Research Description:

In the past six months, I have seen how a team of both professors and students can work together to solve a problem. The focus of my team involved a wetland, called SV5, located at Jensen Beach, Florida. Our goal was to profile SV5 using various methods, such as the water budget, the WAIT Test, and the seepage meter. The seepage meter, an apparatus instrument used to measure the infiltration rate of a body of water, became my responsibility to study, to construct, and to implement.

Infiltration rate is the rate at which water flows from the wetland down to groundwater or vice versa. Using seepage meters, we an directly measure this flow rate. To construct the seepage meters or seepage drums, we took 55-gallon drums, cut them in half horizontally, and attached mariottes to the oil spouts on top. The mariottes, water-filled apparatuses that allow the water to flow at a constant rate, were constructed from various pieces of PVC pipes and tubes. (Traditional drums have bags in lieu of mariottes.) Every time we made a trip to SV5, we installed more drums. To install, we pounded the open bottoms of the drums into the wetlands, and after a period of time, we recorded the rise or fall of the water level in the mariottes. After a few calculations, I would find the infiltration rate through the wetland. To date, we have made four trips to SV5 to install a total of nine seepage drums. We will still need to make one more trip to take them all out.