{"id":295,"date":"2012-05-03T05:57:44","date_gmt":"2012-05-03T05:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.auburn.edu\/aww\/?p=295"},"modified":"2023-05-04T14:05:26","modified_gmt":"2023-05-04T14:05:26","slug":"water-watching-inspires-a-sumter-eagle-to-soar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/water-watching-inspires-a-sumter-eagle-to-soar\/","title":{"rendered":"Water Watching inspires a Sumter Eagle to soar!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lexie Larkin is a 15-year old ninth grader at Sumter Academy in York, Alabama. She loves sports, especially volleyball, basketball and softball. Unfortunately, she suffered two knee injuries with two accompanying knee surgeries that influenced her to pursue other interests.<\/p>\n

Lexie\u2019s uncle Bill Peters and aunt Flo live on Fogle Lake near Alabaster, Alabama. Bill and Flo have been certified as Alabama Water Watch (AWW) water monitors, and have monitored the lake for over two years. Bill is also in the process of becoming an AWW trainer so that he can train others to monitor.\u00a0 During her visits to the lake, Bill and Flo got Lexie interested in water monitoring, and taught her how to do the various water chemistry tests. The standard AWW kit, manufactured by LaMotte, measures six parameters: temperature, pH, alkalinity, hardness, turbidity and dissolved oxygen.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nLexie conducting pH test under her Uncle Bill\u2019s watchful eye<\/h4>\n

Lexie was so excited about water monitoring that she purchased her own LaMotte test kit to use in a project for her school\u2019s annual science fair. The project was based on her hypothesis that turbidity levels in water would have an effect on the level of dissolved oxygen. To test her hypothesis, she chose three different sample sites, all in the Tombigbee Watershed in Sumter County.<\/p>\n

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\nLexie\u2019s award-winning project, \u2018Just Testing The Water\u2019<\/em><\/h4>\n

Click here to read more about Lexie\u2019s project <\/a><\/span><\/h4>\n

Lexie designed a poster presentation to showcase her study, and entered it into Sumter Academy\u2019s annual science fair. There were a total of 53 entries from students in grades 6-12, and faculty from the University of West Alabama came to the school to judge the students\u2019 efforts.\u00a0 \u2018Just Testing The Water<\/em>,\u2019 Lexie\u2019s project, took first place!<\/p>\n

Lexie proceeded on to the district-level science fair, and took another first place, and Best of Show Award. From here, it was on to regional competition, where she took a Third Place award, which opened the door for her entry into the state-level Alabama Science and Engineering Fair at UAH in Huntsville held April 5-7, 2012. Again, \u2018Just Testing The Water<\/em>\u2019 was a winner in the Special Awards category with a Dauphin Island Sea Lab Marine Sciences Consortium Award (pictured below).\u00a0 This award consists of a scholarship for Lexie to attend this summer\u2019s Dauphin Island Sea Lab Marine Sciences Discovery Hall Program. Lexie is ecstatic!<\/p>\n

\"http:\/\/asef.uah.edu\/2012_Special_Awards_Banquet\/ASEF2012SA226.jpg\"
\nLexie receiving her scholarship award to Dauphin Island Summer Camp at the ASEF state competition<\/h4>\n

Future plans \u2013 Lexie is continuing her water quality study, with the addition of three additional sampling sites. And later this year, when she turns 16, she intends to get trained and certified as an AWW volunteer monitor, and begin entering her data into the AWW statewide water quality database. She\u2019s not entirely sure what career path she\u2019ll be following in the coming years, but she\u2019s pretty certain that it will involve water. The AWW staff extends to you a \u2018congratulations on all of your achievements<\/strong>,\u2019 Lexie! Seeing intelligent young environmental stewards like you, we know that our streams, rivers and lakes will be in good hands for years to come!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lexie Larkin is a 15-year old ninth grader at Sumter Academy in York, Alabama. She loves sports, especially volleyball, basketball and softball. Unfortunately, she suffered two knee injuries with two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7724,"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295\/revisions\/7724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aaes.auburn.edu\/wrc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}