{"id":65401,"date":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news-draft\/uncategorized\/uris-top-environmental-science-student-likes-to-get-dirty\/"},"modified":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-08T00:00:00","slug":"uris-top-environmental-science-student-likes-to-get-dirty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/2007\/05\/uris-top-environmental-science-student-likes-to-get-dirty\/","title":{"rendered":"溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s top environmental science student likes to get dirty"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\tNorth Kingstown resident set to graduate May 20<\/p>\n


\n\tKINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 8, 2007 \u2013 Occasionally getting dirty usually comes with the territory for students studying environmental sciences. But North Kingstown resident Sarah Shoppell has developed a passion for dirt that some people may consider extreme.<\/p>\n


\n\t Shoppell is a regional champion at judging the characteristics of soil and looks forward to a career as a soil scientist. She will graduate from the 溏心vlog免费B站 on May 20 as the top environmental science student in her class.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cWhen I took an introductory soil science course, I found it really interesting, so I took a couple more classes,\u201d Shoppell said. \u201cWhen you take a class where you get to go into the field and dig in the dirt, it\u2019s really fun. There aren\u2019t a lot of people who know much about soil characteristics, and I seemed to have a knack for it.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tFor two years, Shoppell participated in soil judging competitions against universities around the country. She competed in California, Utah, New Hampshire and Maine, and earned the 2006 northeast regional soil judging title. The 溏心vlog免费B站 soil judging team placed 10th in the 2007 national championships.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cAt the competition, you go out into a soil pit \u2013 essentially a big hole dug in the ground \u2013 and look for characteristics such as color, structure, texture, and redoximorphic features, which are usually iron concentrations and depletions that tell you where the water table is,\u201d she explained. \u201cHere in Rhode Island, the first layer of soil is dark and that’s from organic matter. Then there\u2019s an orange layer with a lot of iron, and below that is the glacial parent material. It tells you a lot about the natural processes that have happened over time.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tShoppell said that it is important to understand the characteristics of soil because \u201ceverything is built on the soil, so you need to know something about it so you can deal with any problems that arise. Can you put a septic system here? Where will the run-off go? Is this a good place to grow crops, or is it going to flood?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tThe 溏心vlog免费B站 student used her soil knowledge in an internship in the summer of 2005 to help assess the effectiveness of a fertilizer made from biosolids. She collected soil samples throughout the growing season from vegetable fields applied with a variety of fertilizers, grinded the samples up, and tested them in a lab for pH and nitrate. The project assessed which type of fertilizer produced the greatest total weight of vegetables.<\/p>\n


\n\tShoppell\u2019s 溏心vlog免费B站 career wasn\u2019t all about dirt, though. She volunteered at the Kettle Pond Visitor Center for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and spent a summer monitoring endangered piping plovers on beaches in South County.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cI would walk the beach, take notes on where the plover nests were, how many babies they had, and keep people and dogs out of the nesting area,\u201d she said. \u201cSpending the summer on the beach was great.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\tWith graduation approaching, Shoppell is now focused on finding a job.<\/p>\n


\n\t\u201cMy dream job would be working as a soil scientist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service, mapping the soil and integrating soil maps online,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ll probably go to grad school eventually, but in the meantime I want to go into the field and find out if this is really what I want to do. But I\u2019m sure it is. What could be better than a career playing in the dirt?\u201d<\/p>\n


\n溏心vlog免费B站 News Bureau photo by Michael Salerno photography<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Kingstown resident set to graduate May 20 KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 May 8, 2007 \u2013 Occasionally getting dirty usually comes with the territory for students studying environmental sciences. But North Kingstown resident Sarah Shoppell has developed a passion for dirt that some people may consider extreme. Shoppell is a regional champion at judging […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65403,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}