Unfettered

I doubt anyone is still reading this, but I need a break from Mathematica so I thought I'd try writing some plain English for a change. We've been in Corvallis now for 4 weeks, and aside from one trip back to Quartz Creek I've been doing my work here, either in the library or memorial union. Earlier this week the other two members of my group Will and Ginger went out to Crab-Tree Creek on the Santiam to finish the last of our data gathering. I opted not to go for two main reasons, one the StreamPro (The ADCP actually designed for shallow water) can be easily operated by two people, and two I already had plenty of work to do. For the last 4 weeks I've been using Mathematica to visualize and analyze our data. It may not be the best tool for the job, but I know how to use it. Essentially what I do is read in text files of data from WinRiver (the program that comes with the ADCP), process them into a usable format, then use them to make pretty pictures. Aside from work I...

This has been rather busy as evidenced by the lack of posts. On Monday we drove around with a forest service guy named Ray. He showed us a bunch of log jams on the McKenzie and some side tributaries. Its amazing how well he knows the area and all the log jams. He kept coming up with sites to look at, we ended up driving back and forth over the basin. We found a couple of cool snorkel sites to look at fish behavior but none of the sites were really suitable for our instruments. Today we went back to Quartz creek (our main site) and took some more data. This time Jorge our math mentor came along and helped us try to come up with a way to create a grid of data. Suffice it to say it was a long and complicated process and only data analysis will tell if it works. We did get to use a total station to survey the points where we took data, which was pretty cool. This weekend I went to the Oregon Country Fair , which was quite a spectacle and tons of fun! I'm not really sure how to descri...

Before I start talking about day 1 of work here are a few pictures form the hike I took on Sunday. View Across part of the Andrews basin to lookout mountain As you can see there is still a little snow at the higher elevations. The view east from the top of HJA I think these are 2 of the sisters. A pool in the stream our trail followed. Though today was the first day of real work there was still a lot of learning to be done. Today was primarily for Ginger who will be doing the ecology work for our team. In the case of our project this means snorkel surveys of the pools below our logjams. Snorkel surveys consist mainly of floating in the water then observing and recording the behavior of the fish. Since this involves spending prolonged time in water that is between 10-12 degrees Celsius proper equipment is key. In our case this meant dry suits, plus neoprene hoods, gloves, and felt bottomed shoes for better traction on wet rock. Here is a picture of me after we got back, though still ge...

Well it's the weekend again, and what a week it has been. Almost all of the week was spent doing various activities designed to get us familiar with H.J. Andrews Experimental forest, here shortened to just 'the Andrews'. These activities included a number of lectures by various professors, a whole afternoon of safety training, and my personal favorites, a number of field exercises and hikes through the woods. Yesterday we drove into Corvallis to OSU where we watched the professors present powerpoints of the summer projects they are leading. After that we had a BBQ at the house of the program director who also happens to be the professor who I will be working with. We then had to drive back to the Andrews making for quite a long day. Since I've been very lax in my picture taking I've only got a few to put up. This is our bunk house, it is divided into four apartments each with 5 double bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen, and a large living/dining area. Our program has ...