Contact:
Mike Ferlazzo
570-577-3212
570-238-6266 (c)
mike.ferlazzo@bucknell.edu
LEWISBURG, Pa. (August 7, 2025) – What drew Juliette VanLuven ’26 to geology was a burning desire to understand the mysteries of the past. She wanted to know why, and how, the world came to be the way that it is today. As a Katherine Mabis McKenna Environmental Fellow, the Delmar, N.Y.-native has spent her summer searching for answers in the wetlands just outside of Williamsport, Pa.
“We don’t know exactly when the wetland formed or what the past environment of the area was composed of,” says VanLuven, who has been working under the guidance of Professor Lorelei Curtin, geology. The research location, which is known both as Sylvan Dell and The Robert Porter Allen Natural Area, contains one of the largest remaining floodplain wetlands on the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. To understand its history, VanLuven and her fellow researchers have to dig down deep.
When working in the field, VanLuven’s office often takes the shape of a kayak that she uses to navigate through four feet of standing water. Along with deploying ground-penetrating radar to understand what lies beneath the surface, the core of her research depends on collecting, well, a core.
“A core is basically a long tube of sediment that we remove with a special, large drill,” says VanLuven. By analyzing the sedimentary makeup of the core, she can begin to reconstruct the past to determine the age of the wetland. “Were hoping to look back into the Holocene, which encompasses roughly the last 11,700 years.”
Before core samples are sent out to a lab for radiocarbon dating, VanLuven combs through the collected material, centimeter by centimeter, cataloguing everything from grain size to the presence of plant matter. Even the most minute details can offer profound insights into the world of long ago. “I have learned so much from my professors and my peers,” she says. “The geology department is just such a wonderful and open space for curiosity, learning and hands-on experience.”
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