Work and Play: the anti-lab safety video… and Santa Fe

It's been a full week. I am fully underway with my project and that
has been taking a lot of time. I realize that I've been somewhat
incommunicado. There are a couple reasons for this: 1) summer
laziness/apathy/lack of attention span. As much as I love getting and
sending emails, more often than not, I simply don't have the mindset
to sit at my computer and respond to people; 2) lack of consistent
service at the Sev – so I am slow to respond to text messages because
I don't get them often; 3) being busy. This is just kind of an excuse.

I will go in the order of the title of this entry and talk first about
work. As I indicated in my last post, last week I started doing field
work for my own project. (Previously, all of my activities had been
helping out with other projects – some ongoing at the Sev and some of
the other REU student projects here). What does this "field work"
entail? A re-cap of my project: assessing the Rio Grande as a habitat.
In particular, I'm looking at the effects that may be caused by a
variable stream that feeds into the Rio Grande during monsoon season.
So I'm looking at the invertebrate populations above and below where
this stream intersects the Rio Grande.

What does this actually mean? In reality, this is what I'm doing: on
field days, I go to the river, take a bunch of water measurements (pH,
dissolved oxygen), take water and sediment samples (scooping them into
bottles), and then stand in the river and try to catch all of the
invertebrates in a certain area. I'm doing this for 7 sites that
extend from above the confluence (intersection of the river tributary
with the river), at the confluence and downstream of the confluence.
This is what I did on Friday and Sunday. On Friday, however, the flow
in the river was very high, and it was impossible to get to my
upstream sites. I went out again on Sunday because the river was a
little lower. Through a combination of bushwhacking and wading through
slippery mud upstream, I finished my sampling.

That means all this past week, I have been in the lab analyzing my
samples. What does that mean? My goal is to find and identify all of
the invertebrates I collected while in the river. Then, I will
determine how sandy/silty/rocky the sediment that they live in. The
general idea is that the tributary will increase the size of the
sediments (making them rockier) and this will change the invertebrate
community. So this week I spent around 40 hours at the dissecting
microscope looking through sand for invertebrates to classify. It's
taking forever.

Although I realized that there was going to be a lot of back-end lab
work required for my project, I was not expecting it to take nearly
this long to simply find the creatures, not even identifying them or
analyzing the data that I collected. So I kept feeling kind of crazy
spending all day inside and then sneaking (not sneaking at all) out
with other people's field work, then getting back and trying to do at
least 8 hours of lab time anyway.

But spending time in the lab is not all that bad. My lab is a nearly
abandoned, yet brand new facility. It's a large, fancy building with
lots of lab space and large windows looking out over the refuge that
was constructed a little over a year ago. I'm not clear on the
details, but my understanding is that a few people with broad ideas
for education on the Sev got the money for it, then subsequently moved
to other locations and no one has really pushed to make use of it.
Aside from my boss's office and a meeting room that we have a weekly
yoga class in, the beautiful building doesn't get very much use. I've
basically moved into one of the large lab rooms and have taken over. I
consider the large, still mostly empty room MY Lab. Why not/

Considering that I am the only there and my boss is a field
researcher, there is no one to cry when I walk into lab wearing
sandals. (Note: Chacos are the sandal of choice here. I've never seen
so many at such a high density. I have a renewed love and appreciation
for my pair.) In fact, I walk around barefoot most of the time. There
is no dress code. There is no eye protection. it annoys me that the
fume hood is on. I eat lunch/breakfast/dinner at my microscope next to
my chemicals. I play music loudly and sing along. I don't have any
waste beakers, but I'm only using ethanol and water, so my boss
concluded that it was okay to pour things down the drain. (I'm trying
to think of every lab safety rule that exists, just to make sure that
I've broken it.)

Every Thursday night, we have a seminar guest speaker and a potluck
following the talk. Last week, after the potluck we had a tie-dying
extravaganza – sure seems like tie-dye is now an unspoken dress code
around here… Anyway, this week after lecture I decided to go back to
my lab to do more work – it was only 9 o'clock after all and there
could be another couple hours of work to do. I worked for
approximately an hour, but then my friend Chris came and looking
through samples turned into…

a barefoot, lights out dance party. In the lab, of course.

So, if you scientifically trained folks can think of any lab safety
violations I'm missing, let me know and I'll see if I can get to it by
the end of the summer. [no, I will not drink my ethanol or eat my
bugs]

Today, we went to Santa Fe. It was a lot of fun, but we stayed mostly
in the tourist part of the city, so it was also kind of amusement
park-ish.

