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Nahant Marsh, a cattail marsh and sedge meadow located in southwestern Davenport in Scott County, Iowa, is the focus of current student research. Nahant Marsh, once used as a shooting range, suffered significant deposition of lead shot. This ultimately led to the marsh area being designated an EPA Superfund site. Significant remediation efforts have drastically reduced the level of contaminants, and the resulting site now serves as an educational and research center for the Quad-Cities community. St. Ambrose students are conducting research providing important baseline information about present biological communities.
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Russ Banwarth is a junior Biology major from
Dubuque, Iowa. Other than casual observations, little has been done to
document the mammalian fauna of Nahant Marsh. To date, there has been
no systematic attempt to document mammals that occur on the property's
variety of habitats. Russ is focused his
attention on
the initial stages of constructing a species list for Nahant mammals with
particular attention to small nocturnal mammals
(read
Russ' proposal). He completed trapping and
other observations in early spring 2005 and submitted his final report in
late April (read Russ' final report).
Russ presented his research at the John Deere Chapter of Sigma Xi 30
November 2005 at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois.
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