Week of 03/03

Grace Kellner

On Wednesday we had current biology graduate student guest speakers come talk to applying to graduate school, what graduate school is like in biology, and what to expect.

On Friday, most of us were out in the field. Myself, Ali, and Gray worked together in the control site from 1:45 to around 4:00. We got all three of our points finished at the site and I am now completely finished collecting data. Turns out Dr. Entrekin was right and I didn't need to freak out about not having enough time in the field. Allyn and my dad were good teachers.

It was really wet in the area, but it was actually pretty interesting because if we stood still we could see an obvious flow of the water receding. Walking back after taking our samples we all noticed that the path had less standing water in it than it did when we walked in a few hours before. As far as identifying trees, I have definitely learned a how to identify the dominant species in this area: white oak, overcup oak, willow oak, shagbark hickory, post oak, and green ash. Although there were very few shagbarks, I can tell if the tree is a hickory or not depending on the size of the terminal buds. I think Ali liked helping and learning too and she even identified an ash! We definitely had fun taking our samples and we also helped Gray do some of his HGM assessment. Now we have to analyze our data and continue to work on our proposal and begin work on our final report and presentation.

Alyson, was not in the field with us because she already has all of her samples and it would be a poor use of her time to be out with us when she needed to be identifying her samples, so she stayed in the lab to do that.

I'm impressed with how quickly everything has come together. Two weeks ago I was convinced it would take everybody at least four to six weeks to get all of our samples, but I am finished, Alyson is finished (collecting, not identifying), and Josh has finished collecting his samples. We got some pictures in the field as well. I have an image of a tree that I was not sure of, and Ali took pictures of us working.

I will not be in class this coming week and will also miss the Steering Committee meeting because I'll be out of town for a conference.