Presentations....or lack of

Well, we were supposed to head on down to Maumelle today so that we could present our data to the steering committee. But mother nature had other plans. Last night around 8pm an F3/4 tornado passed through right between Maumelle and Conway. It threw a lot of cars off the highway and destroyed some mobile homes. We attempted the drive to Maumelle this morning regardless. However, it was apparent that the presentations were not going to occur when I ended up turning off my car and sat on the interstate for 15 minutes. We will try to reconvene at a later date and present to at least some of the steering committee, but today it was not plausible. Round trip took 2.5hrs. I hope they will get the roads cleared up soon so that we can all get out of Conway, and people can come here for graduation!


I had a wonderful last semester and enjoyed all of you in this class. I hope we can stay in touch via some sort of social media. Enjoy your summer everyone!

Final Blog Post

We were supposed to present our presentations today but due to the tornado that happened last night that did not happen. We tried to present but sat in traffic for 2 hours and only moved 6 miles so we had to cancel. I am sad that we did not get a chance to present but hope that we are able to reschedule and still present our projects. I hope that everyone still gets the chance to present and show their hard work. This semester has flown by I can't believe that it is over. I have learned so much through this project and I am excited for the future. I would like to thank Dr. Entrekin for helping us and all of her advice this semester as well as my group as we have all become good friends through this process. 

Vilonia

In class on Wednesday we ran through the presentations one last time and wrapped everything up. We present our projects on Monday. On Friday even though it was dead day I met with Dr. Entrekin to get some last minute suggestions and make sure that everything looked okay. She gave me some great advice and the poster for Monday! A few weeks ago I was approached by someone I worked with and they asked me I would be interested in talking to their 5^th graders. I thought that it would be a wonderful opportunity so I asked Dr. Entrekin if it would be okay. Once we got the go ahead I extended the offer to my fellow class mates and got some interest. So on Friday Ali, Kell and I went and talked to them. We asked them what they knew about wetlands, had them watch a Bill Nye video, did a short activity and then ran through our presentations which was great practice for Monday. It was a really great experience and I think the kids really enjoyed it! Now just to finish everything up and present on Monday. 

Vilonia MS

Friday morning Alyson, Kell, and I went to VMS to practice our research presentations a little more. I really enjoyed how intrigued all the kids were in what we were doing. They really seemed to like the Bill Nye video on wetlands, and I feel like that was a great way to give them some background knowledge before we just dove into our projects. The kids had a lot of questions for us after we were done, mostly scientific and a little about college life in general. We emphasized a lot that science isn't about getting the hypothesis RIGHT but getting your data as uniform and void of bias as possible. The teachers seemed to enjoy our presentation as well. We originally were only going to present to two classes, but due to a staff meeting taking too long, we took all four classes at once. They were very well behaved and I kind of understand why teachers find joy in teaching. Seeing all these kids so interested in our projects was heartwarming. Not to mention good practice for when we present to the steering committee!

Week of 04/21

Everything is coming together! This week we went back over our powerpoints in class and got our edits from Dr. Entrekin regarding both our slides and our presentation as a whole. We also printed off the big poster that Alyson and I designed (but mostly Alyson). It looks pretty good!

Ali, Alyson and I are meeting this afternoon to go over our presentation again and do a practice run-through. We all need to focus on not saying "incredible" or "huge" and instead replace those qualitative words with some quantitative words.

I'm working on our final report this weekend along with working on my finals and papers and everything for all of my other classes. It's crazy that the semester is almost over.

Vilonia Outreach

After meeting with Maumelle Middle School students several times throughout the semester, I jumped at the chance to go and present to Vilonia's 5th graders. Being from Vilonia, having gone there K-12, I felt it was a good way to give a little back. And I am certainly glad I did. Aside from seeing a few familiar faces, I was very proud of how well the kids were behaved, how interested they seemed in the project, how hard they tried to answer our questions and the variety of questions they asked us afterwards. Having worked with 5th graders in Vilonia before, I knew what to expect and was not disappointed. I feel like our simplified presentations went over pretty well, and both sides took a lot away from this. If only the audience on Monday would be that easy. I don't think I can open my presentation with "Who likes frogs?" I mean I can, but I'll probably get some blank stares and some points off my score. I'm not too worried though. When I sleep and review a bit, I'm pretty good at public speaking. Normally.

