Since all of our field and lab work are done, Week 6 mostly consisted of office work. I’ve had a lot of time to start making graphs of our soil data and analyzing some of the trends. I actually had this blog post typed out a pretty long time ago and didn’t realize I saved it as a draft so I decided to just publish it now as I would have originally (oops!).

We are having some difficulties with the elevation corrections for each site so hopefully by early next week we will have that figured out. That way we can start analyzing how the soil characteristics of each site impact the hydrology in the marsh.

I’ve also started learning how to do basic operations in R. This is something I’ve wanted to learn how to do for a while and, if I can get good enough at using the program, I may be able to do some of statistical tests for our data in the program. I installed the swirl package into RStudio which is a program that teaches you how to navigate and enter data into R within the R program. So for the past few days I’ve been running through all of the courses in R that I can find which has been draining but also really interesting.

Katie and I have to give a presentation on our work this summer on August 9^th for the EPA so we have started putting a PowerPoint presentation together. I’ve actually been learning a lot of great new techniques for presentations from some of the contractors and post-docs working here. Once we finish that presentation, I’ll start putting my 5-minute presentation, poster, and final report together for Sea Grant.

This past weekend some of the interns went down to Crater Lake National Park, Toketee Falls, and Umpqua Hot Springs. Crater Lake was beautiful and it is a MUST to jump in. There isn’t a ton to do at the actual lake, there is only one trail that leads down to the water. Have no fear, there are plenty of hikes, waterfalls, and yes, hot springs in Umpqua National Forest. I would love to post a picture of the hot springs since they were incredible, but none of the pictures did them any justice. There were approximately 6 small pool type areas to sit in that were nestled into the side of a cliff that overlooked a raging river. The pools became cooler as you went down the cliff face but they were all warm and a beautiful green color. Since the weather is typically pretty warm in the forest during the summer, I’d recommend trying to get to the hot springs later in the day when it cools off. On the other hand it may be more crowded later in the day, you’ll just have to give it a try!