iUTAH Undergraduate iFellows
Week 3 Recap
June 2-6, 2014
Allison Albert
Through discussion about how to treat the two different sizes of lysimeters for our field site, it was determined that different auger sizes needed to be found. So week 3 focused on finding adequate augers, as well as pricing and ordering citric acid.
Tim Beach
This week I have been going through more data and putting together various maps. I almost completed 5 maps of Utah: agricultural lands, urban lands, two precipitation maps, and a watershed boundary map. I have been getting ready to go to Nevada with Sarah Null's lab in week 4. We are sampling water quality in the Walker River. I am excited!!
Toby Brotherton
This week, Kenyon and I spent many hours in the Hedco Lab assembling our arthropod traps, which we will use to study arthropod and other insect diversity on green roofs and compare this to insect populations on nearby ground-level landscapes. We want to know if green roof habitats have higher proportions of pollinators than nearby regular landscapes. The pitfall traps, which will collect ground-level bugs, are finished and ready to be deployed (we have a test unit in place by the lab). The combination traps, which will collect flying insects, are very close to being complete. We will be coming in early on Monday morning in order to finish the interception barriers for the combi-traps, because the compound that we were using to assemble them was not as strong as we anticipated. We plan to finish the traps Monday morning and have most of them deployed by the end of the week of 6/9.
Andrew Butterfield
Week 3 has involved mostly data analysis. Much of my time has been spent compiling data spreadsheets in order to compare water samples from the Jordan River. We are looking at variations in water content such as total dissolved organic matter, dissolved organic carbon, and chlorophyll concentrations. Compiling the data was only half the work, as understanding what the available data means involves many questions, generally answered through perusing the work of scientists to come before us. It looks like plenty more of this will carry over into week 4.
Kenyon Gentry
We continued working on making pitfall traps and combination traps for the green-roof biodiversity project and I read some published literature on the topic. The traps are nearly complete and should be ready to deploy next week. The combination trap consists of a PVC tripod that will suspend a Plexiglas interception screen; flying insects will hit this screen and fall into a collection pan suspended beneath the screen. The pitfall traps consist of two small plastic cups, one within the other, buried flush with the ground so that crawling insects will fall in; a raised wood panel covers the cup to prevent water and other debris from falling in. These traps will be placed on various green rooftops on campus and possibly downtown.
Adam Henrie
This past week, I continued to gather housing data for our landscape preferences survey. I was also involved in preparing and polishing another survey which will be used to assess the public's perception of Utah's water resources. We are awaiting IRB approval, and we plan to administer these surveys next week.
Katy Hicks
My third week was spent on coding more articles from the Salt Lake Tribune. I also started pulling articles from the Logan Herald Journal mentioning water starting from January 2012 and will be continuing up until December 2013. I've also been working on some literature review to get a better sense of direction for my research focus.
Alexis Holzwarth
This week mainly consisted of me accumulating information to begin writing about what I have read and researched thus far. Most of the information consists of the affects of plant diversity in landscape design on urban water use in arid regions. I also assisted Dr. Sarah Hinners with assembling a native plant species list intended for remediation purposes. This week was very successful.
Jeffery D. Josephson
Claire O'Donnell
This week the main focus was writing a topic proposal for my research project. For my research proposal I did some background research on water-wise plants, nurseries in Salt Lake County, and if Salt Lake County has any water-wise incentives. I also continued to collect biomass and grass clippings for our on campus fertilizer research.
Samuel Stout
This week I was able to talk with Dr. Jackson-Smith about focusing my project on the difference of water conservation and services between municipalities due to population, and have been working towards that.
Anne Thomas
My main focus this week was figuring out how to set up a tree survey in Heber Valley. I had some good conversations with grad students about valid methods and spent a lot of time looking at Google Earth as well as driving around Heber to get a better sense of the area. I also helped Mike fix some sap flux sensors in Heber.
Michelle-Kei Williams
For week three's update, I finished the literature review for Christine, using articles, where research revolved around using various other constituents that would normally be found in storm water runoff, in their synthetic storm water. I also worked in the chemistry lab, testing samples for their ammonia levels & began inputting data from the previous analysis in order to graph their results. Additionally, I began to work on three literature review assignments from Pratibha, regarding varying factors involved in the bioretention process.
