Students discovering ice age history in lake mud
In February, student and faculty researchers from 鶹 cut a hole in the ice of Flat Iron Lake and plunged out mud samples that are being used in research this summer.
On the floor of a 32-foot-deep small lake just northeast of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Calvin students are literally digging up history.
“It was a shot in the dark when we decided to core this lake initially,” said Melinda Higley, an assistant professor of geology, geography, and environment. “We hoped it would be interesting, and it’s panned out beyond our expectations.”
For the past few years, Higley, the principal investigator on the project, and a few of her students have been extracting samples from the floor of Flat Iron Lake. This past February, a team cut a hole in the ice and plunged out mud samples. From there, the next level of discovery commenced.
“We are studying the history of the hydroclimate for the purpose of planning for the future,” said Higley. “We are hoping the project culminates with an environmental record of what has happened in west Michigan since the ice age so that it will help us understand our landscape sensitivity to climate change.”
Adding new layers of discovery
This summer, two students are continuing to discover the historical treasures at the bottom of the lake: Susannah TenHuisen ’28 (Grand Rapids, Mich.) and Carl Martin ’27 (Mishawaka, Ind.).
“This laminated sediment that we are pulling out goes all the way back to the ice age, so it’s a continuous record preserved in the mud and so this is a continuous record of the environment,” said Higley.
TenHuisen is studying the charcoal that’s been found in the sediment core to add further detail and data to research students have done over the past couple of summers, while Martin’s work focuses on fossil pollen. In essence, he’s counting the different genera of pollen present to see how those ratios have changed over time.
“This data is giving me an idea of what vegetation grew around the lake back then and how that vegetation has changed over time with the retreat of glaciers,” said Martin, a geology and biology double major.
Students given freedom to lead
TenHuisen and Martin’s scope of research ultimately supports the broader project, but Higley says the paths to discovery are oftentimes blazed by students.
“This project has taken direction based on student findings,” said Higley. “The funding we have currently through Vermeer and the Davis Young fund is supportive of student-led thinking and student-led initiatives.”
And sometimes when students dig in, they discover some wild stuff.
“One thing I found fascinating in my charcoal samples is these super tiny almost transparent shapes of some little body of something. I don’t have any idea what it is,” said TenHuisen, who says her current leading theory is a tiny invertebrate or a dinoflagellate.
“My google search history shows: ‘What do you call a tiny silicate with pointy triangles,’ said TenHuisen with a smirk. She says it hasn’t led to further insights, but she remains curious. “Lake sediment is so mysterious sometimes.”
Building confidence in first year
Both TenHuisen and Martin are enjoying a summer of scientific discovery and say they credit their First-Year Research in Earth Sciences (FYRES) experience for providing them with the confidence to do this work.
“I came to Calvin undecided on my major,” said TenHuisen. “Within the first few months I declared a double major in environmental science and Spanish. If I hadn’t taken FYRES I might not have done that or as soon. It was really valuable for me to not only get insight into research but also to research with a cool community of people.”
“FYRES gave me experience and the ability to know how to read scientific papers correctly and then to go out and do research on my own,” said Martin. “It also prepared me to see how messy science can be at times.
Cultivating awe and wonder
While science can be messy, what TenHuisen and Martin have seen through their research experiences at Calvin is God’s intricate design of all of creation.
“You get to see the beauty of God’s creation in it [the fossil pollen sample],” said Martin. It is so complex and diverse.”
“It’s crazy to think you are looking at something that is probably around 15,000 years old and it has this distinct pattern,” said TenHuisen. “The level of precision you can find with things is amazing.”
Funding from the Scholarship & Christianity in Oxford program, in which Higley was a fellow, has also been foundational to this project.