Research Symposium

BIO

I am from my lovely hometown Jacksonville, Florida. In high school, I discovered my passion for all things Biology and fell in love with researching evolution. Now, I enjoy learning everything about how the Earth works in order to hopefully have the opportunity to do paleontology research.

Investigating Iron Concentration in Groundwater Following a Lake-Draining Sinkhole Event

Abstract

Sinkhole lakes are, as the name entails, lakes with a sinkhole in the lakebed. These lakes have occasional dry-down events, which means that the water previously occupying the lake relocates, leaving them significantly emptier than before. These lakes go through a dry-down with a sinkhole event most of the lake water drains into a sinkhole found on the lakebed. Some of these lakes are Lafayette, Miccosukee, Iamonia, and Jackson, all in Tallahassee. Lake Jackson has the most frequent sinkhole events. One of these occurred in February 2022. This was one of the major dry-downs and the one which we collected samples from. Though this is a significant event on the ecosystem, there has not been much research done surrounding these dry-downs, especially the chemical impacts of these events on the downgradient aquifer the water flows through. It is to be expected that there will be oxidative weathering reactions occurring between the draining O2-rich lake water and minerals in the subsurface, leading to changes in iron concentrations in the aquifer. In this project, we investigate the changes in iron concentration in the downgradient groundwater following the February 2022 Lake Jackson dry-down. By analyzing many different days’ worth of samples of water, we have created a chronological data set of shifting iron concentrations.

Keywords: Sinkhole, Hydrogeology, Water, Iron, Lake Jackson