Day 9 - Surveys Galore

I went out today with one of the two Emilys to work on conducting habitat and forest surveys on one of our streams. After some confusion with Matt and Dana changing the reaches on the stream, as well as doing a little bit of unnecessary work (due to the confusion), we finally got a rhythm going and finished up the habitat survey. We left at about 9:15 in the morning and didn't finish the habitat survey until around 1:00. Doing the survey with only two people was a big burden on us and took up a lot of our time. But oh well, got the habitat surveys done with that entire site. Definitely a good thing. After our lunch break, we needed to get started on some forest surveys. We needed to do 4 plots for either the old growth or second growth section, so we decided to work on the old growth (so much prettier, plus we had been working for 3 hours in the second growth; we needed a change in environment). We ended up with some nice plots and some huge ass trees. Managed to finish the four plots in about 2 and a half hours (would have been quicker if the terrain was better on the last plot), and was quite fun. We ended up with this gigantic douglas fir in one of our plots. One of the largest trees I've ever seen. It was far more relaxing than the rest of the work we were doing prior to the forest surveys. Our last plot ended up having a hill in it that was a 60 degree incline. Damn that was tough to ascend and descend, but I got the job done. We called it a day and got back to the HJA headquarters around 5:00.

The rest of my evening has consisted of a little bit of cooking and food preperation for tomorrow, eating, and relaxing. Although the forest surveys were more relaxing, it was definitely an exhausting day. I also managed to drink through all 3 liters of water that I brought with me and I was still extremely dehydrated by the time I got back to HJA. It's intense how much sweat I lose when I'm hiking up and down these streams, but I should hopefully be losing some weight this summer which will be good.

Tomorrow will consist of lots of forest surveys at two different sites and deploying fluorescein into one of our furthest streams. That means that in a perfect world, I'll be at our first site for three hours or a bit less (so done around noon), and then will go back out around 2:30 to do more forest surveys and then deploy fluorescein by 6. That would put me completely done for the day around 7:30, with a 2-3 hour break midday. Doable, but I'll still be exhausted (like always).

Stay fancy.