Day 11: Finding Narnia

Unfortunately, the vegetation team lost most of their data so many of us regrouped and tagged onto their team. Since I had gotten a glimpse into their methods of data collection it wasn’t too difficult to jump in today. Howard and I walked around the north east part of the valley and came across some dense vegetation. It was beautiful! Although I was with the vegetation group yesterday we didn’t stray too much into any dense stuff so it was a very adventurous day for me (as you will see through the pictures.)

It was my job to take pictures of the unknown (to us) vegetation and write down any miscellaneous details about the plant and how to later identify it. While we were out in the field there was a sudden down pour and we had to take cover beneath the vegetation that we were collecting data of, which I found very funny at the moment, but now doesn’t seem like too big of a deal. It got hot very quickly and we headed back to base around noon.

After watching a UAV take off, I split into a part of the hydrology group to try to get a feel of what they’ve done and decide if I want to pursue a final project with data they’ve collected. I’ve come to realize that a project combining vegetation and hydrology may be too big of a bite for one person to handle in the span of the next two weeks. I think I’ll focus on hydrology but am still unsure of what kind of research question I want to ask and research.

A well-deserved shaved ice group hangout was followed by work work work! Kerry and I cleaned up our data dictionary and started to make a plan of attack for tomorrow and what will become our product for the common data. Tomorrow will be a full day focused on our final product and presentation.