Bailey Simmons – Student on the Job
Bailey Simmons is an EES rising senior with a concentration in soil and water science. He has a summer job conducting field and lab work with UMaine faculty members Dr. Aria Amirbahman and Dr. Stephen Norton.
In the field, Simmons along with M.S. student Nick Messina and Ph.D. student Jeremy Deeds, are taking water and sediment samples from 35 lakes across the state. The main goal of this project is to look at how much phosphorus is available in lakes. The gathered samples from the lakes are to be put in a model by Messina who is in the civil engineering department. The model will be able to predict the trophic status of a lake and could be an early indicator of algal blooms.
In the lab, Simmons and Messina run the sediment samples through a process called Psenner Extraction to determine how much iron, aluminum, calcium, and phosphorus there is in the sediment.
Simmons is not sure what he would like to do after graduating but wants to find work for a year or two doing field jobs or other environmentally related work before applying to graduate programs.