full steam ahead Options

[Robert_Oddo]

There is a real lot of activity in the field station right now. We have approximately 12 days left in the field and everyone is scrambling to get data collected and projects completed. People are up early in the morning preparing for field work, spending 12 hours out in the field collecting data and then staying up late at night dowloading data and doing preliminary analysis. There are many rich discussions of the processes that lead to the formation of the cores and what factors influence their formation. There are three main places where the research is being conducted and I try to spend time at each of them. The glacier is one place. People are looking at ablation and the sediment load of the water leaving the glacier. Second is the river, where discharge, sediment load and variation in flow due to dirunal changes as well as precipitation events is being studied. The third place is the lake. People are doing sediment cores, setting sediment traps, profiling the lake and looking at the shore. Everyone needs help with their work and this gives me the opportunity to participate in the data collection as well as work with some really cool equipment. I get opportunities to drive the zodiac, use the sea cat, determine flow, measure ablation, utilize GPS technologies to map areas, etc, etc.

Today I spent some time with Lauren looking at some alluvial fans around the lake. We set up some transects on two fans and did some pebble counts to detemine the composition of these fans. Every .5 meters we picked a pebble up that touched the tape and did an identification. What she will do next is core in the lake off these fans and see if there is any evidence of the events that formed these fans in the cores.

The weather most of the day was nice with temperatures in the 30's, clear skies and very little wind. In the evening, fog blew in and right now you see nothing as you look out the window.


fan to do the pebble count on


examining pebbles on the fan


Brooks transporting us


Brian deploying the sea cat


Brooks and I having a war with the floats on the beach. There is always time for a little fun