An Arizona State University professor gives students the opportunity to work in improving the health of the Hassayampa River Preserve. Many health risks, like pollution and mining sites, pose a danger to the river.
Liza Roger teaches the Environmental Chemistry Laboratory where students conduct field activities on the preserve. She introduced the initiative last year.
Her decision to take students into the field stems from not wanting to simply talk to them and give them a handout.
“So I get them to consider the preserve and the parameters, the conditions of the preserve and try to design a project that they can undertake in one semester there to monitor and check the health of the environment from a chemistry standpoint since they are doing environmental chemistry," she said.
Roger says there’s lacking environmental data.
“So year after year, we're hoping to build a database of different parameters at the preserve. As the students design their own project and measure these things, because there's very, actually very little environmental data on the preserve," she said.
Student projects range from sampling water from the river to analyzing the concentrations of heavy metals from wildfires in the soil.
Roger says the course has been well-received by students.
