16 July, 2001

Monday

Today was supposed to do the third diurnal but it has been pushed back till tomorrow, starting at noon. Steven, Dr. Oechel's nephew arrived from San Diego over the weekend so he will be taking my place on Tuesday. I'm leaving in 5 days and so this is a good way to train him on the instruments. Steve, who is a high school junior, will be staying up here for about three weeks learning the science that is going on and helping out whenever and where ever he can.

Since everyone was keyed up to do the diurnal today, and it fell through, we all regrouped and the day ended up being a lab day. There is always data to be entered or analyzed and inside work to catch up on. When you are in the field, collecting data, it usually takes 3 to 4 times as long to work with it and analyze it in the lab. Often times the data piles up. Some data has to be looked at immediately, to see if instruments are working properly or to check to see if a protocol is working as planned but other data can sit for days. Glen has been working up the previous diurnal data and showing us what has gone on throughout the season in comparison to last years.

Below you can see what most all of us were doing today.

Hyojung on the phone getting information on the open path IRGA which mesures CO2 and water vapor concentrations.

Stan and Erika in the lab talking over who will input the weekly data they have collected.

I am getting the vegetation data put into a spread sheet. Figuring out how to organize, record and display data, so it will tell you something, is an important part of doing science.

Michelle is checking on her soil samples. She has had the samples in the drying oven for 24 hours. She wants to remove all the moisture before weighing them a second time.

Resealable baggies are used for everything around here. Glen is marking these to store his resin bags, which he removes from the plots every 10 days. The resin bags are used to show nutrient levels present in the soil.