Warning: Some technical mumbo jumbo ahead...

Started my summer job a little over a week ago and it's been great so far. I'm working as a Field Technician for a PhD student writing her thesis on survivorship of bottomland hardwood tree seedlings on the Lower Roanoke River in relation to different release rates for the dams upstream of her study site.

It's a lot of endurance work as we travel by boat out to different transects on the river and further hike to where she and her previous technicians set up plots last summer. I've never been hardcore hiking where they are no cleared trails so it was a new experience. Then, there's a lot of bending and kneeling as we document previously recorded seedlings in each of the 5x1m quadrats and take the coordinates of new ones along with the number of first year seedlings (we only take coordinates on older seedlings), and cover classes for species representing >5% in the quadrats, plus the overall cover class.

So far three of our plots have been completely inundated and one mostly so. Haven't seen any Water Moccasins yet, but we've been told by the boss to keep an eye out as such sites in the back swamps are prime territory for them.

I'd say the worst part of the job so far has been the mosquitoes and smilax (a very mean and thorny vine that is everywhere out here). They aren't even the worst of it, though. Apparently in a few weeks is when we start getting deer flies that bite repeatedly and won't leave you alone until you kill them. They're only bad for about 3 weeks, though, so that's a relief.

I feel like I've learned a heck of a lot in just one week so far (the job run for 12) both about seedling identification and ecological field work, in general. It's really given me a new perspective from the purely theoretical stuff I've been learning in classes. I've no doubt this is a good experience and I thank my major professor so much for helping me find this opportunity.

Cheers,
Terri