Internships

Raymond Brusca ’11

My internship project focused on monitoring water quality and ecological balance across the University and within the surrounding Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed, especially Lake Carnegie.  Specifically, my project investigated how land use changes, driven by the Campus and Sustainability Master plans, will impact the biological, chemical, and physical characteristics, and, thereby health, of Lake Carnegie and the surrounding watershed, especially the Washington Road Stream.

Particular emphasis was placed on determining the input point sources of fecal coliform bacteria such as E. coli by monitoring their levels at Carnegie Lake sites.  The project concluded with an EPA-set level of confidence that E. coli levels were unsafe for primary recreation activities such as swimming.  Another project involved investigating whether the variation of zooplankton across lake sites reflects the relative concentrations of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, and, thereby, the nutrient preferences of the phytoplankton upon which they subsist, which fall roughly but not uniformly around the Redfield ratio of 106 C:16 N:1 P.