"How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." ~Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie
Well it was a roller coaster summer, and I had fun. This is just a steping stone on in my path. Thanks everybody that made it great!!
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Surveying and such
Over the last few weeks I've been helping with the adaptive management program. So a recap of whats going on.
So like most of the refuges in region 5 Blackwater is faced with sea rising and disappearing wetlands. One tool to help detour this is fire. When a fire comes through , it burns down vegetation , making rhizomes and roots in most plants beef up and send out more runners. In turn the marsh is stabilized to an extent. Paired with sea level rise and other influences managing for this is tough. Refuges have placed SET (surface elevation tables) to monitor the changes. But these are single point references, to determine elevation changes across a larger range we are using real time kinetic geographic positioning systems.
So my day happens like this.
In the morning we meet and set up a base (right) at a known SET point. these bench sites are our standards, years ago they were set up by super surveyors, so without a doubt we can say we know their position and most importantly their elevation. Once its set up, we have a window of 6 hours before the battery goes dead on us, and yes it has before.
There are 2 teams of 2 biology staff. A person to man the rover and someone to use the data recorder that goes with it (below). Each team then goes to their point, which was picked previously in a big map for the summer, each transect at the point is 120 meters long, and a data point is taken every half meter. Which happens to measure out to be, one big step for me.
Most of the points are a hike to get to, and we generally use a boat or sometimes the air boat to get close to it to walk in. Like most feild studies, weather and equipment problems sometimes beset us. If things run smoothly we can get four points ( 2 each) taken care of in one day before the battery dies. I think I sweat a mixture of sunscreen, bug spray, and Gatorade now.
So like most of the refuges in region 5 Blackwater is faced with sea rising and disappearing wetlands. One tool to help detour this is fire. When a fire comes through , it burns down vegetation , making rhizomes and roots in most plants beef up and send out more runners. In turn the marsh is stabilized to an extent. Paired with sea level rise and other influences managing for this is tough. Refuges have placed SET (surface elevation tables) to monitor the changes. But these are single point references, to determine elevation changes across a larger range we are using real time kinetic geographic positioning systems.
 |
| the base |
So my day happens like this.
In the morning we meet and set up a base (right) at a known SET point. these bench sites are our standards, years ago they were set up by super surveyors, so without a doubt we can say we know their position and most importantly their elevation. Once its set up, we have a window of 6 hours before the battery goes dead on us, and yes it has before.
There are 2 teams of 2 biology staff. A person to man the rover and someone to use the data recorder that goes with it (below). Each team then goes to their point, which was picked previously in a big map for the summer, each transect at the point is 120 meters long, and a data point is taken every half meter. Which happens to measure out to be, one big step for me.
Most of the points are a hike to get to, and we generally use a boat or sometimes the air boat to get close to it to walk in. Like most feild studies, weather and equipment problems sometimes beset us. If things run smoothly we can get four points ( 2 each) taken care of in one day before the battery dies. I think I sweat a mixture of sunscreen, bug spray, and Gatorade now.
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| Me and my buddy, the Rover. |
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