{"id":885,"date":"2011-08-08T10:23:59","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T17:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/?p=885"},"modified":"2011-08-08T10:24:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T17:24:55","slug":"rounding-the-bend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/2011\/08\/08\/rounding-the-bend\/","title":{"rendered":"Rounding the Bend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week we executed an experiment to begin to answer our new question: what is the relationship between nutrient concentration and uptake rate?\u00a0 As I explained in my last blog, we filled bladders with four different nutrient concentrations and deployed them at mid-estuary and lower-estuary marshes.\u00a0 My main task for the week was to be in charge of lab prep.\u00a0 Artificial sea water needed to be made, bladders needed to be filled, field supplies needed to be organized, nutrient samples needed to be taken, and so on.\u00a0 Besides being rather mundane and times, I enjoy being in the lab.\u00a0 As I have expressed before, field work tends to stress me out because there are so many variables.\u00a0 In the lab I have much more control over things.\u00a0 I also have lots of time to think and brainstorm about my life outside of EPA including grad school and other post undergrad opportunities.\u00a0 Often times I have to pause what I\u2019m doing to write things down so I don\u2019t forget!\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

One of the main difficulties of working on this project is that it involves a lot of man power as well as several different people taking charge of various aspects of the experiment.\u00a0 This can lead to problems because every part of the project needs to come together perfectly which sometimes does not happen due to lack of communication.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this was a rather large problem with our deployment last week.\u00a0 The tides were rather high, so we decided to deploy our chambers on low marsh benches.\u00a0\u00a0 We do know at what tide elevation that a particular marsh floods, but we do not know elevations of all of the low marsh benches in the marsh itself.\u00a0 So, we decided to estimate, and our estimate happened to be rather off.\u00a0 On Monday, the chambers were deployed at Winant Marsh in mid-estuary.\u00a0 Using our calculations, we decided to add 10L of water to the bladders which will flood the chambers about two-thirds of the way.\u00a0 Upon Caitlin\u2019s, return from deploying the chambers, she realized that she forgot to leave out the high tide sample bottle, so she and Stephanie went out to the marsh during high tide to collect a sample.\u00a0 When they got there, they were shocked to see that the tide was almost over topping the chambers \u2013 way higher than we thought it would go.\u00a0 This can cause problems because it can result in a pressure difference inside and outside the chambers which may lead to leakage.\u00a0 Leakage, especially from natural sea water infiltrating with our artificial sea water, can render our results useless.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Where did the marsh go? The tide almost completely flooded our chambers. <\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

That day, there was discussion and disagreement over how much water to add to the bladders for the subsequent day\u2019s deployment.\u00a0 This is where several people thinking different things about the same project can lead to issues.\u00a0 Caitlin and I knew (or thought) that the low marsh bench at Hatfield flooded higher than it did at Winant.\u00a0 So we thought that our bladders for that deployment deserved little or no extra water.\u00a0 Ted on the other hand wanted to add 5L just to be safe.\u00a0 The problem with adding too much water is that it can greatly dilute the water that enters the chambers making it difficult to extrapolate out what the exact uptake rate actually is.\u00a0 I\u2019m getting carried away\u2026 haha.\u00a0 Anyway in the end, we only added an extra 2L to each bladder because we realized that we didn\u2019t have enough artificial sea water to add 5L and Jody found extra low sites to deploy the<\/p>\n

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I did get to go out in the field for a bit on Wednesday. I was enjoying being out in the sun!<\/p><\/div>\n

chambers at (lower than our calculations were for).\u00a0 Again the tide came up really high and we didn\u2019t have enough water as was needed leading to possible infiltration.\u00a0 The next day we made sure to add extra water and we found higher elevation sites, so we ended up having too much water!\u00a0 Ugh!\u00a0 It\u2019s so difficult to get it just perfect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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After taking our salinity measurements and finding the final volumes, we compared our results to our initial measurements to see if they matched up (they should be the same if no water was gained or lost during the deployment).\u00a0 We found that a couple bladders may have had external leakage, but it is not as bad as it could have been.\u00a0 Hopefully we will have some usable data from UC Santa Barbara in a few weeks.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This week will be spent preparing for my presentations on Thursday and Friday as well as analyzing data.\u00a0 I can\u2019t wrap my mind around the fact that this internship is almost over.\u00a0 I just hope that I can find a place to live before I move back to Hawaii!<\/span><\/p>\n

Please feel free to read and enjoy my personal blog to learn about my summer outside of the EPA here: sarasoregonadventure.blogspot.com<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week we executed an experiment to begin to answer our new question: what is the relationship between nutrient concentration and uptake rate?\u00a0 As I explained in my last blog, we filled bladders with four different nutrient concentrations and deployed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3008,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3569,1387503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sara-duncan","category-summer-scholars"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":895,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885\/revisions\/895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/seagrantscholars\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}