First week of REU - journal
The first week my REU at West Texas A&M University (WTAMU) has been an amazing experience. I was picked up by Dr. Ray Matlack, the program coordinator at the Amarrillo airport, who gave me extensive background on the wildlife ecology of the area. He introduced me to the concept of playas, shallow depressional wetlands that periodically form after rainfall and serve as a rudimentary form of drainage. We stopped along the way to check out a prairie dog colony, where we saw the small animals and some burrowing owls. After dropping me off and getting me signed into the dorm, I met the other REUs, who are all from different parts (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Salt Lake City, Chicago, and Iowa). Everyone is excited to be here and interested in ecology and environmental science. Later on in the day we walked out to a prairie dog colony and found some tarantula burrows.
That next day we were introduced to the rest of the participants, filled out some paperwork, and met our research mentors. The dean of the college of agricultural and environmental science welcomed us and introduced us to the geography of the Texas high plains. Afterwards, we met our professor for the one-credit hour course we would be taking named "Ecology and Environment of the Southern High Plains". The class sounds pretty exciting; we were given "Caprock Canyonlands" by Dan Flores as well as some other literature to read for next week.
Afterwards I got to discuss my research plans with my mentor, Dr. Jim Rogers, director of the environmental science program at WTAMU. Dr. Rogers has been in the field of ecological risk assessment since 1987 and is a huge wealth of information on anything you want to know related to the field. This summer I will be examining the impacts of atrazine and Roundup on golden algae. This study will hopefully end up being published in SEATAC and allow land managers to provide for buffer strips between agricultural land and surface waters to allow the pesticides to settle out.
After dinner with the participants and mentors, we all drove out to Palo Duro canyon. The site is amazing; after driving for 20 minutes and seeing only flat land, a huge crack in the earth appears, which eventually widens to become a huge rocky landscape of red-yellow-brown canyon walls, towering rocky outcrops, and lush vegetation at the canyon bottom. Needless to say all of our jaws dropped at the site of this natural beauty. We took the hairpin turns and braved a thunderstorm to reach the bottom of the canyon, navigating our way through the rugged landscape.
One of the interesting things about this bioregion is that the ecology and wildlife is different depending on which part of the canyon you are in. South-facing canyon ridges are typically drier due to the position of the sun and support wildlife typical of xeric ecosystems, whereas the north-facing side supports more lush vegetation and mesic systems. As I read more in the book I will update this in regards to different microhabitats, the climate, etc.
After the trip to Palo Duro, we all got back to the dorms and hung out for a while. I left with Zach, another REU extremely interested in arachnids, to go out to the field and look for some tarantulas. While blacklighting for the hard-to-find nests we found a large female bufo woodhousii, woodhouse toad, a common toad native to the mid- and southwestern states. Afterwards we found some tarantula burrows and Zach poured some water in the hole to get it to come out. They really are amazing creatures close up; they can take over 10 years to reach full maturity because of their slow metabolism, but I think their sit-and-wait tactics for obtaining prey is pretty cool. Zach also showed me a video of one of the creatures brushing the urticating hairs of its rear abdomen with its legs while partly in the hole; this is an anti-predator defense which pushes urticating hairs in the direction of the predator and induces physical irritation. The hairs lodge in the animal's skin or eyes and can be quite uncomfortable, according to Zach's experiences with the animals.
On the way back from the field Zach talked to me about the taxonomy of different arachnids and we discussed some different ideas in evolution and projects we had worked on in the past. It's great to be able to participate with people who are interested in various scientific concepts and genuinely enjoy the process of doing science.
On Tuesday, Ray gave us his personal introduction to the biology of the Southern High Plains. We talked about a number of things; one of which was the rain shadow which causes the aridity of this area. When winds from California blowing east come to the Rocky Mountains, the air is forced up to the top of the mountains. As the warm air at the bottom cools down, it condenses and falls as precipitation on the west side of the mountains. The air that blows over the mountains, then, is very much devoid of moisture. Our location in Canyon in the rain shadow of the mountains, combined with high winds causes us to be very dry and have a panevaporation rate of over 6 feet per year. Dr. Rogers was telling me the record for panevaporation was half an inch in only a day.
Our high winds and unique location allow for huge fluctuations in temperature. Changes of 40 degrees have been known to occur within a period of a few minutes. Low-pressure zones can quickly arise and stop otherwise sunny, cloudless skies in a matter of a few minutes. Rainfall, however, is intermittent, though when it does occur flash floods can flood roadways and playas. On our trip to Palo Duro we also witnessed cars stuck under overpasses to wait out the thunderstorm for fear of hail damage.
Fire is a common occurrence in the high plain bioregion, though nowhere near as common as it was in the undisturbed system. These occur naturally every 5-10 years and typically burn up low-lying vegetation because it burns most quickly, while hardwood trees, typically absent except where humans have planted them, are slower to catch on fire.
While the red river forms the base of Palo Duro Canyon and eventually flows eastward to form the Texas-Oklahoma border, the Canadian river lies to the north. This 96 mile river, whose headwaters lie in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico, flow into huge reservoirs from which large populations of high plains residents derive their drinking water. Ute Lake and Conchas lake are both reservoirs of the river in New Mexico, where high demand for water has caused water levels to drop significantly and reduce flow eastward. Downstream, Lake Meredith in Texas has been affected by the upstream reservoirs because it doesn't receive nearly as much water as it should. Consequently, this reservoir serves as a water source for countless agricultural operations. Indeed, 95% of the water used in this area goes toward agriculture, mostly for cotton, wheat, corn, and sorghum.
