I think that title would make a great name for a song.
(sings "as I sit behind Mazzio's Italian Eatery...catching awkward looks from passer-bys")
Ok...ok...enough of that. Let's get to the point. I'm sitting here behind a great italian food joint in Nederland, TX. You might ask where that may be. Trust me...not important. What is important is that I have come out here to J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Center hoping to get out to my site (LNWMA) to begin my fish/invert sampling and vegetation surveys. But, alas, Dolly is standing in my path. Today we did a dry run. That run lasted about, oh, 40 minutes until the rain and winds came. After calling it quits we headed back to the Center. By this time I am soaked and COVERED in sediment. The great thing about these throw traps is that they are large, slightly heavy, and when you throw one in to the water, guess what, you too must jump in and hold it in place. This means sinking in sometimes more than 2 ft. of mud. Yes, yes, wonderful! So now my shoes are soaked, dirty, and so is everything else on me.
Now, after arriving about at the center, we discuss the real sampling that should be occuring tomorrow, and we decided (thanks Dolly) to go ahead and cancel the fish/invert sampling. Trust me, I potentially just saved two people about $40, time and energy to get up here tonight to help with the sampling. What I will try to do tomorrow are my vegetation transects...3 of them...1000m a piece. Point intercept recording will occur every 5m along these transects. In total that's 600 readings. Not only that but I will have to do a percent cover quadrat reading every 100m. It's going to be a looong day tomorrow if we end up doing it.
I should digress from my bitching, to reinform my readers that, yes, I still do love what I am doing. There is just something about getting muddy I enjoy thoroughly. It's just the process of cleaning up that I don't like. I am blessed to be doing what I am doing and blessed to have patient and understanding help from TWPD. Thanks guys! Oh and one more thing...research can get boring...during the times when you're not doing it. I'll end with that. Have a great one y'all. I'll let you know about my experiences.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
A day late, a buck short
Ok...ok...for anyone who does read this, I know I am a tad late on posting an updated blog. I apologize. I know millions want to hear about what I am doing and being almost 2 weeks past due on a new post is insufficient for my blog followers. Once again, I apologize.
Although it may not seem like tough work, reading scientific papers and emailing people for coordination purposes is EXHAUSTING! For one, I am not a big reader and my ADD attention span is along the lines of what you could call "extremely short." I work very hard to control it, but all reading does is tire me out which then causes me to lose concentration, but it's for the good of my work and therefore I have placed reading on a need base policy. It NEEDS to be done, whether I like it or not. On the same note, I do have to acknowledge that what I am reading is quite interesting. I harken back to my methodology blog to discuss this next topic with you. Like science, none of my blog posts can be compartmentalized; to understand one you must read the others. Methodology still haunts me, plus reading, plus coordination. Let's start again with methodology.
I have decided on how I plan to sample my fish and the vegetation. I am going to stick with the throw traps used back in '97 - '99. I also plan to revisit the vegetation transects used back in the earlier study as well. To look at the overall health of this site, I must be able to compare my data with previous date, therefore I must use the same techniques. The older study relied on a grid system for each site (E87, W87, Control) and took a represenative sample from each square in the grid. Good, but so much data that it's difficult to see the trees for the forest. What we have decided to do is designate areas within E87 site representative of all 3 restoration methods: pumped mounds, excavated mounds, and excavated mounds with fill around them. Plus we added the reference site. So in total we have designated 4 areas to be sampled. Each area consists of two subsets and will be sampled at "X" number of random points in each subset. All areas will have the same amount of points sampled. This should help us see the trees for the forest. For the vegetation study, we have decided to revisit the previous transects. We feel this should be sufficient.
Coordination with my helpers, my advisor, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife, has not been too difficult as of yet, but it has proven to be a very complex dance consisting of 5 people. I'm sure once we get all the initial happenings (i.e., training, dry runs, etc.) out of the way it should run more smooth especially seeing as how it is I who will be spending the majority of the time up there. So then it will just be me coordinating with TPWS. For round #1 I head out on July 15th to go over some methodology, and collect sample plants from each area for identification. July 21st, I, along with about 3 other people will be with TPWS to go over airboat safety training. I will then be staying overnight between the 21st and 24, possibly 25th of July to perform my first round of sampling.
Well, that's my life as of right now. As for the title of the post. I am more than a day late getting this blog up, and yes I have no excuse for it.
Although it may not seem like tough work, reading scientific papers and emailing people for coordination purposes is EXHAUSTING! For one, I am not a big reader and my ADD attention span is along the lines of what you could call "extremely short." I work very hard to control it, but all reading does is tire me out which then causes me to lose concentration, but it's for the good of my work and therefore I have placed reading on a need base policy. It NEEDS to be done, whether I like it or not. On the same note, I do have to acknowledge that what I am reading is quite interesting. I harken back to my methodology blog to discuss this next topic with you. Like science, none of my blog posts can be compartmentalized; to understand one you must read the others. Methodology still haunts me, plus reading, plus coordination. Let's start again with methodology.
I have decided on how I plan to sample my fish and the vegetation. I am going to stick with the throw traps used back in '97 - '99. I also plan to revisit the vegetation transects used back in the earlier study as well. To look at the overall health of this site, I must be able to compare my data with previous date, therefore I must use the same techniques. The older study relied on a grid system for each site (E87, W87, Control) and took a represenative sample from each square in the grid. Good, but so much data that it's difficult to see the trees for the forest. What we have decided to do is designate areas within E87 site representative of all 3 restoration methods: pumped mounds, excavated mounds, and excavated mounds with fill around them. Plus we added the reference site. So in total we have designated 4 areas to be sampled. Each area consists of two subsets and will be sampled at "X" number of random points in each subset. All areas will have the same amount of points sampled. This should help us see the trees for the forest. For the vegetation study, we have decided to revisit the previous transects. We feel this should be sufficient.
Coordination with my helpers, my advisor, and the Texas Parks and Wildlife, has not been too difficult as of yet, but it has proven to be a very complex dance consisting of 5 people. I'm sure once we get all the initial happenings (i.e., training, dry runs, etc.) out of the way it should run more smooth especially seeing as how it is I who will be spending the majority of the time up there. So then it will just be me coordinating with TPWS. For round #1 I head out on July 15th to go over some methodology, and collect sample plants from each area for identification. July 21st, I, along with about 3 other people will be with TPWS to go over airboat safety training. I will then be staying overnight between the 21st and 24, possibly 25th of July to perform my first round of sampling.
Well, that's my life as of right now. As for the title of the post. I am more than a day late getting this blog up, and yes I have no excuse for it.
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