Starting on Tuesday we entered a new site called Valino Island Island. It was just a small patch of land about 20-30 feet away from the main Valino Island. Some large patches of bird’s beak were found here. They were more apparent on the side closest to the main island. This made me think that they most likely spread from the large areas we had seen before on Valino Island. After we returned I prepared myself for presenting my proposal to my mentors at the week’s professional development session. The night before I had just read this paper on how hemiparasites like bird’s beak within salt marshes reduce competitive dominant plants which help promote plant species diversity so I made sure to include that in my paper and presentation. Overall I presented my goals for the project well, I explained how the project set out to find the distribution and habitat characteristics of bird’s beak within the South Slough estuary. I then listed what factors would be observed which include: elevation, soil type, soil salinity, the top three plant species growing with dense patches of bird’s beak, and the top three plant species growing in areas without bird’s beak. There were questions on if I would try to transplant a small sample of bird’s beaks into an area where it had not been seen to grow to see if it was just it’s distribution keeping it from there. This was a good suggestion, but since the plant is listed as endangered uprooting them is not really permitted. I also received helpful comments from mentors on how to analyze data, this is definitely a part of research that I am nervous about doing but I am ready to learn. Valino Island Island: small, full of mosquitoes, and a home for bird's beak! We found a whole skeleton of a pretty large animal on Valino Island Island. I’ve been able to focus more time on my soil samples this week as well. I have finished sieving and drying three more sites this week. By next week I may be almost complete with all the sites that have bird’s beak present and start to compare with sites that do not have the plant. Dried soil samples (left) and samples about to be sieved (right) . Throughout the week I have also been able to help with other projects at South Slough, like retrieving pH and CO2 sensors from the estuary and trapping crabs for Renee’s (my lab partner) predation experiment. On Friday, Renee helped me out with mapping at this site called Barview. I feel as I start to get more data I need to start getting more familiar with programs that can analyze what I have. That will be one of my main goals for next week, I’ll let you know how far I get with it next time. My lab partner, Renee, with her lab set up.
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AuthorI am an incoming third year student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa studying Oceanography. I’m looking forward to learning all I can about the Oregon Coast from this internship! Archives
August 2019
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