Student researchers to investigate droughts in national park this summer

By Antonio Miguel Escorzon •

COURTESY OF PAUL BALDAUF
The Badlands Working Group map rock formations in the
White River Badlands in around 2018.

This summer, Paul Baldauf, professor in the Department of Marine and Environmental Sciences, is taking student volunteers to aid in the research for the Badlands Working Group, a team of experts from different universities around the United States. Student volunteers from these universities investigate the long-sustained droughts in Badlands National P

Alongside Baldauf are undergraduate student volunteers John Nichols, Amanda Altree, Corinne Renshaw, Ritka Vonguru and Lillie Suthers. Baldauf and his students work together with Professor Patrick Burkhart and his students from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania, as well as Professor Gregory Baker from Colorado Mesa University.

“Despite the geographical distance between the universities, science still brings the group together,” Corinne Renshaw, junior environmental science and marine biology major, said. “I am happy to be part of that legacy.”

During the 2023 to 2024 academic year, Renshaw worked on mineralogic identification, geochemical analysis and particle size analysis.

“I bring it up in class and welcome environmental science majors and non-majors to volunteer,” Baldauf said.

Baldauf has been working with the BWG for 15 years. He frequently speaks to his students about the BWG because he thinks this independent research opportunity can help them regardless of their chosen field.

“I feel that I have really benefited from working with other students who are so passionate about this project,” Amanda Altree, freshman environmental science major, said. “Their research not only adds to our collective understanding, but fosters new ideas and conversations within the group.”

Altree has been working since September 2023 in comparing particle size to identifying the origin point of the sediment.

Baldauf brings student volunteers to the Badlands to work on the research from May to June. Baldauf understands the importance of developing early networking and work experience through this research investigation.

“It is the obligation to mentor the next generation of scientists, encouraging them to network and participate,” Baldauf said.

The BWG uncovered three periods of extraordinary droughts when digging the sand dunes in the Badlands.

“These are not continuous for hundreds of years, but probably are closely spaced enough that they changed the ecology dramatically, shifting the region from temperate to arid,” Baldauf said. “It results in loss of vegetation and sand dunes becoming active.”

The BWG formed a profound idea of the existence of a megadrought culminating in these periods. The BWG collect samples of sediment from the dunes to further the research.

“We analyze our sand samples using the OSL [Optically Stimulated Luminescence] to determine how long the sand has been buried, which we interpret as the time since the end of the drought,” Baldauf said.

In order to study what the environment was like at the time the dunes were active, the BWG found snail fossils in the samples. Using a sieve separates the snails from the individual grains in the samples.

“I took off on sieving snail fossils from the Red Dog Table Loess sediment from the Badlands,” Renshaw said. “The passion for investigating the snails’ use as temperature proxies from isotopes has really moved along our understanding of this area.”

From there, the snails are identified by David Grimley, gastropod expert from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The BWG uses carbon-14 dating on the snails to interpret the period from when these snails were alive.

“Working as a team, meeting new people and developing ideas are important ways for students to experience the value of collaboration,” Baldauf said.

There are opportunities for student volunteers to not only help in the research, but present the results during conferences. The NSU research team in the BWG present their findings during the annual Geological Society in America conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in October.

“I not only talk about what we are researching, but about how to communicate with other researchers, how to organize presentations and other invaluable skills that I would not have had much exposure to, if it was not for the Badlands Working Group,” Altree said.