PROTECT Team Members Attend the 15th “Sinkholes Meeting”

Current and past members of PROTECT attended the 15th “Sinkholes Meeting” (15th Multidisciplinary Conference on Sinkholes and the Engineering and Environmental Impacts of Karst) in Shephardstown, WV, during April 2018. The Sinkholes Meeting is one of the oldest interdisciplinary conferences focused on karst and the associated issues. The conference proceedings includes blind, peer-reviewed manuscripts for publication. Members from the PROTECT group teamed up to present three papers: (1) Laboratory testing of the potential for the influence of suspended sediments on the electrochemical remediation of karst groundwater[1]; (2) Bulk chemistry of karst sediment deposits[2]; and, (3) Geochemical Comparison of Karst and Clastic Springs in the Appalachian Valley & Ridge Province, Southeastern West Virginia and Central Pennsylvania[3]. The meeting was attended by approximately 130 people from 12 countries.

PROTECT researcher Dorothy Vesper and former trainee Mohammad Shokri attended the 3-day meeting along with Emily Bausher (a WVU graduate student who occasionally volunteers on the project). Vesper was also on the organizing committee for the conference and co-chaired the Barry Beck Scholarship Committee to support attendance by trainees.