back from florida

north hollywood beach, fl


the everglades


the solar decathlon on the national mall where all different colleges feature the solar powered, super energy efficient houses they've built

as you guys probably know, i spent the last week in florida for work. things were quite hectic at work before that because we had so much prep to do for the trip, like cleaning a bazillion bottles...and because the everglades is so low in certain nutrients that we are testing for, we have to clean reallllly reallllly well with a special regimen of acid washing and washing with distilled water to make sure they really are clean... so that's the kind of stuff that takes so long. i flew down to fort lauderdale on sunday, and i've never been down to south florida before so that was pretty cool. we stayed at a hotel about 10 miles west of downtown, so that we could be closer to our field site in what is known as water conservation area 3A, north of the national park area of the everglades. we seriously lucked out with our hotel because hyatt is in the process of renovating this building of suite rooms and so the prices for these really amazing rooms (with huuuge comfy beds and way too big flat screen tvs) were really low due to construction still going on. we also lucked out with weather because it was mostly in the 70's when we were out in the field and since there's absolutely no shade that was quite nice. our 'site' is actually a platform built from wood and aluminum pipes with flumes built next to it for our experiment. the flume is just two parallel lengths of plastic pieces that is closed off at the end so we can use pumps to change the speed of the water in the flume and see how that then affects the water chemistry and how much/what kind of sediment gets turned up in the water column when the water's moving faster. before humans came along and built levees and whatnot, the everglades used to flow faster (5 cm/s versus 1.5 cm/s) and one thing that that is seeming to be changing is the sediment transport. its likely that the slower water carries less sediment and smaller sediments and that seems to be affecting the 'ridge and slough' landscape of the everglades (there is a pattern of alternating higher ridges of sawgrass in the everglades and lower areas with deeper water) this special kind of landscape is very important to all the critters and birds that live out there so the fact that its disappearing is bad, and that's something that is being addressed in all the restoration efforts in the everglades. in fact, that bill that the congress just overruled president bush's veto on includes lots of important funding for everglades restoration. one of the great part about getting to the site was that we had to take an airboat out so that was always a fun ride, and one time we did see an alligator on the way! we worked really hard to get the experiment done on schedule and get all of the water samples processed and get our equipment shipped back to VA, so we actually had extra time before our flights on friday. me and one of the other techs, leanna, explored the area a bit and found a great beach between ft lauderdale and miami, and man was it gorgeous! it just made me soooo happy to get out into the ocean again :) after that, we had a bit of an adventure because our rental car wouldnt start, so we ended up having to get it towed, then missing our flight, getting rebooked, missing our connection back to washington because of plane problems, then finally finding one last flight that went to dulles airport instead of reagan airport.... but we made it home finalllly and didnt have to sleep in the airport! just a random thought, here's the websites for the agency i work for.... the US Geological Survey... if you ever want to check them out. www.usgs.gov or water.usgs.gov. also another really cool website that you should check out just because it's so awesome is earthasart.gsfc.nasa.gov. i can't believe it's november all ready, but i'll be home next week sometime for thanksgiving and man am i excited for that!