I should write more about it, but I'm pretty tired and going to try to
do a lot more lab work tomorrow. Good night, all.

Third Weekend: Sampling and West Mesa (aka – I learn the power of trucks with 4-wheel drive)

Over the last few days, I have become personally aware of the reasons
to have, and in fact, embrace trucks and 4-wheel drive. Although there
are many great things about the people who are out here with me, one
of the great things is the diversity of everyone's backgrounds. There
are students here from Arizona, New Mexico and Texas who are
accustomed to the hot and dry southwest and there are people from
places like Alaska and Virginia. There are city slickers (New York,
Philly) and folks from rural Oklahoma. On the scale of sheltered city
person to hillybilly, I am much closer to the city mouse. Considering
that most of my childhood was spent in a small Massachusetts town (but
not one out in western MA in the Berkshires or something), I had never
quite understood the reasoning behind owning large powerful vehicles.
Even SUVs were a pretty large overkill where I grew up. In fact, I am
pretty sure that I was just generally confused by the existence of
pickup trucks before I came here a few weeks ago.

There are two types of vehicles at the Sev field station: 12 person
passenger vans and pickup trucks. For trucks, you have the fine choice
of those with two bench seats or simply one. The large vans are for
use to shuttle many people around to and from civilization (grocery
shopping / entire group field trips such as to the Grand Canyon). The
trucks are the true workhorses.

Let me refresh your memory: the Sev is a wildlife refuge. Paved roads
are few and far between (in fact, I can think of only two stretches,
one of which is leading up to the visitor's center). To get anywhere
else involves adventurous driving along unpaved, dusty, rocky, bumpy,
washed-out-by-flash-flood, twisting, winding roads. To get anywhere to
do fieldwork requires traversing this confusing network (and not
getting lost – more on this to come…) This is where the trucks come
in: not only do they navigate crappy dirt roads better than the
average minivan, the truck bed is also extremely convenient for
throwing all sorts of field work supplies such as buckets, ice chests,
shovels, pipes, etc. Other things can go in the back too, such as
propane grills – I discovered this Friday night. Basically, what I am
getting to with all of this is that: previously in my life, there was
no reason to place for a serious off-road, work vehicle. Now, they
comprise my most common form of transportation.

Friday was a monumental (and fun!) day for me. It was my first day of
field work for my own project – collecting samples that I would
analyze for my own data! Okay, okay – so maybe it's not that exciting,
but I just would like to note it.

At the crack of 7:30 (actually, that's really not early here – 4:30 is
"early"), I headed out triumphantly and excitedly with one of my
fellow REU students to go to my field site. It wasn't long, however,
before we encountered a minor snafu. Private roads belonging to the
refuge – maintenance optional. Signage – even more optional.
Navigation of the Sevilleta is done by feel and experience. I am
working on both… but clearly there is progress to be made. Due to my
poor directions, we made a wrong turn pretty early on. Things only got
worse when we tried to conduct a three point turn on a desert road
that quickly turned to loose sand off of the main path. The
whirlwhirwhir of tires digging themselves only deeper into the sand
instead of going forward greeted our ears.

oh. shit.

It would be pretty embarrassing to have to call for help because we
stuck somewhere because of a wrong turn. My friend called her mom
(she's from Oklahoma/Texas and apparently knows such things.) The
truck's owner manual was cracked. I remembered some tricks that my
mentor used last week when we got stuck in the sand. 4-wheel drive was
applied. We escaped the sandy roadside. There was no rescue call
required. Win for us. Win for trucks. Win for 4-wheel drive.

Later in the day on Friday, we took a group field trip (to celebrate
Friday, of course!) to a place in a remote portion of the refuge
called West Mesa. It was an hour's drive over some very, very rough,
sandy roads. 4-wheel drive required? Yes. We barbequed, watched the
sunset over the desert and the mountains and then looked at the
countless stars for hours.

If only the picture did any justice to the beauty.

(ps. On the way back, we got lost in the dark. Took a turn down a
"road" in the bed of a dry arroyo. By which I mean, long, twisty sand
trap. 4-wheel drive? Applied.)

Sevilleta REU

A little over two weeks ago, I arrived in the Albuquerque airport,
hoping that I would be able to navigate through my sleep deprivation
for long enough to make it to my final destination at the Sevilleta
Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Field Station. That is to say, I
felt like a zombie, was in a foreign place and my intended destination
was in the middle of the desert, 50 miles from the city where I was.
Now that moment feels like a sliver of ancient history – not to
mention how far away finals and even the semester feels.

