Highlights
Student Profile: Katherine Middlecamp
by Susan McLaughlin
From the presidential candidates’ speeches, to the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, to a plethora of best-selling books with advice on how to live a greener life, there is a tremendous focus today on sustainability and solving environmental problems. However, Pitt graduate student Katie Middlecamp isn’t just talking, but actually putting her concern for the environment into action.
Middlecamp, who is pursuing a master’s degree in the Department of Geology and Planetary Science, was the recent recipient of a $4,000 Graduate Student Research Grant from the Geological Society of America (GSA). Her proposal, a study of how plants take up pollution in urban environments and how they may then be used to mitigate it, was selected by the GSA as Outstanding Mention for “exceptionally high merit in conception and presentation.” Of the 570 proposals received by GSA, 320 were awarded grants, and only 20 of those were selected for Outstanding Mention.
“I’ve always been interested in nature and the science behind environmental problems,” Middlecamp says. “It’s so important to learn everything we can how the earth’s natural systems work and how human activity impacts them. By doing this, we can learn how to balance things, make the environment healthier and preserve our resources.”
Middlecamp began the research component of her proposal—officially titled, “Isotopic investigation of anthropogenic sources of carbon and nitrogen to vegetation along an urban to rural gradient”—this summer, establishing field sites and collecting data. She expects this phase to continue until October, and will then start analyzing the samples in the lab and expects to have outcomes by spring 2009.
“As plants grow, they take in carbon and nitrogen from the atmosphere. Because the varied sources of carbon and nitrogen have different chemical signatures, we can figure out how much carbon and nitrogen the plants are getting from each source, ” Middlecamp explains. “My proposal is focused on showing that urban plants take in their nitrogen and carbon from pollution and rural plants take in those chemicals from the soil. If this holds true, plants could be a great way of reducing the effects of pollution in urban environments.”
Middlecamp just began her second year in the MS in Geology program and is planning to continue working on environmental challenges by pursuing a career in environmental consulting.
