iUTAH Undergraduate iFellows

 

Week 3 Recap

May 30-June 3, 2016

 

Joydino Beyale

My week three has been very busy, I have been learning about programming and coding with Campbell Scientific CS800 and have worked with my colleague Kaisa. We went out into the field and collected soil samples. This week was short, but we were able to learn more in the lab.

Heather Bottelberghe

This week was great! I was able to see more of Cache Valley while looking at street gutters.

 

On Tuesday we went to Wellsville and saw a variety of secondary water conveyance methods. Unfortunately, the canals in Wellsville were dry so we were unable to accurately determine which irrigation ditches and street gutters are actually used.

 

Wednesday and Thursday we rode our bikes and walked the streets of several Logan neighborhoods. With a map on a clipboard we were able to mark all of the blocks and streets whose gutters do not convey irrigation water. We saw a few canals and took many photos to document our experience.

 

On Friday we took a rest from field work and spent our time in the lab digitizing the data we have collected so far into an ArcGIS map layer.

 

 

 

 

Katelyn Boyer

This week I was at the Lytle Ranch Preserve, which is located in the southwest corner of Utah. At the beginning of this week Ashley and Bailey, who are undergrad students, and I set up 80 pit fall traps in 5 block areas to collect the different types of insects in the areas to compare how they differ from burned and unburned areas. The next couple of days we spent doing shrub density and fruit counts in the 5 blocks. At the end of the week the pit fall traps were collected and will be sorted sometime this next week. Through this week I was able to learn about the different plants that grow in the desert and about the animals that live there.

 

 

Todd Brown

No Entry

 

 

Darcie Christensen

It already seems like time is going so fast and there’s so much to be done! This week was spent preparing samples for isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). It is quite a tedious and time-consuming job. The workspace and product is shown in the images. A small amount of each sample (between 0.2-1.5 mg depending on the sample) must be measured into a tin cup then shaped into a cube to be placed in a well plate. After each sample is measured, the workspace and tools must be wiped down with ethanol to prevent contamination between samples. It takes around 7 hours to prepare 96 samples, which fills one entire well plate. I’ll hopefully be able to get all the samples prepared by early next week so in 2-3 weeks we’ll have the nitrogen percentages to analyze. We also got everything set up to begin PCR training next week. Other than that, I just worked on the beginning of my research paper!

 

 

 

 

Georgie Corkery

Monday I reseeded the plants for the Hydroponic Lighting project because only 4 of the kale in rock wool, peppers in rock wool, and peppers in soil have sprouted. By the end of the week however, they all started to sprout! I am excited to watch them grow and finally up pot them into the hydroponic systems and larger soil containers.

 

For the Home Hydroponic Kit we set up our first prototype and discussed the use of solar energy to run either the aeration pump or the light fixtures, or both. There are LED camp lights that are solar powered that we are looking into, however, the energy needed for a standard grow lamp might require too large of a solar panel for this project.

 

Lastly, my mentor Steve and I went to Frog Bench Farms to take a tour and see if it would be a good case study to demonstrate water use in urban agriculture. I was blown away by how efficient, organized, and beautiful the farm was. I think it would work great as a case study because they use water efficiently via drip irrigation, and they have 6000 gallons water tank system that harvests rainwater, as well as a computer system that water the plants only when it is needed. Frog Bench Farms would be a great case study to show how water can be efficiently used to grow food in a city.

 

 

Cynthia Elliott

This week we went to a park in Salt Lake City and found some people to take our questionnaire, it was really nice but there weren't a ton of people there. After that, we went to a grocery store and were able to get more participants. It averaged about ten people per hour. The next day we got together in the lab and went over some details and got a sneak peek at the data we had collected so far. This was my favorite part! It was really insightful to discuss the data with Taya and Dr. Brunson because of their expertise. We started to compare different answers in different ways to get some practice for when we have all our data collected. We've got another event tomorrow, and next week is totally booked full!

 

 

Andrew Hackett

Week 3 has been quite a bit of fun; Heather Bottelberghe and I spent most of the week hitting the pavement and mapping the streets of Logan looking for places where secondary water is delivered via curbs. Already it is apparent there is a great deal of variety street to street, so it is important for us to take detailed notes and observations during our travels to then be digitized into ArcGIS. 

 

 

 

 

 

Greta Hamilton

This week, we did our 24 hour Provo River water sampling at Soapstone campground in the Uinta Mountain Range. Monday evening, we decided this was the week we would head up after considering the weather and expected snowpack runoff for the study. Tuesday was spent getting all the collection bottles and materials inventoried and put in bins for easy transport up the canyon. Wednesday morning, we loaded up the trucks and drove to Soapstone where we set up camp and our water processing stations. Additionally, we set up a clean station near the river where we used the geo-pump to collect water samples every hour before taking them back to the trailer for acidification and refrigeration. It took nearly 30 hours from set up to tear down and we made it home Thursday afternoon very tired but excited to see what the data will reveal over the next few weeks.

