Computer Day

Once again we were hacking away at the computer. Elizabeth spent about 2 hours looking for rainfall totals for the immediate area during July 2005 & 2007, and no luck. Archived data is available for NH for various seasons of the year, but finding data for a particular month apparently is tricky. I wrote up the analysis of our data and included the comparison to the 2005 group. Everything pretty much stayed within the same range as that group.

Above is a wonderful sketch by Elizabeth leading to my favorite site. At this point in the walk we were trying our best to inform the next group of the GPS point that is between two others on our map.

As for the results there were a couple odd numbers from the group of sites. The conductivity level at site one was very high, 148 uS, as opposed to other sites that were between 18 and 51 uS. I started to think why this was so and thought that maybe there was human pollution involved. There were homes nearby! And to me that would be exciting but not so good for the environment. But then I began to think about the construction at the entrance to the Tamposi Reserve on Tibbetts Road. And my research said that urbanization was a possible cause to high conductivity. It can also be the temperature of the water. This site was the lowest of all at 16'C. This result was read about in the VRAP Turbidity page that said as temperature does one thing, conductivity does the opposite. Our teachers discussed this with us and we came to the possiblity of there being an underground spring. We are happy to leave that to another group for research!

It was fun to find researched reasons and take educated guesses for various results, but it was also hard work in understanding some relationships. My mind just doesn't relate some information without having it all on one page. But I got through it.

We talked briefly about the powerpoint presentation for Thursday and came up with an idea to include an activity. Talking for an hour just isn't the way to teach anymore. Our methodologies overlap with the idea of place based learning so we are planning an activity for our presentation. I can't give it away, of course, but it will be better than sitting and listening only.

Only two more days! :(