Dr. Justin Richardson was awarded a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Resources Conservation Service to study the application of portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF) to measure heavy metals in urban gardens and forests. Collecting soils, processing them, and analyzing them by Inductively Couple Plasma Optical Emission Spectrometry is the gold standard method, but can take weeks to months to complete. pXRF may offer a way to get heavy metal data in urban forests and gardens in seconds! Before this technology can be applied at scale, biases in measurements from rocks, water, human refuse, and particle heterogeneity will be quantified by this project. The research will be completed in collaboration with Dr. Nicholas Perdrial at the University of Vermont..