Last day working with Maumelle Middle School

Today Kell and I went to Maumelle Middle school and they gave us mock presentations. Overall I have to say that they went really well. They know their material, but they had not broken up the slides so they were just winging it. Kell and I helped them to organize their presentation in a way that they all will talk about the same amount. Now they just need to spend time really getting to know their slides and what they really mean. The girls did a really good job interpreting their graphs and explaining the concepts that we had taught them on a prior visit. We also gave them ideas to make the presentation more theirs. I feel like they have a wonderful base presentation they just need to learn to love it and explain why they are really doing it.

This week in practicum we have been working on making our presentations better and learning to love our data. I think it is going well tomorrow we are going to give another mock presentation and then determine how we want to conclude our project.

On Friday Ali, Kell and I are going to visit a school in Vilonia and teach them about wetlands. Hopefully that goes well and the kids are able to learn something from our presentations. 

Week of 04/14

This week we got our report drafts back and realized that everybody has a lot of work to do on their introductions, abstracts, and especially discussions. My group had difficulty getting a good discussion or analysis of our data because some of the stats for some response variables had not been run correctly or completely and so we had to wait for that information before we could start a discussion. I tried to find some good research articles for all of us to use and posted them in our group's folder on Blackboard. Unfortunately, only about half of the few that I posted will be worth much. It is difficult to find literature that looks at hydrology, vegetation, and aquatic macroinvertebrates. I found a lot of articles (or at least it felt like I did) on birds and vegetation in wetlands and connecting those two together. It was frustrating, but also interesting to see the direct connections between the projects of all of us in the class. This was later reinforced on Friday when we worked on our diagram.

Class Wednesday was very productive. Although I had heard some of the information before, it was really good for me to hear it again and have it reinforced and I also learned a few new things about abstracts. Our final report has a lot of work left on it before we will be in good shape. Dr. Entrekin mentioned several times the importance of the topic sentence and I couldn't agree more. After working with Dr. Larson on my thesis, I really had that ingrained in me. If I learned anything from that thesis, it was how to write a topic sentence. It's how I write everything now. I start with the topic sentences of paragraphs where I want to discuss various aspects of a topic. After I have my topic sentences, I find my collected literature and put the sources under the topic sentences and then go back to those sources and fill in the paragraphs. Finding sources is the most time-consuming part of that process and the most difficult part is writing the topic sentence. It's definitely a valuable tool.

Wednesday and Thursday we worked more on our presentation using Google drive again. Alyson worked with me in the GIS lab to put it together and Ali worked from home on it. I think overall it wasn't a bad first draft, but we realized that we definitely have some parts to work on (discussion!). Presenting and critiquing our own and each other's presentations on Friday was also highly productive. I know I definitely have direction on where to go not only on our presentation, but on the paper to improve it. Alyson worked on the presentation some last night. I aim to work on the paper this weekend and next week and then add Monday/Tuesday add in my slides so that I have time to practice them and edit them before we present again on Wednesday. Overall, it was another highly productive week!

Wrapping Things Up

This semester has flown by. I have learned so much this semester not only about macroinvertebrates but about myself. This week started by going and helping the MMS work on their presentations. I think that Kell and I were able to help them understand how to better make a presentation and actually understand their data. We will go on Tuesday and watch them give a mock presentation to help them to get ready to present in front of Scott. On class on Wednesday we got the comments from our first drafts back. We also did an in class exercise to try and improve our discussions. Today in class we did practice presentations in order to get ready for the big day. I think it was helpful and as a class we were able to work on how to present our presentations in a cohesive way. I think that it will all turn out great and we have some good ideas to really get our points across! 

Week of 04/07

Nobody went out in the field this week, and everybody has finished collecting their samples (or they should be...). We focused on our final report first draft and finishing up any statistics and graphs that did not get finished or perfected last week.

