I woke up this morning feeling much better than last night. An early start had me well awake by the time we needed to gather. We got a late start hopping into the cars, but Brian (the crew leader helping Matt), both Emilys (one is doing her own undergraduate research, the other is an intern just like me), and I ventured out to one of the streams. We did a full habitat survey, which ended up taking close to 3 hours over the course of 140 meters. This included measuring the bankfull and wetted lengths of the stream (I explained those terms in the previous post) every 10 meters, measuring the width, length, max depth of every pool plus the depth of the outflow (self explanatory, where the water flows out of the pool), estimating the substrate every 10 meters (the % of different types of rock sizes basically, using terms such as fine/pebble/gravel/boulder) using a quadrat, as well as measuring/estimating the dense wood (defined as wood that has a 10 cm diameter or greater) within and over the stream. I measured the bankfull/wetted/pools which I thoroughly enjoyed. I basically got to spend a lot of my day just walking in a stream and measuring the water, which was refreshing to stick my hands in. After that, we didn't have enough time to do any other serious work, so we decided to head back and take a break. We got back to HJ at 3:30.
Then at 5:30 we headed back out, with the addition of Matt, to collect all the fluorescein from the streams. Much cooler than the afternoon (it got up to 94 degrees here) and very peaceful. I was alone going up and down the stream, so it was a nice 30 minutes or so to myself in the forest next to a stream. In total, it took us 2 hours 15 minutes to get back, and probably close to an hour of that was spent driving to the spots. That will definitely be a burden this summer, just the travel time to get to the sites. But with this collected fluorescein, we will be analyzing it in the lab tomorrow all day. Although, apparently, a couple people will go out into the field tomorrow. So who knows what I'll be doing. I hope to stay in the lab.
Other than that, nothing else happened today. Played a little bit of Beer Friz and have just been relaxing this evening. I'm hoping to go fishing tomorrow after work; it's all I've been waiting for since I got here on Sunday.
Oh, and today I saw two frogs (not 100% on the species, but they were different - I can't quite remember their patterns), a few fish in the streams, as well as a deer (and maybe another just a few hundred meters away, although it was difficult to tell as we were driving by). A good day for all of us!
Stay fancy.
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