Lost in the Phragmites

Today, I was completely submerged in the jungle of dense Phragmites patches at the invasion edge of a Spartina meadow in Kirkpatrick marsh at SERC's Global Change Research Wetland. I measured lots of Phragmites of various heights, took their leaf count, then cut the plant at ground level. These samples were individually labeled and bagged. Once I returned to SERC's main campus, I put these samples in the drying oven, so I can take a dry biomass. With a dry biomass, I can correlate it to the plant's height over many samples, I can make a height to dry biomass model. Then, by using the recorded heights of the chambered stems, this model can be used to non-destructively approximate the biomass of the plants in the chambers of the CO2xN Phragmites experiment.

Tropical Storm Andrea is approaching! All of SERC is getting prepared. The all-inclusive warning email to SERC staff was sent out.The boats were taken out of the water, put on trailers, and now sit in the middle of a field. The GCrew site (the nickname for my research site, the Global Change Research Wetland), the Wet Lab, and the SERC Dock all too extra precautions. We will have to wait and see how bad this storm is. Predictions do not look too bad, but coming from the Gulf Coast, I know the forecast can change quickly if the storm changes path or gains strength.
Hopefully Mother Nature will be kind to the East Coast!

Diner had a southern flair! Vegetarian enchiladas with salsa! There was corn, black beans, onions, and spinach in them. They are actually much easier to make than I originally thought. Cooking the corn, spinach, and onions. Wrapping the vegetables in the whole grain tortillas. Putting enchilada sauce and cheese on top. Cooking them in the oven. And voila they were done!  They were so delicious! Usually enchiladas have ground beef with the vegetables in them, but these were all vegetarian. I surprisingly didn't even miss the meat! I've been eating so much less meat since I've been here. Vegetarian meals are very flavourful and scrumptious!