Author(s): Mattigan Wheelwright, Ethan Ence
Mentor(s): David Parrott
Institution Westminster
Salicornia Utahensis and Salicornia Pacifica are halophiles, or salt loving, succulents that could help purify the land around the Great Salt Lake in Utah through the accumulation of dangerous compounds much like how these plants draw salt from their environment. Plants instinctive accumulation of compounds present in soil could help us understand possible solutions to mercury, its effects on the native plantlife, and ways to identify heavy metal sediments at Utah’s Great Salt Lake. This project's main goal is to find whether or not Salicornia, otherwise known as Pickleweed, is absorbing mercury from shoreline and topsoil at Great Salt Lake. With the help of my mentor Doctor David Parrott at Westminster University, there has been sampling pickleweed at three separate Great Salt Lake locations and the consecutive use of a lab freeze dryer and a Direct Mercury Analyzer (DMA-80) to quantify the present mercury. It is currently hypothesized that trace amounts of mercury will be found, but not a significant amount as mercury is more common in deeper substrates than the shoreline soil. This project is currently underway with strong suggestions that there is a negligible amount of mercury in the surrounding shoreline soils, but more research is needed and underway. If there's mercury in the shoreline soil it tells us that it will be present in dust storms that would affect the populations across Utah, causing degenerative issues such as neural damage as well as harming lung tissue. This project will address environmental science issues and implications for future public health issues depending on results.