Fall 2009. BUMP #1. Block #1. Three words come to mind: Sergio, mud, and samples. This course was taught by Sergio Fagherazzi and his TF Guilio, both of whom are beyond Italian. The strong accents lead to many an entertaining conversation and estuaries was by far the most fun-loving class I've ever taken. I mean, c'mon, how can you not love this guy?
The class was based completely within the Plum Island Sound LTER (Long Term Ecological Research)http://ecosystems.mbl.edu/pie/. The general idea is that Rowley, MA is mostly covered in marsh making it ideal for the LTER. One area of marsh was left completely natural- there is very minimal human influence and is as close to pristine as possible. Another marsh nearby gets continuos pumping of N and P at a rate calculated to be equivalent to average anthropogenic runoff. The two sites are then compared over short and long time spans under the hypothesis that the marsh exposed to the excess pollutants will erode at a faster rate and eventually begin to collapse in on itself.
I managed to make a great first impression; just a few minutes into our first class I stumbled into the marsh. Please note everyone behind me pointing and laughing, a memory we still cherish.
The class was split into four groups. One worked on channels and another on scarp as pictured below. They were literally in wetsuits every day standing in the channels completely covered in mud. They recorded the height and slopes of predetermined sample sites which were eventually compared to the class's findings from the previous year.
The third group, dunes, recorded vegetation plots, percentage cover and species ID's of plants in the surrounding dune ecosystem. They were also looking at erosional changes and differences in plant species dominance from the previous year.
Below is one of the field stations where we would commute to everyday; note the white BU van.
I was in the fourth group, cores, or as we were eventually known: team hard core. Enter Finzi lab experience. The site coordinators wanted to try a new sampling technique analyzing the quality of salt marsh soil by taking cores and comparing the treated v. control marsh. The only problem was they had never done it before and most of them were ecologists with limited terrestrial background. Since I had just spent a year of my life getting acquainted with soil cores I showed them the standard techniques for forest ecology and kick-started our intensive field block. We took 36 50cm soil core samples which were divided into zones, each of which was picked for root, rhizome, and detritus biomass. We also took C,H,N samples for later isotope analysis and took plant samples for above ground biomass.
Some of the sites were much more excluded than others, one of our dear friends (Sweeney) was over the river...
and through the woods...
(That's our team below! I'm holding the core sampler over my shoulder)
By the time it was all over many mistakes had been made, some cores were retaken, and we eventually worked through 998 samples. We didn't just take that many, all those sections were handpicked and analyzed which is pretty ridiculous for four college students in less than a month. It's truly more processing than some labs accomplish in an entire year so estuaries was definitely a class close to my heart. There were even samples left at the end and a few of us were asked to stay on to completely finish the processing; not bad to have these guys on your resume: Woods Hole
Please note that it's pitch black outside that window, I think it was about 11:30.
We still had our fun at the field site. Here are two Europeans (L-Giulio, Italy R-Christina, France) having their first ever s'more. They liked it but said it would have been better with dark chocolate.
And during the process some equipment malfunctioned, here is me taking my anger out on an oven that kept burning our samples to crisps (rendering them worthless).
I mean, you've got to be a little crazy sometimes or you'd drive yourself completely mad.