Definitions

I looked up the words "labile" and "recalcitrant."

Labile- Easily changing, unstable, readily changes.

Recalcitrant- Difficult to degrade under natural conditions and usually not responsive to treatment

Anyone with other definitions feel free to comment.

Math problem: calculating concentration

OK math whizzes: what is a microgram of mercury? Let's sort this out:

How many micrograms in a gram?

How many micrograms are there in, say a typical mercury thermometer?

An average thermometer contains 1 gram of mercury (note: Maine has tried to get mercury thermometers out of circulation; new ones contain alcohol instead).

If you broke a mercury thermometer in a lake that was 50 feet deep, 100 feet diameter, and perfectly round (and hemispherical), and if 1 cubic centimeter of water = 1 milliliter, what would be the concentration of mercury in the lake, in micrograms per liter?

Link to article

Here's a link to the article about the class, FYI:
http://ellsworthmaine.com/site/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6035&Itemid=85

Cartoon Worlds

This morning I talked about models and "cartoon worlds" -- in the sense that a good cartoon can capture someone's essential characteristics without being accurate in all details.

Think about the work that Jessica Muhlin described. Why was building a "cartoon world" of the interaction between the reproductive cycle of seaweed and the effects of the coastal geography an important step?

What is the connection, if any, between this "cartoon world" and the much classier notion of a hypothesis?

-- Bill

Inference and Description

I thought that the work that you all did today was really rich, excellent stuff.

Part of what made it so rich was that it opened up so many issues and questions that are worth thinking more about. And, indirectly, Sarah, Jessica, Ken, and I were pushing you to the edges of some of those questions. A good example was when, tonight, Ken wanted to know what one group's hypothesis was and when he wouldn't settle for an answer that didn't have a firm hypothesis.

What's that all about? Why the focus on a hypothesis rather than just finding some stuff out?

One distinction that I have consistently found to be useful is between "description" and "inference." In statistics we talk about "descriptive statistics" and "inferential statistics." What is the difference? Is one a better thing to do than the other?

Think about the research that Jessica described with the oranges. She had some pretty low return rates for some of the orange releases. In some cases she had only one orange found in a particular location. What does a result like that show? What can you conclude from it? What are the limitations? What does this have to do with inference and description?

-- Bill

Fucus vesiculosus

Jessica Muhlin is not the only researcher at Acadia working with seaweed. Here is a link to a brief article describing some Acadia research by Dr. Jeremy Long about ways that the same rockweed that Jessica is studying actually develops defense mechanisms to defend itself against grazing by snails. Very interesting stuff. This is FYI -- no comment necessary -- but welcome, of course.

-- Bill

When doesn't a watershed work?

OK, so everyone seems to be good with the concept that water moves downhill. But there's one thing I didn't mention, a key assumption we use when we take the watershed as our study unit, and it can throw a monkey wrench in the whole idea of a watershed boundary.

Today we got a first look underground - in the field digging in the soil - and way underground as Ivan Fernandez told us about bedrock and surficial geology.

That's the hint - can you figure out where we might be missing some water and leaking some of our study chemicals out of the watershed, without us even realizing?

What’s the deal with our rinse water?

This morning I said that I couldn’t mail the ultrapure or ‘mercury-free’ water from the lab up to Zen to sample, so instead I asked her to buy some bottles of Poland Spring (no endorsement of any type of water – I just figured it’s probably easily available). We also used Poland Spring water in the field today, to rinse our templates and knife between sub-plots. Why did we use that type of water instead of tap water or something else?

You might want to start on the Poland Spring website, and see if you can find any mention of mercury in any of their water quality reports. Why do bottled water companies and drinking water suppliers (like cities) test their water for chemicals?

Experimental designs

In environmental science, we often have to choose between two main study designs: one where we take lots of samples from lots of places all at once – but only once twice (a survey) and one where we take lots of samples from only a couple of sites, on many occasions or for a long period of time (often called trend analysis). Describe an instance (not one we've already talked about!) when you think each approach makes more sense. How might choosing one design over the other affect your results or interpretation?

Road Less Traveled By

So, today we went on a hike to try and find the boundaries of our watershed as well as scope out potential sites we might take litter samples from. Thing is, there's a little tributary we didn't check out today. Now, this might be fine because we know it's there, and that's great. HOWEVER, the waypoint labeled "Canyon" on the points Bill took was taken in an area where we were over our little stream. This isn't a bad thing, but it means that, for the time being anyway, our stream has another tributary we didn't know about. This expands and changes our watershed a little, which is fine. The thing is that now we don't know if the tributary originally stated on the maps we have is actually there. I'm proposing that tomorrow when we take our samples we check out that last branch of stream. Bill has said that there is a path that follows that area and it's totally possible for us to check that out. I feel it's necessary to cover this ground since the land is accessible and there's no point in projecting our watershed out that far if the stream doesn't exist there to begin with. Please excuse any misspellings.

