Innovations in energy storage will make renewables like solar power less expensive and more reliable.
Innovations in energy storage will make renewables like solar power less expensive and more reliable.
At the end of a long day in the field, Jennifer Glass’ students were covered in mud and bug bites but excited at having new samples to analyze. The team took the core samples back to their lab in Atlanta, where they hope to answer questions about the Earth’s ability to cope with greenhouse gas emissions. From left to right are Chloe Stanton, Amanda Cavazos, Melissa Warren, and Jennifer Glass. For more on their trek to Sapelo, see the Explorers story on page 38. To watch the team at work, see The Explorers story, At the Coast.
Walking in the Sapelo marsh is hard work. The mud sucked the team’s rubber boots into the ground. Their slog churned the soil and released sulfur odors into the air. Once in the marsh, Jennifer Glass and her students hammered a threefoot- long PVC pipe into the ground to collect a soil sample. To remove the sample, the team had to get dirty. The students plunged their hands into the soil, elbow deep, and dug the pipe free from the mud’s grip. Chloe Stanton (left) and Melissa Warren hold a fresh core sample, while Amanda Cavazos (back, right) looks on.
In the summer of 2014, Georgia Tech scientists traveled to Sapelo Island, a barrier island along the Georgia coast. Sapelo, famous for its swampy beauty, is accessible only by boat or airplane and remains largely wild. Ecologists from faraway countries have been studying the Sapelo salt marsh since the 1950s. Jennifer Glass, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, visited Sapelo in July with her team of students to study the microorganisms in Sapelo’s marshes and water.
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