So, about three weeks ago, a new research project started involving the study of winter annuals in and around Tucson, and how well they grew under certain conditions, as well as other details. Needless to say, this requires hour after hour of somewhat tedious data collection. :p
So what better way to do it than having a party? Or at least, something in the semblance of a party where you can get everybody working together and on the same level.
So a week and a half ago, there was a 3-day weekend party up at the Biosphere for the research assistants working on the project. I was only up there for two days, due to having class on the Friday of the party.
When I first arrived, I saw what a monumental task we had just started undergoing, and would be going through for the next month or two. For starters, Whitney and I started by counting leaves on all the winter annuals, and then randomizing them to reduce interference caused by being near members of the same species.
Evan and Ashley were working the 5400s (I think that's their name), and needless to say, I do not have any clue what those things do, but it looks complicated. :p Hopefully I can be trained in them some day.
(poor plant's getting tormented)
So we left them to do their thing. We had a lot of our own work to do: plant harvesting. No, not like harvesting corn. More like counting leaves, picking apart the annuals, seeing how much surface area was per leaf, and collecting root samples from the soil.
So this fearsome beast of a machine was none other than the leaf area meter. You'd take all the leaves from a plant, squash them between two transparencies, and run them through the machine, and it would tell you how much surface area (square centimers) was there for the entire plant.
Of course, you had to prepare the plants for the scanning first.
Once the scanning of the leaves was done, we transferred the now plant-less tubes over to have their soil and roots collected. Since we didn't want to damage the microroots, we will be sending the soil samples elsewhere to be processed.
All the data retrieved thus far would then be stored on an excel spreadsheet.
And that's what we did for the vast majority of the day. Harvesting leaves, and taking soil samples. Believe me, it sounds like it would be quick and easy. But often it would take nearly 20 minutes effort per plant for a single person. Which means a fairly slow pace, considering we started with around 500 annuals, I believe.
So, once our day's work was over, we went up to our casitas, prepared for dinner, and had a wonderful meal with the Huxman family, some of their relatives, and the other research assistants. Scientists with alcohol are interesting, to say the least. :p
Since I'm not much of a party person myself, I preferred to take photos of some of the wonderful things going on outside the casita. Such as the sun setting on the Biosphere. Or the stars.
You could really see the stars from there -- there was practically no light pollution that far out from Tucson.
So once the party had died down, everybody sauntered back to their temporary residences, and slept the night away.
Come morning... and we're back to harvesting plants. Whee. Some people from yesterday had left (Carmen, Whitney, Dan, and the other guy who I wish I could remember his name). Today, Kristin and Karrena (sorry if I butchered your name) came up. It was a relaxed day as we fell back into the routine of harvesting.
And then after another long day's work, we were done for that weekend. We're still doing harvesting and other work now, but man, that was a huge effort.
A slideshow of the photos:
