11 August, 2002

Last night brought another dose of cold rain. It rained nearly all night, but this morning the skies had broken (at least partly) to reveal a new dusting of snow on the hills to the south of camp.

The nights are becoming noticeably longer. When I first arrived, it stayed light all night long. Last night it was dark enough by 11:00pm that I had to use a flashlight to get to my tent and it was still dark this morning at 4:30am. We seem to be losing about 7 minutes of daylight each day.

Today, I helped Tim Alessi with his project. Thankfully we had success with the chainsaw, and completed the sampling of tree age in his area. We had previously bored samples from living trees, but there were a few areas where the largest trees were down, and a tree bore doesn't work well on dead trees. We cut slabs from the downed trees and counted rings in order to get an estimate of the age of the tree.

While out in his work area we also came across another kettle lake that Tim was unaware of. Some probing with a long stick revealed some very deep sediments. We plan to head back to the lake tomorrow with the sediment sampling equipment and pull a core out of the bottom of the lake. Išll post some pictures showing the sediment sampling tomorrow.

Life Is Good

DT

Tim Alessi, an REU student from the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh makes a fresh cut on a stump. This will allow for a clear view of the tree's rings so that an estimate of age can be made.