Out here, work and play are intermingled in ways that are hard to tell
apart. It feels like sometimes I am not doing any work but instead am
just involved with adventures of varying strenuousness. I get really
dirty, my shoes get caked in mud, I am religious about sunscreen
application and I chug water. I watch thunderstorms and I look at a
night sky full of more stars than I have seen in years. I talk to
people and walk in the desert for hours. I read scientific articles,
textbooks, send emails and call scientists (and farmers). I sift
through piles of dirt, I dig holes, I go hiking, I wade in rivers and
natural springs. There is no one thing that I am guaranteed to be
doing every day and how fun or tedious or tiring my day's
work/activities will be is always unknown.

That's the general overview. If you just want the feeling of what my
life is like right now, you may stop there.

Specifically, the Sevilleta (http://sev.lternet.edu/) is one part
nature park / wildlife refuge where families and children can come to
view a less altered patch of southwestern desert and one part giant
research laboratory. For the nature park portion, there is a visitors
headquarters with a couple park rangers, some brochures and a few
stuffed animals, but not much in the way of trails or truly catering
to the general public. From what I can tell, the research side of the
Sev is much more active. There are a bunch of long term projects set
up throughout the refuge that people here work to maintain as well as
shorter term research (such as the project that I am working on – more
on this later) that gets done in this area. Given the size of the
refuge, there is a decent amount of variation of landscape within it,
so scientists (mostly from the University of New Mexico) can have fun
in everything from streams to mountains to desert grasslands.

Given its distance from civilization, the field station is set up so
that people can live here and save some driving. As it is, many of the
field sites are 45+ minutes away over bumpy dirt roads through the
refuge. There are a bunch of comfy little houses, a brand new (and
strangely empty) lab building and some other buildings for seminar
talks, computer usage and storage etc. Fortunately, these comfy little
houses have air conditioning and everywhere the wireless internet is
satisfactory (there have been a few days that I have spent more time
on the couch researching, planning and emailing than anything else).
Six people live in each house, two people per room, which is just
enough to be cozy but there's still enough space.

My peers are the other 12 REU students who are here for the summer. It
is our charge to execute independent research projects over the span
of our 10 weeks here. The sheer variety of the projects that we are
working on must surely be one of the things that makes our boss kind
of loopy – but in good ways. Although we all have separate mentors, on
a day to day basis, one woman, Jennifer, is responsible for corralling
all 13 of us to make sure that no one has been lost in the desert and
that, ideally, progress is being made on our projects. Projects
include everything from tagging prairie dogs and tracking whether they
go to different communities to analyzing weathering/soil formation on
hill slopes to two art students who are collaborating on painting and
paper making projects.

I faced some difficulty with my project right from the beginning. My
mentor is a stream ecologist who works with this area of the Rio
Grande, which conveniently runs through the Sevilleta wildlife
reserve. I spent about a week trying to put together a project to look
at pollution in irrigation ditches in the area and try to measure
water quality. That, although still an interesting project, turns out
to be beyond my scope. I did talk to some very nice, friendly and
helpful farmers and give myself a crash course on all of the
pollutants of the Rio Grande, agrochemicals, measuring pesticide
content, and the extent of agriculture near the Rio Grande. But that
turns out to be a little ambitious for a summer project with a budget
of $500.

Instead, I will be looking at local variations of the Rio Grande as a
habitat. In particular, I am looking at invertebrates that live in the
river and how they may be affected by the junction of a stream that
flows only after monsoon season. Translation: I will be wading out
into the muddy Rio Grande, scooping up bugs, water samples and
sediment samples. I will then spend hundreds of hours (literally)
looking through what I've found and identifying the bugs, and bobbing
a meter in a slurry of mud to determine percentage silt, mud, pebble.
I'm excited.

As far as fundamentals go – eating is probably next on the list of
things to cover. We cook for ourselves out here; some nights are
potluck nights. I live in the vegetarian/vegan house. We talk about
how much we love vegetables. I've never heard of a tofu scramble, but
I've witnessed several since living here. When we went to Albuquerque
last weekend, we ate the most amazing New Mexican food. Green chili
sauce is amazing and needs to applied to many more things in my life.
[But as a note, I'm now certain food for my summer is not nearly going
to be as exciting and amazing as it was last summer.] I love peanut
butter and packing lunches for days in the field.

Oh there is so much more to write. I still haven't told specific
stories about adventures – especially the weekend trips (Grand Canyon,
Albuquerque) that we've taken so far. But almost every day starts
early here as it is best to get done with field work by noon and I, of
course, have more papers to read to make sure that my research methods
aren't total tomfoolery.