Lucy Archibald, Geology major, received NSF GEO-REPS funding – to support up to one year of research training for students who did not have access to opportunities due to pandemic-related interruptions. Funding includes a competitive stipend (up to one year), research supplies and conference travel.

Lucy’s work focuses on how water is transported and retained in saline and sodic soils. Soil salinization is a major environmental issues with impacts on global food security and environmental quality. Saline soils present significant challenges to soil and water quality, soil biodiversity, soil erosion and economic crop production, creating significant challenges for more than 1.5 billion people around the world. Lucy will develop a novel experimental methodology to create soils with different salinity levels in the laboratory and will investigate and model water retention properties for agriculturally important soils in the US, which are prone to salinization. The GEO-REPS supplemental funding will enable her to continue this project for up to one year after graduation.