The official summer research program ended last week with a big barbecue (Profs Bill Church and Christoph Geiss, head-barbecuists) and summer research presentations. ENVS was very well represented by Dan and Justin, who looked a bit nervous before their talk,
but did a very fine job telling us about their ongoing research in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Now that their standard solutions have finally arrived Justin is eager to get started on his handful of samples.
Rose and Sarah have been working as interior designers, furnishing Cameron Douglass’ lab, and have been kept busy making artificial weeds.
For all of you who don’t have enough naturally occurring weeds in your back yard: all you need is a few sticks, tin snips, blotting paper, and two students who carefully cut out each leaf by hand. My request for naturalistic serrated edges was nixed. Cameron’s weeds have a total of six square blotting paper leaves.
No fake weeds in Christoph Geiss’ lab. Counting pollen is exhausting, as one can see:
and Jami only has twenty five thousand measurements to go. Almost done, I’d say.
At the same time, guest-researcher Kelsey is busy re-learning ArcGIS in the lab. A dozen more maps and she’ll be done as well. Kelsey, just a heads-up: we’ll need the lab in September to teach Geology again, so quit slacking!
Last month Professor Morrison and her students conducted the annual spring bird banding event with 6th-8th grade students at the 2 Rivers Magnet Middle School, in East Hartford. This activity provides a unique opportunity for students to learn scientific methodology for studying birds, about the natural environment surrounding them, and more about the birds themselves. Prof. Morrison and her students have been banding birds at 2RMMS since 2002, once in fall and once in spring. This week’s best capture was a Northern Flicker!
