Caden Terence Pohlkamp
7th Grade, Brookside Intermediate School
Friendswood, TX
Is More Green Better? Does Littoral Vegetation Enhance Habitat Suitability of Local Retention Ponds?
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Project Background
Living near the Gulf of Mexico, Caden is interested in how communities control flooding from extreme weather events. He found out that many of the man-made ponds around his town are required—they collect and control water during storms. “If our community is going to build retention ponds, I wanted to know the optimal way to design them to provide suitable habitats for the local marine life I am passionate about,” he says. Caden decided to build a remote-operated vehicle to investigate the health of his town’s ponds.
Tactics and Results
Caden built a small remote-operated vehicle (ROV) that could scoot to the bottom of retention ponds and bring back water samples. He then took samples of 12 different ponds around his community and measured the pH, the amount of oxygen consumed by living things in the water, the dissolved oxygen, turbidity, phosphate, temperature and more. He used these to determine how much life the ponds could support. Caden showed that the ideal pond has between 15 and 30 percent non-grass vegetation around its edge. Healthy ponds have large amounts of dissolved oxygen and ideal pH. He also showed that retention ponds with fountains had better dissolved oxygen, making them more hospitable for life. Ponds without fountains, he showed, had measures that suggested a lot of algae, gobbling up the oxygen. He communicated his findings to officials, so they could act on any unhealthy ponds.
Beyond the Project
Caden loves taking care of his guinea pigs and his 10-gallon aquarium. “When I was five years old, my mom took me to Sea World and I fell in love with marine life,” he says. He wants to become a marine veterinarian and biologist. He loves reading about the ocean, and sneaks in big books to read in school. “My parents say the extra weight in my backpack is bad for my back, but I disagree,” he says. He also participates in the Texas A&M Galveston Sea Camp, and volunteers at local beach cleanups to protect marine life.
