Looking for what you cannot see: Krista Saladino gets her hands wet investigating the depths of a lake.

Probing beneath the surface

Krista Saladino’s introduction to field work was hardly glamorous. "We camped for two nights. The first night we had to set up our tents in the rain," she says grinning. She loved it.

Saladino, a junior studying geosciences, and graduate student Mike Moreland spent the summer paddling through lakes in a bright yellow raft, using a cylindrical probe to measure water temperature, conductivity, salinity, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, and pH—indicators of lake health.

Attached to the multi-sensor probe is a handheld computer that stores and displays the data. "The probe lets you take measurements at different depths, sort of like getting a snapshot of a slice of the lake," says Saladino. "A lake may look beautiful," she explains, "but you have to collect data to find out what’s really happening in the water."

"Mike really trusted me to do a lot," says Saladino. "The probe was a new and expensive piece of equipment for us, so we were trying to figure out how to use it correctly."

Saladino’s field experience will form the basis of her undergraduate thesis, a requirement for all geosciences majors. "Research teaches you team work, organization, how to communicate results," she adds. "It prepares you for the real world."

Krista Saladino was an undergraduate student in the Department of Geosciences in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State.