Assessing Carbon Dynamics and Eutrophication Risk in the Northeast Anacostia Watershed
So honestly when I started this practicum I didn't really know what I was getting into. I knew I was interested in water stuff and that the Anacostia has a reputation for being pretty polluted, but I didn't realize how complicated the whole picture actually is. Like yeah everyone talks about nitrogen and phosphorus causing algae blooms, but nobody really mentions carbon? Which turns out to be a pretty big deal and honestly kind of overlooked.
I did my practicum through GEOL499 in the Geology department. Basically it's an independent research class where you work with a professor on whatever project you're doing. Mine was about looking at carbon in streams and how it relates to nitrogen levels, and whether that tells us anything about eutrophication risk. We had four sites: the main Anacostia river (NEA), Upper Campus Creek, Lower Campus Creek, and Paint Branch. The data went from 2017 to 2025 which is a lot of data points to work with.
The main goal was to see if there's a relationship between dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), non-purgeable organic carbon (NPOC), and total nitrogen (TN). And if there is, does it mean anything for eutrophication? My hypothesis was that DIC and TN would be correlated because they both come from the same urban sources like storm drains and concrete weathering.
It really depended on the day. Some days we were out in the field collecting samples which was honestly my favorite part. We'd go out to the sites with a YSI ProPlus probe and take measurements for dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, all that stuff right there in the water. Then we'd collect samples to bring back to the lab.
Lab days were more tedious. We used this Shimadzu analyzer to measure DIC, NPOC, and TN. It took forever to calibrate and you had to be super careful with the standards or everything would be off. I messed up a couple times and had to rerun samples which was frustrating but I guess that's just part of learning.
Then there were the data analysis days which were honestly kind of brutal. I spent way too much time in Excel making graphs and trying to figure out if my correlations were actually meaningful. I made time-series plots for each site and also broke it down by water year to see if anything changed over time. The presentation at the end was stressful but I think it turned out okay.
I picked the analytical/critical thinking prompt because that's what I ended up doing the most of, even though I didn't expect to.
So in SGC Colloquium we talked a lot about systems thinking and how human activities mess with natural cycles. I didn't really get how that applied to actual research until this project. Like we learned about non-point source pollution in class how it's hard to track because it comes from everywhere instead of one pipe and then I literally saw that in my data. Upper Campus Creek had this really strong correlation between DIC and TN (R2 = 0.657) which basically means they're coming from the same place, probably urban runoff and concrete weathering from all the buildings and pavement around campus. But then the main Anacostia site had basically no correlation (R2 = 0.007) because by that point everything's mixed together and diluted. Without the systems thinking from Colloquium I probably would've just thought my data was wrong instead of realizing it's actually showing a real spatial pattern.
We also talked in Colloquium about how seasons affect ecosystems, which helped me figure out why all my sites had these weird spikes in carbon and nitrogen during winter. Turns out when it's cold, the microbes and plants that normally suck up nutrients basically stop working, but urban runoff keeps happening anyway. So everything just builds up. I don't think I would've connected that dots without having learned about seasonal ecosystem processes first.
One thing I definitely got better at is not over-interpreting data. At first I wanted every correlation to mean something important, but some of them were really weak R2 and I had to accept that maybe organic carbon just has too many different sources to show a clear pattern. That was hard for me because I wanted everything to be significant but that's not how science works I guess.
This whole thing made me realize I actually like research? Which I wasn't expecting. I thought I wanted to do something more applied like environmental consulting but now I'm thinking about grad school for real. The combination of being outside sometimes, working in the lab sometimes, and then trying to make sense of data is actually kind of perfect for me. I get bored if I'm doing the same thing every day.
I did get to practice most of the skills I wanted to analytical chemistry, data analysis, presenting but I wish I had taken more biogeochemistry before starting this. Understanding why organic carbon behaves differently than inorganic carbon was harder than it should've been because I didn't have enough background in microbial ecology. If I could do it over I'd take that class first.
My next steps are probably: take a GIS class (I think II'm going to minor in it), try to get an internship with the Anacostia Watershed Society or something similar this summer, and start looking at grad programs. I don't know exactly what I want to do career-wise yet but something with urban water quality feels right.
Most of this was independent but there were other people in the lab doing their own projects and we'd help each other out sometimes. I think I ended up being the person who kept track of protocols and made sure we were doing things consistently, which is kind of my thing I guess. I'm pretty detail-oriented which can be annoying but it's useful for research. It was new though because normally in group projects I'm just doing whatever part I'm assigned, not making sure the whole thing stays organized.
Yeah, definitely, but only if you're okay with figuring things out on your own. GEOL499 is not a class where someone tells you exactly what to do every step. You have to be self-motivated or you'll just waste a semester. But if you are, it's really worth it. You get actual research experience, you get to know a professor well enough to ask for a recommendation letter later, and you have something real to show for it.
The Anacostia is actually a pretty cool place to study because it's right here and it's a mess but people are trying to fix it. It's not some abstract ecosystem in a textbook it's literally affecting people in DC and Maryland right now. That makes the work feel more meaningful than if I was just doing problem sets about some theoretical river.
This practicum was way more work than I thought it would be but also way more valuable. I learned a ton about carbon in freshwater systems, I got better at analyzing data without jumping to conclusions, and I figured out that I actually want to keep doing research. The Anacostia might be polluted but studying it taught me a lot about how urban watersheds work and how complicated fixing them is going to be. I'm glad I did this even though there were definitely days where I wanted to throw my laptop out the window.