Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center

Led by Dr. Amy Fowler and Dr. Kim de Mutsert, PEREC faculty are mentoring OSCAR undergraduate students this summer, as they assess and convey ecosystem health through community composition, food web dynamics, and the ecotoxicology of pharmaceutical chemicals in Gunston Cove and Hunting Creek, both tributaries of the tidal Potomac River located downstream of wastewater treatment plants. Environmental Science seniors Sammie Alexander, Michael Rollins, and Tabitha King, along with junior Heather Nortz, and Lisa McAnulty, a Junior majoring in Chemistry, are spending their summer collecting fish, water, invertebrate and sediment samples to further analyze in the lab. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services/George Mason University

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R. Christian Jones, director of Mason's Potomac Environmental Research & Education Center (PEREC), has received a grant of $167,481 from Alexandria Renew Enterprises, a water resource recovery utility that works to improve local water quality. Jones and his co-PI’s have been tasked with studying water quality and aquatic biota and how they relate to discharges into the Potomac River. Jones is working with a number of graduate and undergraduate students as well as PEREC colleagues on the project, and they are looking at issues including excessive algae and aquatic plant growth and bacteria from sewer overflows. To do that, the researchers are collecting samples of water, sediments and animals in tidal areas of the Potomac and its tributaries. This study builds on previous work for this sponsor which began in 2013. . Photo by Evan Cantwell/Creative Services/George Mason University

170621015 Alexandria Renew Enterprises Potomac Environmental Research and Education Center R. Christian Jones boat esp field research oscar perc potomac river