Day 8: Field Work Begins

I’m not quite sure if I’ve developed allergies or if Paul gave me his cold. Needless to say, it’s tuff to get used to this kind of humid sticky air, but even more difficult when your nose is congested. Breakfast went well; most of us were up by 6 and ready to start the day.  The process of lunch making was a little hectic with everyone in one general area and sandwich bread flailing around every surface of the counter. After getting our data dictionaries together we headed off to Koaloa Ranch.  Having taken classes that focused on gathering data to create a map, I recognized the time consuming issues that could evolve. For example, my geographer’s toolbox class required each individual student to map and classify every tree on campus! Needless to say the process was extremely time consuming! The fact that we can program our GPS units, in this case trimbles, with any feature/attribute table we need is awesome! A major time saver.

Koaloa Ranch is beautiful! Even though we were given a tour yesterday, there’s nothing like going out into the field and exploring the many wonders of Oahu on your own. Stepping out into the humid air was a little tough. Coming from central California I’m very used to the heat, it’s in the 100’s back home, humidity not so much. It actually wasn’t even hot, I think temperatures topped off in the 80’ s today, but the humidity took it to an entirely different level.

Kerry and I ground trothed the East side of the valley and were able to collect data on several roads and man-made objects and structures. We quickly noticed we would need to add a new category to our data dictionary, cattle guards. After only a few short hours we were starting to feel the heat! So much walking and so much humidity! Lunch couldn’t have come sooner. After lunch it seemed like the rain gods had finally heard our cries and a short drizzle of rain never seemed so beautiful.

As day one of data collection came to a closing we were informed we could later go to foodland. I jumped on this opportunity and got the medicine I needed! Hopefully this cold goes away as quickly as it appeared. Shelby and I had veggie burgers for dinner, we really couldn’t have asked for more! The cough medicine is starting to take its toll, hopefully a long night of sleep awaits me.