iUTAH Undergraduate iFellows

 

Week 7 Recap

June 27-July 1, 2016

 

Joydino Beyale

My week with my mentor and peer mentors was exciting, especially our cohort meeting at the museum in Salt Lake City. I was able to catch up on some paper work and updating my abstract for a convention coming up in Long Beach, California. I also did more touch up work on my poster design, such as picking certain pictures and from solid edge computer drawings. I also collected roof runoff on USU campus from a roof with solar panels, a roof with metal panels and collected rainwater samples from a flat roof using an Isco Autosampler. I also installed a tipping bucket in a manhole to measure roof runoff flow through drain pipes. Over all, my week was productive and experiencing.

 

 

 

 

 

Heather Bottelberghe

This week I finished creating the IR imagery mosaic of Swaner Preserve! I was glad to have all of the image processing done because exporting frames from the IR video and processing the images for the mosaic takes a long time. With a finished mosaic, I was able to georeference the IR imagery in ArcGIS So that the mosaic lays over satellite imagery. Now the Swaner Preserve thermal IR mosaic can be used on maps in ArcGIS. Next week I am going to La Grande, Oregon to help a Utah State University graduate student, Jessica Wood with the fieldwork for her project. She is monitoring a stream near La Grande, and I will be helping take water quality measurements. I am very excited to be out in the field!

 

Katelyn Boyer

Monday was the fourth cohort session where we learned about the importance of keeping connections with different mentors. Having several different mentors is important to help you reach your overall goals. We also spent some time learning about and visiting different GIRF and GAMUT sites. For the rest of the week I have spent my time analyzing the data that we collected on forest characterization. I have been working in excel to create different graphs to display the data in a clear and concise form. Some of the graphs I have created show how forest density, using stem per hectare and basal per hectare affect snow accumulation. I have also created some graphs comparing the burn severity blocks with mortality and will be creating graphs dealing showing how percent mortality effects snow depth. I have found that the more I work with the data in excel, the more comparisons I am able make. Overall it has helped me to gain a better understanding of the data that we collected and is helping me broaden my horizon.

 

Todd Brown

2016 iFellow Todd Brown describes the research he is working on at Utah State University for the summer: organizing and perfecting data to put in the Watershed Area of Suitable Habitat (WASH) Model, developed by USU Ph.D. student Ayman Alafifi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Darcie Christensen

Monday, we had a cohort meeting here at the U. It was fun to be able to go to the Natural History Museum. It’s basically in my backyard, but I hadn’t been up there yet. Seeing the display about the information gathered by iUTAH was awesome. I love that they’re getting the word out about watershed changes to the general public. We also had the chance to go see the site where all the bioretention sites I am studying are. It was good to finally see the site since I am working on the data gathered from there, but hadn’t had the chance to go out there yet. We learned about how artificial storms were applied and improvements being made to the new bioretention gardens that are going in. The tipping buckets used for measuring the water that comes out of the bioretention gardens were also shown. We also got to see a couple of the GAMUT sites and learn about the data logged at each of those.

 

The rest of the week has been spent compiling and analyzing data. I have been going through all of our results from IRMS to see what the trends are for nitrogen content in the plants. So far, it looks like the upland (native) plants are performing just as well if not better than the wetland vegetation at removing nitrogen. The only problem is the standard deviations. Some of the deviations are bigger than the mean itself, so there is obviously a lot of variation. Whether that comes from the prediction of the biomass, errors in measurements, or really is just that varied, I’m not sure yet. But, it has been fun to finally see some data and results about what is going on. I have also been working a lot on finishing up my first official draft of the paper and getting my poster ready for our practice presentations next week!

 

 

 

Georgie Corkery

This week I maintained the Hydroponic Lighting experiment, reviewed the research papers written by my research partners regarding their experiments with hydroponic systems and container gardening, and worked out the the focus of my project for iUTAH.

 

In terms of maintenance of the Hydroponic Lighting experiment, we changed out the water and nutrients for the plants outside (of which four of the six have died) and watered almost daily the peppers in soil in each of the three locations. Clearly, the peppers in soil will use more water than the hydroponic plants, and the plants outside will use more water and nutrients than the plants inside or in the greenhouse, and the plants inside will use more energy than the plants outside or in the greenhouse.

 

The focus of my project is becoming more clear as time goes on. From the general question of What is the water use in different urban agricultural settings? to Can Salt Lake City sustain a large percentage of their food supply off of environmentally sustainable urban agriculture? we are more specifically looking at What urban agricultural setting in Salt Lake City, Utah provide the largest pounds of yield for the least amount of water, energy, and nutrient input?

 

Cynthia Elliott

This week we had a cohort session at the museum at the U. We learned about the importance of mentors and afterwards we got to explore the museum! We had an event the next day and are now at 401 survey responses! We met our goal and are now done collecting responses. The rest of the week was mostly used to work on the rough draft of my paper. My mentors helped me find sources for the essay and fine tune it a bit. Next week we will go over the data together and analyze our results.

 

Andrew Hackett

This week I was focused on preparing a draft research paper and poster for our project, and continuing to digitize the curb types within Cache Valley. On Monday we had a very informative Cohort Session at the Natural History Museum of Utah and visited some GAMUT stations near the University of Utah.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Greta Hamilton

This week started with our iFellows meeting on Monday where we learned about the importance of mentors and conferences before heading outside to check out the Red Butte GAMUT site. Tuesday, we went with the DEQ and several Provo river management agencies to view construction updates to the river diversion sites and rebuilt wetlands. The rest of the week was spent working at the University of Utah preparing our river samples to be run for trace metals in the ICPMS lab.

