Another full day in Lake Linne Valley Options

[Robert_Oddo]

Today, was a full day of work. Seven of us trekked up the valley with a car battery and a big water sampler. Our goal was to set up an automatic water sampler that will automatically sample a body of water 24 times. You can set it to do it every 2 hours, for 48 hours, every hour for 24 hours, every half hour for 12 hours etc. We are trying to answer a number of questions. Is there some sort of diurnal cycle of sediments coming down the river? How are sediments transported during a big precipitation event? The sampler takes 500 ml of water every time it samples. It took approximately two hours to set this up and then we were up to the glacier to check ablation stakes and the level loggers up there. We found that the glaciers had melted in three days somewhere between 11 and 15 cm, which seems to be an incredible amount. This is a huge glacier and all of this water that is melted has to goes off the glacier every day.. I played around with the aerial photos of the glacier and found that it retreats approximately 18 meters a year. Wow!! We finished up on the glacier around 4:30pm and after a long trek we arrived back to our field camp at 7:30. The other group sampled materials from the side of the lake.

I realized today that I hadn’t introduced all the folks that I am working with and where they are from:

The two professors that direct all the studies are:
Dr. Steve Roof from Hampshire College in Massachusetts and Dr. Mike Retelle from Bates College in Maine.

The REU students are studying lake sediments, river flow, river sediment transport, river and lake geochemistry and glacial ablation.. They are Brian Yellen from Brown University, Nora Matell from Williams College, Carlos Czembak from Univerity of Massachusetts Lowell, Fran Moore from Harvard University, Brooks Motley from Bates College, Lauren Perreault from Bates College and Emily Gercke from The College of William and Mary.

The whole group is a very dedicated hard working group of people working hard to find the answers to some very difficult questions.



Here is the 24 hour water sampler set up


banging in posts for the sampler


setting intake hose for sampler


measuring ablation stake


downloading information from the levellogger into computer on the glacier

[Ute_Kaden]

Hi Robert,
I just like to let you know that you do a great job up there. I read your material with great interest. Keep up the good work and say hi to the other people.

Ute ( Valdez, AK)

[Robert_Oddo]

Thanks Ute,
I can only hope that your TREC experience is as rich and productive as mine has been so far. I have been following you page with interest also!!! Good Luck
Bob