 

 

 

 

Stacy Henderson

This week I did some data mining for one of my mentors. I gathered general plans for each of the 10 counties she’s studying as well as gathering land and water use data for her. In the process I located USGS water data from 1985-2010 to help her with her dissertation. This is a very detailed data set, which includes a lot of information she was hoping to find. As my mentors went over this data, they found a good project for my summer iUTAH research. I will be analyzing this USGS water use data to see if I can find any general patterns in the usage between counties, and if there’s time, I will proceed to compare that to population growth, then to see if there are any patterns in usage between types of developments in the 10 county Wasatch Range area. I began cleaning this USGS data and analyzing it at the end of the week. I look forward to the coming weeks to see what I find.

 

Rebecca Lee

Our project deals with microbial source tracking which will allow us to determine non-point contamination sources in Utah's watersheds. This week we continued with DNA extraction and began PCR. We are isolating DNA so that we can make standards to compare future samples to. PCR replicates the DNA we found so that we can analyze it. As a lab, we also went out to Rush Valley, Utah to collect soil samples, do water infiltration tests, and cover surveys. 

 

 

 

 

 

Gabriela Martinez

This week was all about finishing the introduction and methods section of my poster. I also started reading and compiling articles for my literature review. My near-peer mentor Pratiti showed me a way to organize and categorize all of the articles that I might be using on my paper, in a way that not only would allow me to understand what I'm reading better, but that it will also allow me to focus on information that is relevant to our research. I would have to say that, staying focused on only our project questions and nothing else has been the most difficult part of doing research thus far. There are so many interesting things to read about and research, that sometimes it can be hard to stay on point, or focused on our project and not let my mind wander off... When this happens, I am very lucky to have amazing mentors that take the time to guide me and reel me in when needed.

 

 

Mitchell Steele

This week we were able to enter some of the data needed to start calibrating the pressure transducer. We are also working on getting other resources to help with calibration faster. The purpose behind why it is important to get the pressure transducer calibrated is so we can measure the average flow of water that enters the bioretention bay from the gutter. 

 

 

 

Shanae Tate

I am getting better at managing data and using Excel for plotting data and fitting curves to them.  I am also learning to recognize the shift that occurred in the data with the firmware update in the soil moisture sensors. I enjoy learning from the soil physics manual as I do calculations and practice problems.  I have also been reviewing literature about estimating evapotranspiration using a water budget and soil moisture data.

 

 

Luis Vidal

This past week we had the help of friends from outside of the iFellows program who came from Southeastern Utah. We spent the first part of the week and planning and then touring the sites related to our survey. We then attended a Jordan River Comprehensive Management Plan meeting. Later in the week we were able to survey a good number of community members at the local grocery market where we collected interesting results for our survey. We were also able to get more surveys due to the extra help even though a good part of our lab was sick for most of the week.

 

 

Lily Wetterlin

This week was my first week in the field.  We spent Tuesday collecting leaf and soil samples from selected trees downtown to determine their Nitrogen availability and whether the source is from fertilizer or from NOx gas released by vehicles.  The remainder of the week I was in lab preparing the leaf samples to run by grinding and storing them.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adam Whalen

With no cohort session this week, I took a much-needed day off before launching full force into my secondary data collection. Most of my time was spent sifting through numerous databases collecting anything and everything that might deliver insight into state and national water attitudes. As I gathered and analyzed these sources, I found myself feeling as if I was studying something truly impactful for Utah’s water future, and possibly the nation as well. Furthermore I found myself making mental comparisons between the data sets, even without any initial coding. Next week I hope to take much of what I’ve found and begin analyzing it within SPSS.

 

Outside of my research, I had a very helpful meeting with my mentors where we revised our Curriculum Vitae’s (CV), what is essentially an academic resume. This was a fantastic way to reflect on where I’ve been in my academic career and gave me the opportunity to look back through my awards, honors, and distinctions. Working on my CV allowed me to think toward the future as well, and what place research might have in my career. For me, this CV demonstrates the diverse opportunities the iFellow program offers its researchers. Beyond the logistics of my work, these career-oriented workshop sessions I have with my mentors are both helpful and enjoyable.

 

Even though there is no Cohort session next Monday, I look forward to another week of exciting research with my mentors.

 

 

 

Sandra Udy (Young)

On Tuesday of this week I completed assignment 1 for the research integrity course. Then on Wednesday we were able to go out to the field to deploy the L-bars into the river. I drove down with Elizabeth Ogata, my peer mentor, to the upper Provo River just below Jordanelle Reservoir. Here we zip-tied the L-bars to bricks. These were then deployed in the center of the river. We collected dissolved oxygen and light levels at the surface and river floor. It was exciting to learn more about how the microbes will begin to grow on the glass discs and how the nutrients will slowly diffuse through the agar and be used by the microbes. These L-bars will be collected in approximately two weeks and analyzed to determine what nutrients are being used by the microbes. Thursday and Friday were spent in the lab running tests on previously prepared hemi-cellulose mixtures. I am excited to continue learning and hope I can apply all that I have learned so far.