Jessica's blog

I ran 52 samples this week, which means a lot of time in the lab. It took me a while to become consistent everyday in naming my files. In the morning it takes me about 45 minutes running tests to make sure the machine is running properly. I hope to have about two more weeks before I'm done running samples and I can dive into all of the data being collected. until then, I'm enjoying my time getting to know the other ASE students and am looking forward to going over to the primate center like last year and meeting the other ASE students working for OHSU.

Last year after completing the ASE program I was fortunate enough to be offered a part time job during the school year in the lab with Tawyna and Joe. I usually came in from 3-5 hours a week prepping for cruises and working on data organization/analysis involving the CDOM samples that I had worked with the previous summer. Then I was offered the opportunity to come back again this summer as a full time student through ASE.

My 8 weeks have come to an end. It seems like it went by so fast! I got really busy, sorry for no weekly updates.
Towards the end I worked a lot in MatLab comparing how different salinity levels can affect diatoms (using a previous study from J.Needoba)
The over all conclusion:
-Salinity affects growth of diatom
-CDOM release increased as salt water was added to fresh water phytoplankton
-However, No effect on July Salinity experiment
[Different Seasons, Different Location in the river, Different species (Salt-tolerant]

Last weekend was the ASE (the program I went through to get this internship) mid-summer conference.
All of the high school students who were chosen for an internship in Oregon met at OSU for two days
There were 3 sessions, mine were all on oceanography which was fun I got to look at how they take cores from the bottom of the ocean. There was a huge fridge full of core samples from as late as the 70s.

The whole lab is preparing for the cruise, pretty chaotic around here. I've been going through all of the salinity experiments and it's showing some useful information.

It seems that the CDOM levels over the days fluxed in the fresh water at the same time as salt water, although fresh water still has higher levels in all cases

Salt Water vs. Fresh Water

We tested all of the past cruises for CDOM information it was over 250 samples all lots of information
Now we are in the process of sorting all the data and soon it will be able to be useful

-Added Later-
The data has been sorted by cruise, date, cast, and depth. Now I am creating graphs and looking for any trends or unusual information in the CDOM/RFU levels. So far the graphs seem to be consistent by the CDOM levels dropping as the samples are farther away from the surface.

So Far so good :)

My first week was pretty crazy with all the site visit stuff going on. I was happy to meet so many welcoming people though. I am really looking forward to this great opportunity to learn so much.
All of the background reading... although tedious was helpful and next week I will kick off my project with Tawnya and Joe and my other high school partner as we test the carbon cycle and CDOM

Week one/eight

-Jessica

PS I feel so small here as a High School student all these people are so smart!