Abigail McBride in the lab with instructor Allison Campbell.--SUBMITTED PHOTO
reporter@medicinehatnews.com
Soil has always fascinated Abigail McBride.
Now in her second and final year of the Environmental Biology and Reclamation Technology program at Medicine Hat College, she has loved her classes.
“It’s been amazing. It’s hands on and I found a community here.”
McBride has always liked insects, fungi and has a passion for everything related to soil. In terms of a careers, she said, “I’m hoping to do something in mycology, which is the study of fungi, or in soil science.”
After completing her year at MHC, McBride plans to pursue a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Lethbridge.
“I used to catch bugs all the time and I would look at them and inspect them. I feel many people have that connection to nature, so it felt easy for me. My first two years of college I was taking psychology and I just didn’t see a career in it for myself.”
She decided to try environmental reclamation and the subject matter immediately felt right to her. Instructor Allison Campbell recognized McBride’s interests were perfect for working on the Centre of Innovation’s (C4i) myco-remediation project and offered her a position.
This past year didn’t supply any concrete findings and was mostly used to review literature. McBride explained there is only one lab in Canada that could analyze the compost they were working with, which comes from the Medicine Hat wastewater treatment plant and is composted at the landfill. The cost to have the testing done is expensive, and due to funding limitations couldn’t be completed.
“We are hoping to get it going again next summer by having all the backing and literature and a plan. We are going to try a couple of different species and see what works best with it,” explained McBride.
Right now, the compost is rated level B due to the types of heavy metals it contains, primarily arsenic and molybdenum.
“We are trying to figure out what would be the most efficient for this specific type of heavy metal. There is lots (of research) on arsenic, but molybdenum, there is practically no literature on myco-remediation with that. Arsenic and molybdenum are the two heavy metals that are too high, so it’s a level B compost because of those and if we are able to extract a certain amount of those, we will be able to bring it up to a (level) A and sell it.”
Working on the C4i myco-remediation project has been invaluable to McBride. It gave her practice with sampling techniques along with figuring out different ways to approach research.
“It gave me lots of background knowledge to understand how research works. Also, now I can look at research further down my career, like other people’s research, because I have that backing.”