Question to answer for Wednesday: watersheds

Today I asked you to start out by writing down your answer to the question "What is a watershed?", before we discussed it in class. Later, you updated your definition after seeing a presentation about watersheds. Then we delineated watersheds on paper maps, and finally headed out into the field to find our watershed on the ground.

Based on these different experiences and interactions with the concept of a watershed, in your own words, describe your understanding of a watershed - how will you explain it to others when you present your results from this class?

If your definition of a watershed changed throughout the day, include a short discussion of how the new information you gathered helped to change your idea of a watershed.

A concise, descriptive paragraph or two will suffice.

Question to answer for Wednesday: watersheds

Today I asked you to start out by writing down your answer to the question "What is a watershed?", before we discussed it in class. Later, you updated your definition after seeing a presentation about watersheds. Then we delineated watersheds on paper maps, and finally headed out into the field to find our watershed on the ground.

Based on these different experiences and interactions with the concept of a watershed, in your own words, describe your understanding of a watershed - how will you explain it to others when you present your results from this class?

If your definition of a watershed changed throughout the day, include a short discussion of how the new information you gathered helped to change your idea of a watershed.

A concise, descriptive paragraph or two will suffice.

Mercury in the Environment

Sarah provided you with an overview of how mercury affects biota. Here is a good USGS article that provides you with a review of the points that Sarah made.

Here is a question to test your understanding of some of these issues: Would you expect mercury to have a bigger impact on loons or on chickadees? Why?

-- Bill

Island Biogeography

One of the things that Sarah and I emphasized today is that Acadia National Park is almost all islands. We are on Big Moose Island here at SERC. In fact, the area where we will hike tomorrow is the only part of the Park that isn't an island.

Take a look at this article on "island biogeography." Island biogeography is a theory about biodiversity developed by one of the world's foremost biologists, E.O. Wilson.

After you read the article, try to answer some of the following questions:

• What does this have to do with Acadia National Park?
• Give an example of how island biogeography could affect the Schoodic part of Acadia, even though some of it isn't an island.
• Think about some of the "megafauna" that people come to Acadia to see -- moose, bears, and so on. How does E.O. Wilson's theory connect to the Park's mission to conserve such species?

Post your answers as comments to this posting. Or, if you have more write about the topic, start a new posting of your own.

-- Bill

Connecting the Hike with Geochemistry

As we took our walk in the rain out to Schoodic Point and over to Blueberry Hill today, we pointed out a number of things about the terrain, plants, and general environment. You no doubt noticed some things on your own.

How do the things that we noticed while out hiking connect in to the watershed chemistry issues that Sarah described this morning? In answering this, take a particular observation and tie it into the picture of watershed chemistry for this coastal area. We recognize that your answers are really just hypotheses at this point -- these are not things that you would necessarily be certain about. So, state some hypotheses connecting what you saw, heard, and smelled with the geochemistry that Sarah talked about.

You can post your answers as comments to this post.

-- Bill

Schedule of Activities

We are making the schedule of day-by-day actvities available here to parents and students. This schedule provides the general framework for our days -- the details will certainly change as we are actually engaged in the class. Details will change because of collisions between weather and outdoor activities, or because of new opportunities that turn up in the course of the fieldwork. So, you can't set your watch by this schedule. But it should give you a good idea of what we will be donig over the 10 days of classwork.

What to Bring

We have uploaded a copy of the memo sent to students and parents that contains information about what to bring, as well as a general description of what we will be doing and what to expect. You should all have received a paper copy of this -- but, just in case, here it is online.

Welcome

Welcome to the blog for the Winter Watershed Geochemistry class.

This class is a cooperative effort between Acadia Partners for Science and Learning and the George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research at the University of Maine. It is being offered to students from the Maine School of Science and Mathematics during the two weeks starting January 8, 2006.

The course is being taught by Sarah J. Nelson, a Canon National Parks Science Scholar currently working at the Mitchell Center. For more information about the course, see the full course announcement.

About This Blog
This blog is for use by the staff and the students participating in the winter watershed geochemistry course. It is here to that we can capure observations, share experiences, and to create a record of the course.

Contact Information
If you need to get in touch with the staff or if you have questions, call me at 207-963-2023.

-- Bill Zoellick