I have been doing some more research and reading for my thesis. There is a lot of interesting papers out there about citizen science. I found one about using Twitter for citizen science. It’s been an interesting read. I am feeling a little better about writing my new introduction paper. I am very happy with my topic because of this reason. Lots of good interesting papers.
Last weekend I collected data on 430 trees. I am also beginning to run various statistics with the data collected. As I close in toward the end of my study, I am beginning to see trends in the data. These graphs and statistics can help prove various growth rates and effectiveness of slope, aspect, height, DBH and other data sets.
I spent the week of spring break out on Santa Rosa Island and was determined to finish up my data collection. Luckily, with the help of Joe Ferguson, I wrapped up all the data collection for my capstone! In the photo above is me and my awesome research assistant after sampling the campsite.
I am going to collect the last of my water quality data this weekend, since it is supposed to rain. I have also been working on editing my paper and finalizing some of my GIS interpretations.
My trees continue to grow and every time I go to the greenhouse to check on the growth of the trees there are more germinating. Although I am very excited to see my plants doing so well and giving me plenty of data I have to spend a lot more time in the greenhouse. Every three days I have to go and measure the growth of each individual tree and look for newly germinated trees. With 60-70 trees that can take a long time and I have been getting a sore back form bending over to check the measurements. I sure hope that I have some useful data by the end of this project.
Hey everyone! I haven’t finished collecting data yet but there are a few things I have noticed from the growth I have so far. First of all I am only getting growth in the high water regime, unfortunately the low water regime cannot sustain the trees at such a fragile state. One of the main things I have seen is that both populations are growing much better under conditions with ash cover as you can see in the pictures below. The top photo is high water without ash and the bottom photo is high water with ash.
There has been a much better germination success rate for both populations with ash cover but beyond this I have noticed that under conditions of high water with ash cover the mainland population seems to have greater germination success than the island population. Under conditions of high water without ash on the other hand the island population seems to be having greater germination success than the mainland population. The preliminary data seems to be supporting my hypothesis but we will have to wait and see until I finish collecting and analyzing my data.
I spent this first week back from spring break looking at peer suggestions for revisions throughout my entire paper and exploring areas in which I can cut information out, or add it in if needed. In addition I practiced my elevator speech, seeing how I have not done so in a while.
I received the business cards required for class (100 cards for &7). I included my school, email, major, and this website in an effort to produce a professional looking business card.
Below is a picture of a 10×10 meter plot located in direct sunlight without any Torrey pine.
Life in California is fast and hilly! I definitely appreciate the mountains and regulations we have here in California, but I think us Californians could learn a thing or two from the South. For one the culture is alive there, everyone is living it and it is all different in each person, we should embrace our individual cultures and identities, but respect and learn from the cultures of others.
New Orleans is a beautiful place that we should preserve as long as it makes sense to. But I learned how important flexibility in resource management needs to be, the environment is not steady and unchanging so we can’t be either.
Thanks for the good time NOLA, I’ll be back!
Welcome to the middle of the semester! I hope everyone had a great Spring Break. Remember, at this point, you should know at least one of your portfolio essays and should be working on substantial revisions while you draft through our third essay prompt. By Week 12, you should know your second portfolio paper and then continue to revise. Don’t forget that our scoring criteria is accessible through our syllabus page as well as under Learning Module 4.
Remember, revision, revision, revision!
Jetzt sind wir in Kalifornien…. Gott sei Dank!
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