Research Experience for Community College Students in Critical Zone Science

This week has been wonderful. I did learn early on that you should probably get permission before taking photos at federal government buildings.

I’m based at USGS for my project. My mentor is Jenny Briggs, a research ecologist, and Fleur Ferro, a biology instructor from the Community College of Denver, is part of our team a few days a week. Fleur was my biology teacher and I attribute much of my love for science, especially biology, to her. I am thrilled to spend the summer with one of my favorite instructors.

Jenny is a wonderful mentor. She encourages me to ask questions and she really is so intelligent and kind. I’m excited for my team!

This week was full of reading, research and field work. So far I love being in the field.

We spent Wednesday in the field at Golden Gate State Park. We searched to find the old plots from 5 years ago. The data from these sites will serve as our comparison for our summer data. This paricular plot did not have much beetle damage, but there was a prescribed burn. We did preliminary measurements to just learn how to measure material on the forest floor. Lots of hiking, squatting, and counting are in our future. I’m going get so skilled with the GPS.

As I write this post we are headed to Larimer County. We will be visiting a site that had 60% beetle damage. I haven’t seen a site so affected yet. It will be sad to see the dead trees, but it will be interesting to do the data collection. I’m hoping we can add some new seedlings to the data sheet.

The sites for our project will be finalized early next week. From there the field work and data analysis really gets going.

I’m attaching our first team photo. This was our first field visit at Golden Gate.

All the best,

Marianne