New Items
March 2008 - Congratulations to our Science Fair Award Recipients:
Hayden Basinger
Mont Harmon Junior high
"Each year thousands of pounds of coal blow off of stockpiles, conveyors, train, and tractor trucks. The coal dust or fines accumulates on or sometimes off of the containment sites. Assisting my father as he conducted a work related survey, we noticed very little new vegetation growing in an area covered by coal fines.
In my experiment I exposed two common native plants of Utah, Blue Bunch Wheatgrass (Elymus spicatus) and Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) to varying amounts of coal. I grew them for four weeks and evaluated their health condition after being exposed to various amounts of coal. Yarrow was the most effected by the coal, it started to wilt and thin out almost immediately. The wheat grass was less affected, not showing signs of degraded health until late in the experiment."
Kate Coursey
West High – Freshman
"I am 15 years old and I go to West high School. I enjoy writing and playing Firebirds soccer. For my project I chose to study the effects of estrogen on brine shrimp development, because recent studies have shown increasing estrogen levels in our water. I dissolved this estrogen into the water and hatched the shrimp. My original results noted that the shrimp in the control group (no estrogen) were breeding, while those in the estrogen did not breed. The estrogen also unbalanced the sex ratio, making 2/3 female as opposed to the usually less than ½. Because of this I concluded that estrogen interferes with the male hormone testosterone, making shrimp unable to breed. This estrogen could eventually lead to brine shrimp extinction, as well as collapsing the brine shrimp harvesting industry, a large part of Utah’s economy."
Kalen Black
Midvale Middle School
"I am a ninth grader at Midvale Middle school in the ALPS program. I have always loved to do science fair and have done it almost every year since kindergarten. I have been to district science fair many times, and this is my second time at the CUSEF. This year, I did my science fair project on harvesting of wind energy and how it affects the environment. When we put a propeller in a wind stream, it greatly reduces the velocity of the wind, depending on the size of the propeller. If we reduce wind velocity enough, it can greatly impact the environment. Wind plays many roles, two which are nutrient distribution and thermoregulation. Even though the wind is such a great force, humans can reduce it, just like the ozone layer. I believe that this topic needs to be greatly considered and further researched."
December 11, 2007 - The Great Basin Chapter of the Air & Waste Management Association is pleased to announce that it has awarded $1000 scholarships to the following three students enrolled in environmental programs at Utah Universities:
All three scholarship winners will also receive a one year student membership to the Air & Waste Management Association. Congratulations to the award winners! Read more about GBC's scholarship winners here.
Prior Scholarship Winners:
Brydger Cauch - 2006 Winner
The Greater Basin Chapter has added a free job posting service for its members. Go to the "Post Jobs" page. Jobs will be posted within 2 business days of receiving information, on "Job Openings" page.