The other agricultural operations here largely involve cattle ranching. This makes up a huge amount of income for the area, and Ray estimates that approximately 1/3 of all beef produced in the United States comes from a circle forming 100 miles around Amarrillo. Hereford, which is south of Canyon, is known as the beef capital of the world, while Amarrillo houses one of the largest meat packaging plants in the entire United States.
Anyway after Ray taught us all of this information plus some more, a woman from communications came by and we took a self-assessment based on our personalities. She divided us up into four groups (blue, gold, green, and orange) based on how we answered these questions and helped us all to learn about each other. Afterwards we met with Ray and talked about what type of food we would eat while camping in New Mexico over the weekend and went out to eat. We ate at this amazing Mexican restaurant where I got a taco with grilled chicken, grilled pineapple, and grilled onion (thanks Ray for the recommendation). I'm excited to try the different types of Mexican food they have down here - there's more variety than the typical once-in-a-while Mexican place you find in New Jersey and Taco Bell. It's also incredibly cheap - all the sit-down restaurants we've been to so far have had specials for no more than $5 or $7 with a soda. Definitely a lot more than you would spend at most places in New Jersey.
Later on we talked with our mentors a while longer and finally went out with Ray to get dinner at a local burger place. Afterwards we had the opportunity to do some shopping at the nearby bookstore. I came back to my room, did some reading and went to bed.
Wednesday (yesterday), Dr. Rogers was out for the day but I got to see how a scanning electron microscope worked. I met with Chris, one of Dr. Rogers' research assistants, and we went over to the engineering building to check it out. It was only there for a couple of days so we made use of it by checking out some pollen samples. It was amazing; the machine was very user-friendly and we got to see some really detailed, high-quality images of pollen grains. Each species of pollen grain was different. I'm later going to touch the pictures up in photoshop to show the true colors. Later, Dr. Ghosh, a biologist from the agricultural and environmental sciences department, came by and helped us identify the pollen grains further. He mentioned that from the structure of the pollen grain, we could tell which ones would be most irritating to people with allergies, then people surveying fields could tell from the abundance of plants whether there would be a high risk of allergies.
We also collected a couple of insects and looked at them under the microscope. It was amazing seeing these guys really close up, the detailed anatomy was so apparent it just put you on a whole other level. Most of the time we conduct experiments on small organisms and don't really get to observe them except with our eyes, but being able to see these organisms on such a high scale and resolution was just stunning.
After lunch at a burger place (which had an amazing virgin drink called a cherry limeade) we returned and helped Chris bring some soil to the greenhouse where he would plant beets for an experiment. I'm not going to go into details, but he's figuring out a way to maximize water retention in beets so they can be grown in more arid areas and reduce water application. The multitude of projects going on here is just astounding.
That reminds me, I haven't talked about the other participants projects. Zach is conducting an inventory on the different species of scorpions and tarantulas in this bioregion because the taxa are exremely understudied; he'll also be examining the phylogeny and determining whether changes should be made based on DNA studies. My roommate Marty (Iowa State) and Eric (Stockton College) are doing inventory on bird nests at Crossbar Ranch - they'll be spending Wednesday-Sunday in the field to determine the distribution of various bird nesting sites.
Kyle (Catawba College) is working under Dr. Matlack on a project involving echolocation in bats and whether this ability is used to find habitat in canyon walls. Kristen (SUNY Binghamton) is investigating cell differentiation in onion cells as well as the effects of dieldrin on the plant. Brooke (Spring Arbor) is looking at volatile organic compounds (VOCs) coming from concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). Jenny (Loyola) was going to be looking at the effects of euthanizing chemicals in horses on ground and surface water but the testing may turn out to be too expensive, so I'll have to get updated on what her project's going to be.
Yesterday after finishing up with the SEM I went home and check out the gym, did some reading until late and fell asleep.
Today Dr. Rogers returned to the office so we talked about the idea for the proposal, only after I showed Zach the scanning electron microscope. He got some great pictures of scorpion claws at 3,000x.
I waited for a while to talk to Dr. Rogers because he was busy dealing with someone from the Ecological Rights Foundation on PCB pollution in the San Francisco Bay. They needed his assistance compiling a TMDL document, but he's had some problems with it because both they created separate documents for dioxins and furans/PCBs, while the two are congeners. This means that the chemicals act in very similar manners, and the effects of both on an organism would be additive. For example, assuming a benchmark of 10 ppt: if both are assessed separately and the concentration of PCBs/furans turns out to be 9.7 ppt in surface water, while the concentrations of dioxins turns out to be 8 ppt, they would both still be within the benchmark. However both act similarly and the actual concentration of these chemicals together would be around 17 ppt, much higher than the benchmark for either chemical. So the bottom line is that in ecological risk assessment it is important to assess chemicals which behave similarly as having additive effects. Many chemicals do not have additive effects, in fact some chemicals reduce the toxicity of the other. More on that later.
So we developed our research plan in the morning, which I'll write up tonight, and we hammered out a budget of about $415 to spend on aquaria, tubing, bubblers, and filters.
Tomorrow I'm leaving at 10 AM to leave for the mountains of New Mexico. We'll camp in the mountains for two nights at different sites and visit the city of Taos, a city with a rich Native American culture. I'll bring the camera along and hopefully get these pictures loaded up ASAP.
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