Gavin Blanchard, Avian and Applied Geosciences Intern, provides support to The Water Institute in multiple research areas including georeferencing photomosaics of colonial waterbird distributions over the past ten years and working with the Capital Area Groundwater Conservation Commission. Gavin’s experience in sediment coring and other field work coupled with his skill in applications such as QGIS makes him an asset when collecting and interpreting data for various projects at The Water Institute. Currently, Gavin is working on analyzing minerals in a volcanic ash deposit from a 450-million-year-old eruption to learn more about the tectonic setting of the subduction zone. Gavin will graduate with a B.S. in Geology from Louisiana State University on Dec. 22, 2024. In his free time Gavin likes to volunteer in the vertebrate paleontology collections room for the LSU Museum of Natural Science.