"In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it." John Archibald Wheeler

Lots and lots of field work has been the theme of the past few days!
And I love it!

Wednesday is the day I do my weekly measurements of the Phragmites in the CO2xN chambers. There are some real monster stems already, and there's still several more weeks left in the growing season. It's amazing to see the differences between all the chamber treatments!

And I'm getting pretty good at taking the frames and their braces off the chambers! The wing nuts of the braces can get very stiff and difficult to unscrew. Then the frames themselves, even though they are light to carry, they are so big and the wind catches them easily.
Just like big sails, like I called them earlier.

Wednesday afternoon, I did my fortnightly measuring and sampling of Phragmites from the field. It was very warm and the Phrgamites were being quite evil poking me in the eyes the whole time, even with my sunglasses on.

After putting all the samples in their paper bags, it was late, but I love field work so helped out another intern with getting plant samples. It was muddy work! The knives were a bit of help, but to actually get the plants out, we had to dig into the soil with our hands.

 Thursday and Friday were also field days. My research adviser came down to SERC to guide me with my research direction. We used the LiCor machines to test photosynthetic rates using a light curve at 11 points at varying light levels. The head connects to a leaf and the monitor does all the computing. And we can plug the computer into the LiCor and read the light curve graphs on the computer.

We used the LiCor bath days, then on Friday afternoon I used a leaf punch. I feel an actual hole punch would have been easier, but this way worked too. It consisted of a hollow metal puncher and a piece of rubber to safely punch the leaf with. Look at that perfect hole I punched. Then I put the circles I punched out into labeled envelopes. Once I returned to SERC main campus, I put them in the oven and will weigh them on Monday.