Samantha Fung won best poster award at the 2019 meeting of the Washington State Lake Protection Association.
Samantha Fung, a PhD student working with Rebecca Neuman and James Gawel on UW SRP Project Four, recently won best poster award at the 2019 conference of the Washington State Lake Protection Association (WALPA). The conference was held October 30-November 1 in Chelan, Washington on the theme "Lakes are for Everyone."
Fung's poster was titled "Vertical Flux of Arsenic from Lakebed Sediments: Mixing Patterns and Seasonal Arsenic Regimes." In it, she presented results showing that levels of arsenic in the water column and plankton of shallow polluted lakes are higher than levels found in deeper lakes. These differences are likely due to differences in patterns of mixing in the summer months when cold water sinks in deep lakes, leaving the sediments at the bottom relatively undisturbed in a low-oxygen environment. In contract, constant mixing in shallow lakes brings contaminated sediment into the upper layers of the lakes where higher levels of oxygen allow for plant and animal life. Other authors on the poster included Erin Hull, Kenneth Burkart, James Gawel, and Rebecca Neuman.
Because the conference was held on Halloween, the evening session included a costume contest. Fung dressed as an aquatic snail in a food web. Read more about the 2019 WALPA conference here.