Research Opportunities

Dr. Wally Borowski

Greetings! My research is and will be directed along several major themes:

1. Environmental problems associated with fresh water streams, rivers, and lakes, particularly related to geochemical and microbial tracer techniques.

2. Depositional environments and stratigraphy of Ordovician carbonates of the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, Appalachian Plateau.

3. Geochemical signals of methane and gas hydrates in marine sediments, especially those within pore waters and concerning carbon and sulfur isotopes of pore water constituents.

I up currently winding up research in the latter topic, hope to attract interested student to the second, and am presently active in investigating environmental problems of fresh waters. So let’s talk about items 2 & 1.

First, the rocks. I did my Master’s research at Tennessee where I studied the depositional environments of Middle and Upper Ordovician rocks just north of Knoxville. Rocks of the same lithology and age crop out around Richmond, KY, so this is wonderful opportunity to deduce the depositional environments and stratigraphy of the local carbonate section. Not only would interested students sample rocks and make thin sections to figure out their origins, we would also place those rocks into a stratigraphic context. Carl Brett (U. Cincinnati), and his students have extensively studied the equivalent rocks north of Lexington, placing them with a sequence stratigraphic framework. It would be natural to do the same for the limestone carbonate section surrounding Richmond. There are several localities around Richmond with thick, complete stratigraphic sections. Interested students would measure and describe the stratigraphic section, cut many rocks and thin sections, and synthesize the information to see how the nature of the Ordovician world changed through time in response to geologic events and processes. Please do consider working with rocks!

Second, I am currently working on tracing the nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) sources within Wilgreen Lake, a dammed lake just outside Richmond. The lake is eutrophic, that is loaded with nutrients that cause unnatural algal growth and interesting water chemistry. The main goal of this research is to find the sources of these nutrients using nitrogen isotopes and microbial PCR analysis. Possible sources include runoff from agricultural lands (cattle fecal matter and/or fertilizers), runoff from suburban landscapes (fertilizers), and leakage of septic tanks from established or more recent housing developments around the lake.



Our current hypotheses targets septic tank leakage as the most probable source of both nutrient loading, and high fecal microbe counts in lake waters mostly centered near human dwellings with septic systems. We hope to point out the source, so that the community can act to decrease the amount of nutrients and microbes entering the lake. Although we are winding up work on Wilgreen Lake, I will be looking for other study targets in EKU’s service region. Also, there may be other interesting problems that surface at Wilgreen. Please consider joining the research!