Ten weeks, 10 hard-to-reach headwater streams and a determination to understand how land use shapes water quality — that is the summer résumé of Amanda Beall, a chemical engineer rising sophomore from the University of Kentucky Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering working with the Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment. She is participating in the work as a part of the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU).

Beall worked closely with water resources engineer Tiffany Messer, The Bill Gatton Foundation Endowed Chair and associate professor in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering. Messer is also the principal investigator of the $487,000 grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation that supports this REU site.

The REU brings undergraduate students from across the country together to focus on addressing water resource and sustainable engineering challenges facing the Appalachian region through research and professional development. The 2025 cohort had 12 undergraduate participants from six universities.

Guided by Messer and graduate student mentors William Rud and Matthew Russell, Beall set out to locate field sites that capture the range of pressures facing Appalachia’s waterways.

She began with a statewide database that scores 207 watersheds for surface water quality, county-level cancer incidence and household income. From that list, she extracted the fifty highest priority sites, then honed her focus on the twenty-six lying inside Eastern Kentucky’s rugged topography.

“Finding a creek on paper is easy,” Beall said. “Standing in it safely is another matter, especially where banks can be near vertical or choked with briars.”

Aerial imagery and terrain layers in ArcGIS Pro helped narrow the group to ten streams that blend scientific value with physical accessibility. Digital elevation models revealed slope and drainage density, while overlays of oil and gas wells, active and abandoned mines, landcover classes, and, after considerable troubleshooting, soil type maps sketched a three-dimensional portrait of each drainage basin.

The soil proved pivotal. The official data set tagged patches by numeric codes rather than plain descriptions, forcing Beall to dig up reference tables, match codes to names and translate those names into hydrologic traits such as runoff potential and permeability.

“Understanding whether a contaminant moves overland or through groundwater changes how you trace its source,” Beall said.

Eastern Kentucky draws most public supply of water from surface intakes, so gauging overland transport takes on added weight.

Once the map was set, Messer plotted a loop allowing the team to visit five sites in a single July day. The group collected samples filled with nitrate, nitrite, E. coli and sulfate. Since space remained in the ice chest, so the crew added vials for ammonia, volatile organic compounds, selected metals and microplastics.

Back In the lab, the team measured salts, microbes and metals to see the amount of each. Preliminary values will populate Beall’s poster for the four-departmental showcase, the formal culmination of her REU appointment. The dataset, including geospatial layers and raw field observations, will extend the survey across the Commonwealth over the next two years.

Messer believes Beall's work has been invaluable.

“Amanda has been a vital part of our team this summer and we are ecstatic to have her continue her work with us by joining the team as an undergraduate research assistant this fall,” Messer said. “She has shown incredible aptitudes for research through their curiosity to create a more resilient Kentucky through water resource and sustainable design solutions.” 

For Beall, the project opened doors she had not considered during her first year as a chemical engineering student.

“This experience showed me the analytical side of environmental work — how chemistry, mapping and field logistics interlock. I’m leaning toward graduate study now, maybe in biosystems engineering, so I can stay on the research track,” Beall said.

Beall says this experience reshaped her academic path. After conversations with faculty and graduate students, she plans to keep her chemical engineering major but add an environmental engineering certificate, with graduate study in biosystems engineering on the horizon.  

“I’ve always liked the idea of research, and this experience showed me how much I enjoy it,” she said.

Beall’s research project was funded in part by The Bill Gatton Foundation Endowed Chairship funds.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award No. 2348814. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation. 

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Writer: Jordan Strickler, jstrickler@uky.edu      

BAE is a partnership between Martin-Gatton CAFE and the Stanley and Karen Pigman College of Engineering. To learn more, visit https://bae.ca.uky.edu/.        

University of Kentucky alum and former trustee Carol Martin “Bill” Gatton bestowed a transformational $100 million gift to the college through The Bill Gatton Foundation. It is the largest gift to the university in its history.  

Four Pillars of The Bill Gatton Foundation’s gift are (1) Scholarships and other initiatives for Student Success, (2) Companion Animal Program, (3) 21st Century Capital Projects and New Initiatives Fund and (4) Faculty Research and Innovation/Research Challenge Trust Fund Program. 

The Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment is an Equal Opportunity Organization with respect to education and employment and authorization to provide research, education information and other services to individuals and institutions that provide equal opportunities for qualified persons in all aspects of institutional operations and do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, ethnic origin, religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, uniformed service, political belief, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, marital status, genetic information or social or economic status.