I helped Alyson run some of her stats in JMP and make some graphs because she was sick last week when I spent a lot of time working on mine in the lab with Dr. Entrekin and Ali. Our group worked on our report draft using google docs and it was fantastic. We can comment for each other and when we do work we don't do something that somebody else has already done because we can see the updated version on Google docs. There were some controversies over a few parts of our draft but it all worked out. I know that both Alyson and I have our Trimble points on an Arc map. two of my points are missing, and one of them is way off north where I definitely did not go to sample. At first I thought it was accurate, but I would have had to have walked through the water to get to the location that is recorded. I'm not sure why it is so inaccurate because it has tree information that I recorded in it. We will still need to go back in and add Ali's sample points and correct mine. I also have a duplicate point.

Alyson and I worked in the GIS lab to make locator maps and maps showing our points so that we would be able to put our own work into the report and not have to use a map that somebody else made.

I think our first draft of our report is farily good. There are still things that I want to add for the discussion, and I think our discussion at this point is a little weak. We also need a paragraph or something to conclude the entire document. At this point it kind of just stops.

I volunteered this morning for Girls of Power in STEM (GPS) from 7:30 to about 9:45. I helped with registration of the teams, team leaders, and students. It was exciting and I think I would have enjoyed fully participating for the entire time. Unfortunately I have other things I had to do today so I was unable to stay longer than just for registration. I got a T-shirt and a goody bag out of it though! I think the GPS program is a really good idea and I hope the students get a lot out of it for the remaining time they have left.

Alyson and I worked on the beginnings of our presentation, which we are also doing through Google because it worked so well last time. Ali had a prior commitment in NLR this morning and couldn't join us. We will be working on the presentation and polishing our report for the final version throughout the week.

Late Review of Night Sampling

It only just occurred to me that I hadn't posted about the night spider data collection that took place nearly a week ago. Though many had been asked to go, and several gave a "strong maybe" response, in the end, only 4 of us showed up. Myself, my lab partner Gray, and the Entrekins. Despite lower than expected participation, the search went wonderfully. Professor Entrekin taught us a method for scanning an area for spiders using flashlights reflecting off of spider eyes. While at first I had trouble seeing things, I quickly found it was a matter of location. In the tall grass areas, there was too much interference. In the short grass area, there didn't appear to be much to see. But in the leaf litter under the trees, the effects of this method became clear. The further you walked into the trees, the more little sparkles you saw reflecting back at you. It became a little startling just how many spiders had been under my feet that whole time. Later, Gray and I took a moment in the control site to just stand in silence with the lights turned off. Once your eyes adjust to the low levels of light, the bayou becomes quite a beautiful and peaceful place. Before I left, I encountered a large frog (where was he when I was looking for frogs?!?), and heard something rustling in the leaves near the edge of the control site. I assume it was a herd of deer, but my spotlight had died, and I had no way to pursue them. All in all, it was quite an enjoyable experience.

Tooling for citizen science

While you guys were at UCA slogging through your data, I was in Springfield Mass attending a conference. I learned some things that I wanted to share with you all. I know that some of  you are familiar with some of these resources, but probably not all of them. They can be used in multiple different ways and are a good way to keep your foot in ecology if you move out of the field when you graduate. Hope you find this helpful. ~Sally


*Applications for Iphone and Android smartphones*
*Ebird*‑id and document birds found in the field
*iNaturalist*‑enter notes and images that are shared with others and
automatically puts gps point
*BAMONA* (Butterflies and Moths of North America)

*Natures Notebook*
*itree*‑assessing and managing community forests
*mytreetracker*

*Big data collected and transmitted in real time*. Students can use
these
data for labs. Some colleges have written proposals to fund the
development
of a course centered around the Serengeti dataset.

https://www.zooniverse.org/
http://www.snapshotserengeti.org/

Samples

 I finished identifying my samples except for a few things that I want Dr. Entrekin to check for me. I am very sad that we had to cut the wood samples but I hope to be able to finish them next semester since I will still be at UCA. Now I am excited to sit down and actually see the results and see how similar the sites are. I think that as a group we still have a few decisions to make but everything is coming along well. Now we will analyze the data and work on our final reports. We also need to take another look at our Trimble data and figure out why some of our points are not showing up after the transfer. 

