WVU Doctoral Candidate Receives EPA Fellowship for Water
Protection Research
The State Journal
29 August 2014
By Sarah Tincher, Energy Reporter
West Virginia University graduate student Eric Merriam has been
awarded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's STAR Graduate
Fellowship for his research on the protection of water resources.
Merriam, a doctoral candidate in wildlife and fisheries resources
in the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and
Design, will receive up to $42,000 a year to cover tuition, fees
and stipends for graduate school. He is the second WVU student to
be awarded the Science To Achieve Results, or STAR, Fellowship.
Focused on the protection of water resources in Appalachian
watersheds from the effects of mine runoff, Merriam's research
aims to improve modeling and prediction capabilities so that
scientists can assess how current and future land use activities,
like mountaintop removal mining and Marcellus shale gas
development, will affect water quality.
“A major theme of my research is the importance of placing
surface-mining impacts within the context of other human impacts,”
he said. “For example, the impact of surface mining combines with
the impact of untreated municipal wastewater, which is
unfortunately common throughout much of the central Appalachian
region.
“Management efforts that focus solely on surface mining will have
minimal benefits to water quality and ecological conditions, such
as recreational fisheries,” Merriam continued. “We need to start
developing management approaches that address all relevant
stressors, including insufficient wastewater treatment
infrastructure, legacy impacts from historical mining, as well as
contemporary mountaintop mines.”
As part of his fellowship responsibilities, Merriam will be
teaching a course on the ecology of Appalachian rivers and
attending a weeklong symposium with other STAR fellowship
recipients from around the country. He will also be completing a
final portion of his dissertation that will determine whether or
not water quality in streams throughout southern West Virginia
have changed as expected over time as the intensity of mountaintop
mining has changed.