Date of Award

12-2001

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Geography

First Advisor

Dr. Charles Emerson

Second Advisor

Dr. David Lemberg

Third Advisor

Dr. Rolland Fraser

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Many environmental problems involve the collection and interpretation of spatial data. Screening methods attempt to develop efficient test procedures to determine the presence and absence of contaminants in samples. Screening methods can reduce monitoring costs and effectively identify contamination problems. Adaptive sampling has the flexibility to adjust for follow-up sampling based on the observed patterns in the population. Geostatistical method is employed for the adaptive sampling scheme. Geostatistics are statistical methodologies that use spatial coordinates to help formulate models used in estimation and prediction.

This study seeks to map Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCBs) concentrations in sediment in Lake Allegan and Morrow Lake in Michigan. Surface sediment sampling are collected for both lakes, and PCBs concentrations are measured by two test methods, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) and Gas Chromatography (GC). The screening functionality of ELISA kit was not demonstrated as useful in this sampling situation. However, adaptive sampling, which applied the Voronoi diagrams and Ordinary Kriging, demonstrated the logical additional sampling points.

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