 

 

 

Stacy Henderson

This week I spent creating maps in ArcGIS for my project. I will be displaying water institution boundaries in a series of maps for various water agencies within Utah. A lot of the time creating the maps I worked on this week was spent searching the USGS and Utah AGRC websites for applicable GIS data. I also made phone calls and sent emails to obtain data that wasn’t located on the internet. I ended up talking with both Utah AGRC people and the Department of Environmental Quality people and learned a lot about data I was looking at. I also researched the exact legislative policies that define what each agency is responsible for and how they are set up. Overall it was a very busy and mostly productive week.

 

Rebecca Lee

This week I extracted DNA from the samples from Logan, Red Butte, and Provo watersheds. The samples are now ready to be analyzed for the specific bacteria we are looking for! We also worked on getting clean PCR results so that we could begin our cloning reactions. We began the cloning process by inserting our PCR results into a circular strand of DNA called a vector. We then put the vector into E. coli cells and cultured them. Doing this allows us to have a quantifiable number to use as a standard by which we can compare our samples from the iUTAH watersheds.

 

 

Gabriela Martinez

Last week was stressful, we encountered some problems with out research model and it was decided that we would start over from scratch. So this week was basically starting the process all over again, but more fun because I got to interview and survey members of the lab as a practice run for our future research. It is great to be surrounded by smart and innovative people on a daily basis that are able to see past the little bumps along the road and inspire me to do the same, and even though last week was discouraging, I feel like I'm back on track again.

 

 

Mitchell Steele

This week we are still running some test on different weir boxes to calibrate. the weir boxes that are finished and calibrated have been installed on 3rd east. waiting for rain so that we can get results.

 

 

Shanae Tate

Time is flying by and we've already finished the 7th week of the program! That means that it's time to crack down on my paper and preparing a draft of my poster. We'll present our posters next week for practice. On Thursday I went once again with Chris and Kay to our famous TWDEF site. There we replaced a few Acclima TDT probes that measure soil water content. Kay also took some soil water measurements with the neutron scattering probe. I've read loads about neutron scattering, but I'd never seen it in action, so that was excellent. Learning is fun!

 

 

 

 

 

Luis Vidal

This week we reached our goal of hitting 400 survey responses and concludes our data collecting part of the summer. We still have a scheduled event in the future but now we can start doing data analysis. The week started off with a cohort session where we shared our current graphs and figures for feedback. The next day we went down to the Partners in the Park event where we reached our goal. The latter part of the week was then focused on preparing our research paper for submission.

 

 

Lily Wetterlin

This week has been very busy. I am in the process of extracting the water out of my stem samples. To do this we use a cryogenic extraction line and then test the water on the Mass Spec for the hydrogen and oxygen isotopic signatures. I have also been prepping my leaf sample for the Mass Spec by weighing them out on the Mass Balance, it is a very tedious process. I have become very familiar with both of these lab techniques and am excited to continue to work towards getting my data.

 

Adam Whalen

My week began with a cohort session at my home institution, the University of Utah. It took place at the Natural History Museum, where we were given a tour of not only the museum, but a special installation on Utah’s water and GAMUT (Gradients Along Mountain to Urban Transition) sites made possible by iUTAH. It was enjoyable to see all the museum had to offer particularly in the company of my other iFellows. We then made our way to several GAMUT sites in and around campus. A highlight of the session was our trip up into the Red Butte watershed. Dave Eiriksson, one of the GAMUT technicians, was kind enough to show us his stations and instrumentation used for his measurements. While the temperature left something to be desired, it was a memorable experience and one of my favorite cohort sessions of the experience thus far.

 

This week also found me making good progress in my research. I had a very productive meeting with my mentors in which we isolated drinking water as our primary variable of interest. Furthermore, we made plans for me to learn the basics of regression analyses which should aid in the overall quality of my study. My initial findings lead me to believe I am nearing the end of my iFellows research, but there is still much to come. Now that I have focused my research further, I will edit my abstract to reflect on its now more precise nature.

 

Next week I will be submitting a video on the basics of coding within IBM SPSS Statistics. It will be built as a “how-to” of sorts, with the ultimate goal being an introductory approach to the inner-workings of my research.

 

Sandra Udy (Young)

This week began with another iFellow session discussing presenting posters, attending conferences, and networking. I really liked getting a new perspective on networking and all of the people that provide a strong base for continuing research. We also had the opportunity to learn more about the GAMUT system and went to a site. I really liked learning about the YSI probe and how it is being used to record new information. My week continued with a trip down to BYU to process more DNA for the SIP process. We had a lot more success this week and learned some more techniques to make the process better. The centrifuge was struggling, so hopefully with that working again we will be able to complete the DNA-SIP process and discover how the bacteria used the nitrogen. I also used the aqualog machine this week. It helps to characterize organic matter in our samples. It was cool to see how different nutrient amendments influenced the readings for the aqualog. I am excited to find out what the readings mean and what types of protien are in each sample. Overall it has been an exciting week and I'm excited to send in the rough draft for my paper and prepare my poster for next week!