Salt applied to roads during the winter has an unsettling tendency to stick around long after the ice has melted. What\u2019s more, it can make the runoff flowing into nearby streams almost as salty as the ocean, according to a recent study.<\/p>\n
A student-led effort at Cornell University made the discovery after another investigation looking into nitrogen concentrations uncovered oddly high conductivity levels in a plot of soil near a campus parking lot. Researchers say the results of the investigation will help fill in the blanks in long-term data sets on chloride levels in streams near Ithaca, New York, and may help to start a conversation on tackling problems that road salt creates.<\/p>\n
Once students had found the high conductivity levels, which are a measurement of salinity, an adviser at the school encouraged them to look deeper.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d been looking at long-term changes in chloride and we didn\u2019t know what happened in the spring,\u201d said Todd Walter, a faculty member in Cornell\u2019s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering and the students\u2019 adviser throughout the work. \u201c(A student) was looking at nitrogen and left conductivity probes installed over a year and the results came back much higher than we\u2019d expected.\u201d<\/p>\n
At that point, a new study was afoot, as three undergraduate students at the school – Shane DeGaetano, Sarah Nadeau and Erin Makarsky – went to streams near campus and collected water samples with grab samplers. From February through November 2014, the students kept going back to storm drains that flow into Cascadilla Creek.<\/p>\n
All the samples were packaged up into wide-mouth sampling bottles and taken back to a lab on campus for analysis in an ion chromatograph. The results were startling.<\/p>\n