, they can harm organisms by causing tissue translocation, illness, and death. It is important to establish how much risk microplastics pose to freshwater organisms because most microplastic studies focus on marine ecosystems. I determined a risk assessment threshold for microplastics in the agricultural Pajaro and urbanized San Lorenzo rivers using NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information data. I found that both rivers have relatively low risk and microplastic abundance. Monitoring frequency should still increase to ensure the risk of microplastics does not increase to a level where harm could come to sensitive-species.  

Thank you to my advisors, friends, family, NOAA CCME-II, CSUMB, Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University, the Moore Institute, and NOAA. I couldn't have done this without you!” 

 

People’s Choice Winner

Gerhard Gross

“Assessing stream geomorphic change following the San Clemente Dam removal” 

“My Grad Slam presentation focused on research I helped conduct on the Carmel River following the removal of the San Clemente Dam as part of a 10-year monitoring program to assess changes to the river’s physical morphology and river bed grain size. The San Clemente Dam was removed in 2015 due to seismic hazard, low storage capacity, and ecological impacts. The dam removal project was designed to minimize downstream impacts to steelhead trout habitat and flood frequency by sequestering a large fraction of reservoir sediments on site. Using auto-level surveys, I investigated how the shape of the river bed has changed over time and how it has affected flood risk to downstream communities. My results indicated that the dam removal project met its aims of mitigating downstream flood risk, showing net erosion at most survey sites with the exception of sediment deposition at one site, which will require further monitoring to assess flood risk.”