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Sam Buswell ’23, grew up in Brandon, Vermont—a small town one hour and ten minutes south of Burlington. He describes himself as a “Vermont ski bum kid,” happy to live anywhere with mountains and snow.

When Sam was deciding where to apply to college, he wasn’t sure what program was right for him. He knew he wanted to work outdoors, protect the natural environment, and be close to the mountains.

He decided to apply to the Environmental Sciences program at ����̽̽ (����̽̽), and upon being accepted to the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Honors College, he began his first year in the fall of 2019.

“The Rubenstein School provided me with applied learning opportunities,” said Sam. “It covered more than just the hard science—it incorporated human science, environmental justice, and place-based learning too.”

Sam selected the Water Resources concentration in the Environmental Sciences program, which prompted him to take courses in stream ecology, limnology (lake studies), environmental geology, pollutant movement, and more. After two years of coursework, adapting to the pandemic, working summer jobs in the environmental field, and skiing as much as possible, Sam entered his junior year ready to hone in on a research project for his honors thesis. He met with several faculty, including Associate Professor Dr. Eric Roy, to discuss his options.

“I had done well in Eric’s pollutant movement class, and he was willing to take me on as an advisee,” said Sam. “He mentioned that he had a new project working to examine the effects of restored wetlands. He asked me if I was familiar with the town of Brandon. I said, ‘Well yes I am, I grew up there.’”

While this may not seem like much of a coincidence given Vermont’s small size, for a state with 246 towns, landing a research gig in your hometown of 4,000 people was serendipitous for Sam.

Sam started in Dr. Roy's Nutrient Cycling and Ecological Design lab in the second semester of his junior year. He attended weekly lab meetings with graduate students, where he learned about different avenues of water quality research through discussions about projects happening in the lab.

“The main hurdle for many who do an undergraduate thesis can be actually getting the project together; finding funding, establishing methods, accessing equipment.” said Sam. “My advice is that if you can join a lab and an existing project, you’ll have a lot more support and can start learning from other researchers right away.”

Dr. Roy invited Sam to join year one of a three-year research project studying restored wetlands in Vermont. Sam chose to examine phosphorous cycling, as he had learned about its critical impacts on the Lake Champlain basin.

Many factors go into phosphorous dynamics in restored wetlands, including land use prior to restoration. Sam’s project investigated the water quality impacts of restoring wetlands on land that had been historically used for agriculture.

Sam assessed over 300 water samples from five sites in Vermont. Of those locations, two were in his hometown, and one was in a town, Weybridge, that he had worked in a few summers prior with a regional Land Trust. The project involved collecting and analyzing water samples before and after flooding events. The samples were analyzed for phosphorus and sediment concentration, and additional information was collected regarding the time and location where they were collected. After the field water samples were collected, an intact core experiment was done in the lab to simulate how the soils from different sites would release phosphorus to floodwaters over time.

“Being able to do research in places that I am connected to, and with people I had worked with before made the work feel even more impactful,” said Sam. “My parents got involved too; they’d send me water level updates, and I even went kayaking on one of the sample sites with them.”

With abundant data to work with, Sam spent the spring semester of his senior year analyzing it in RStudio, a widely used statistical program, and summarizing his findings. Each week, Sam met with Eric and Tiffany Chin, his supervisor in the lab, to discuss data analysis and developing the findings of the project.

Sam’s analysis showed that restored wetlands are generally not causing increased phosphorous concentrations in the water that discharges into Lake Champlain. Overall, he found that wetlands have a minimal impact on total phosphorous levels and a positive impact on total suspended solids (TSS) concentration, meaning that they reduce the load of sediment entering the lake.

Sam’s data indicated that the phosphorus dynamics of the restored wetlands varied substantially based on the river that they were located next to. The two rivers included in his project were the Lemon Fair River and the Otter Creek. Sam found that the wetlands on the Lemon Fair River had a more positive impact on phosphorus load than the wetlands along the Otter Creek, likely because the Lemon Fair River water has much more phosphorus and sediment in it.

At the end of the spring semester, Sam gave a public seminar and completed a formal defense of his thesis project. Sam’s presentation was well-attended by State of Vermont employees, community members, peers, and family.

Sam credits his committee members Dr. Kristen Underwood and Dr. Rebecca Diehl, and mentors Tiffany Chin and Dr. Roy for helping to make his thesis project successful.

“Tiffany was hugely influential; she brought me through the entire research process,” said Sam. “From teaching me how to run the SRP plates, to showing me how to use R, to collecting 99% of those samples, she made this project a success and an enriching learning experience for me.”

“I have a tremendous amount of gratitude and respect for Eric,” Sam added. “He juggles so much on a day-to-day basis, working with a broad range of research subjects, advising graduate and undergraduate students, and working in the community.”

After graduation Sam will leave Vermont to go west for a summer job monitoring wetlands on Bureau of Land Management land in Nevada for the University of Montana. But he won’t stay away for long. He plans to return just in time to catch another winter in Vermont and serve as an ECO AmeriCorps member with the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation’s Wetlands Program. After a year of work experience, Sam plans to continue studying wetlands in graduate school.