BIO

Hello, my name is Jesse Thomas. I am a second-year student here at FSU majoring in biological sciences with an interest in the health field. I have a younger sister playing college softball and a dog named bear I took with me to college. I am from Crystal River, Florida so I spend a lot of time outside and on the water. Much like my research which is near Saint James Island at the FSU Coastal and Marine Lab, my personal interests drove me to pursue this field of research and I enjoyed it greatly.

Chemical Analysis on Local Source Vegetation and soils in the Apalachicola Region

Abstract

The importance of analyzing coastal environments around the Apalachicola region has become increasingly important to researchers. My project's goal is to analyze how ratios of carbon:nitrogen: organic matter varies between local source vegetation and local soils and draw conclusions based on that data. We will be looking at soil core samples. Our vegetations of interest are Red Mangroves, Black Mangroves, Juncus, Spartina, Batis, and, Salicornia. Data was collected by ourselves, we obtained our own samples for processing, using plastic 30 centimeter PVC pipe. Cores were stored in the fridge, separated by root size, and then freeze-dried. One method we will use is analyzing organic matter using Loss on Ignition which is burning samples in ceramic crucibles in a furnace at 550 degrees Celcius. The other method is performing elemental analysis on a machine called the ELMO. Samples are wrapped in tin boats carrying the sample and then loaded into the machine to run. This machine will give us data about chemical compositions for each individual sample. The findings of my experiment are preliminary at the moment because I am still in the process of analyzing all of the samples we have collected at the lab. I found that dead mass for all of the cores had a significantly higher carbon to nitrogen ratio compared to live mass samples. PCJ2 (Juncus) has the highest C:N ratio, the influx of dead mass influences this.

Keywords: Vegetation, Soil, Carbon, Nitrogen