Week of 3/31

This week I worked with my data. For me, personally, I think this was a highly productive week in that regard. I learned how to make a data matrix, and I downloaded JMP and learned how to use it to run the stats that we needed to look at, and I learned a few new things about excel. Ali and I worked with our data on Friday with Dr. Entrekin helping and guiding. The three of us had a really good discussion about Ali's hydrology and the variation within the wetland. There is pooling near the middle school and in the degraded site, but there is not pooling near the main channel and pre-impact site 1. Why is there a difference? We decided that some of it could be due to foot and vehicle traffic, and the lack of trees.

I think I have finished working with my data and making graphs, but I'm not 100% confident that I did everything correctly. I got a lot done this week. I have four graphs, one of which is a stacked graph. I had never made a stacked graph before and I had problems understanding how it worked in regards to setting up my matrix to get it to display what I wanted, but it is finished and looks pretty!

Catching Up

So as some have noticed, I am awful about not making these posts as often as I should. I'm not much of a blogger (I generally don't have much more interaction with technology than I have to when it comes to social media). That being said, I also haven't had much to say. The short summary is that collecting amphibian data was not going well at all. Though I could see frogs (and took a number of photographs that will eventually make their way onto this page, as soon as I can sort and edit them from my phone and camera), almost no frogs actually showed up in any of my samples. I have actually felt pretty bad about that, since it seems that most if not all of my classmates have completed sampling and are well into their analysis of their data, and yet I haven't even collected any usable data. I have been going out at least once or twice a week, spending 5 or 6 hours at a time in the field trying to catch anything I can use, but it just didn't pan out. In response to that, my topic has changed from amphibians to spiders (a last minute switch that has left me scrambling to restart and do a lot of things in a short amount of time). Last night I went out with my lab partner and we were able to sample two transects each at the P2 and Control site. The P2 site had an exceptional number of spiders, and I was relieved to finally have some data. The Control site had significantly less data, with only 3 spiders turning up between the two transects. This isn't such a bad thing, though it is a curious result as one might expect there to be more spiders in the Control site than in the other sites. I still need to do a lot of research on spiders, sampling methods, and things of that sort, but again, I am quite pressed for time (between this course and several tests and papers coming up in the next two weeks, I probably won't sleep much more than I did last week, averaging about an hour and a half per night). Last night I finally received an email to download the JMP program for statistics, though I had sent the request for it Wednesday, and everyone else got their email within a few minutes, an hour tops. I don't know why mine didn't come until last night, but I ended up passing out before I had time to play with my data. That is on the agenda for today, as well as the research for spider sampling methods.

Tonight however, I have different plans. I am attempting to organize a group spider sampling event, in which anybody that shows up will help us search for spiders for a given time at each site within a given location. I need any help that I can get, so if you are reading this and have some spare time tonight around 7, please send me an email at ksullins@email.com. I'm ironing out some details for that this afternoon, but after yesterday's success at P2, I am hopeful that this is going to be equally as effective. A quick note, if you have a flashlight or two, the brighter the better, bring it. We will be using them to try and reflect light off of spider webs and spider silk threads along the ground and trees. I wish I had more information at this time, but I will release more information as it becomes available.

Field Post 1 (P1 and Degraded sites)

Completed dip netting of P1 and the Degraded site. Results: P1 had very few visible amphibians, with only 2 frogs seen and 1 large tadpole captured on the 7th of 10 attempts (an attempt being 4 sweeps of 1 meter each). A few crayfish were captured in the process. The Degraded site had frogs everywhere, constantly jumping off the banks as I walked. There was no sign of tadpoles nor were any caught, however one frog was captured on the 8th of 10 attempts, and crayfish were captured in abundance in every attempt. Several other fish and insects were captured and seen as well. Spiders were nearly as common as frogs. In the distance, large white birds are constantly visible in the more secluded wetlands. Of the frogs in the ruts of the degraded site, there appear to be between 3-5 species, varying in size and color. None larger than an inch or smaller than a half inch.

A few photos were acquired and will be loaded later.