Project team member Tara Ferguson has been awarded the Senior Undergraduate Science Research Award from the Faculty of Science Foundation. The award is given to undergraduate students in the Faculty of Science for outstanding research outcomes in senior undergraduate science research courses.
Tara’s thesis project focused on simulating municipal solid waste landfill hotspot conditions, or areas in landfills where there is concentrated methane release, in soil columns using cover soil collected from a former landfill. The goal of her project was to assess the effect of precipitation on methane removal rates to better understand the role of soil moisture in landfill methane release, especially where variable precipitation is a factor. Her project further contributed to understanding the role of methanotrophic microbial communities in enhancing landfill cover soil performance.
Tara conducted her thesis project under the supervision of Dr. Fereidoun Rezanezhad and directly contributed to Activity 6 of the Mitigation of Methane Emission Hot-spots from Municipal Landfills project.
Project team member Tara Ferguson in front of her research poster on soil column experiments to quantify methane oxidation capacity in landfill cover soils.