Day 16

We didn’t go to the field today and just focused on data management. We started off by cleaning up our common products and adding metadata to Kerry’s master geodatabase collection when each group had the time to get on the computer. This day also marked the shift to our individual research questions and made a lot of people on edge. The pressure was on and everyone worked on hammering out the details to their questions and proposed field methods. This was when everyone had to put their teamwork down and think on their own and made the whole day/night really stressful, including me. Tonight was also my night to help cook dinner and thankfully it was only heating up some lasagna and salad. Many people seemed to enjoy it so that was a relief. For most of the night everyone was focused on writing up their research question. I was somewhat lost at first and didn’t know how to frame my question. I really had interest in helping the efforts towards improving Hawaii’s biodiversity, especially the native plant species. I remember reading about the nation GAP analysis program and thought what they were doing was neat. However, it was only tonight where I really connected to dots between the GAP program and my research question. My curiosity in trying to map native vs. non-native plants came full circle and I decided that the GAP research methods were best suited for my analysis, even though my research won’t be as comprehensive as the GAP analysis.