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Undergraduate

Tanvi Dutta Gupta

Biocides are one of the most direct ways humans relate to and impact our environment.  I have been assembling a timeline of the history and present use of biocides – especially mosquitocide – at various locations at Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve.  I am collating county records, EPA documentation, data from scientific literature and other sources.  This work has direct implications for paleoecological analysis of the record left by humans trying to control the environment.  Eventually we will explore the Searsville sediment cores to see if we can pick up the signal of these biocides with mass spectrometer analysis.  In discerning the Anthropocene and its impacts, biocide use represents an intersection where science, public health, academic institutions, governments, public citizens, and wildlife contribute to decision making about how people and nature live together.