Tuesday, June 7, 2016

What day is it again?

Our team size increased +1 with the arrival of the hot off the press, straight outta grad school, PhD holdin' Dr. Dan!
What's up, Doc?
Iceland has been unusually generous with her fair weather this summer, but hey, I'm not complaining! We took advantage of another sunny day and brought everyone out for some training.

Not pictured: swarms of midges and black flies in our eyeballs.
We're preparing everyone for the high volume of work that will follow the start of the N15 isotope drips. In the meantime, Jon took drip rates and refilled the phosphorous barrels!

Sometimes you just gotta put your foot down! To block the stream.
Jill watches Jon intently.
Jill continues to watch Jon intently.
After spending a day collecting FBOM(fine benthic organic matter), epilithon, and macroinvertebrate samples, we spent the next day in the lab doing some live picking (much more fun than dead picking).

Just a lazy Sunday morning...and afternoon...
Not only did we have to pick the bugs out, but we had to sort them so we can get separate N15 readings for the different trophic levels in the stream. The live bugs don't know their fates are sealed, so they still put up a fight. One of my many worms somehow squirmed underneath its own dish!

"Is this the way back to Stream 9?"
The midges are tough to identify with the naked eye, so we made good use of the microscopes for those guys.

All that lab time in Bozeman came in handy!
It took all day, but we picked our way through all 28 samples! Nice job, team! We only have to do that for the rest of the summer!

Maybe I should just retire and take this cat's job.

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