Saturate Hydrocarbon Analysis on Liberty State Park

Contaminated soils have been a concern in New Jersey since the Industrial Revolution. One site in particular has a variety of contaminants and is near the coast of Jersey City in Liberty State Park. Liberty State Park (LSP) has been impacted by four significant changes: natural wetland, NY dump site, CNJ railroad, and Jersey City dump site. Even with all of these changes to the pedosphere, it has abundant plant biomass and succession. In normal conditions, one might expect that contaminants would interfere with plant growth because the various molecules or elements would impede different enzymatic functions of the plant. The goal of this study is to find out what contaminants are present in the LSP soils. There are four subplots and a reference site that our whole group studied: HMF, 146, 43, 25F, and 25R. HMF or Hutcheson Memorial Forest is a natural preserve that Native Americans used for agriculture. The sites 146, 43, 25F, and 25R are in different locations throughout the fenced off section of Liberty State Park (LSP) and have different levels of contamination and plant life. This study reports on a sub-category of organic compounds, called saturates. Depending on how contaminated each individual site is, the abundance of the specific saturate compounds may vary. The numerous findings proves that HMF is a natural site by having its hydrocarbon compound count to a minimum, and proved that 25R is the most contaminated site out of the others.