Brr...wish the lab was warmer.

Ahh…winter is deeply upon us. It’s cold, but the precip has been kind of lacking. No qualms here, in terms of hanging out in town. I have gotten to go running, biking and hiking while staying dry…well if you don’t count the fog and that it’s so cold I don’t sweat much. Speaking of riding bikes in town, winter is a pain in the ass because of the excess road debris from snow removal. All that sand on the shoulder of the roads hides all the glass that shreds your tires, get out there and clean it up county/city.

In terms of work, my class schedule restricts some snow sampling, but it looks like I can get at least one day a week out in the snow...possibly more. It’s been a while since I have picked up a snow tube or a calculator, let alone my snow shoes. On February 11, the PC NASA snow crew along with our think tank of smart guys at Batelle in Richland, WA will be presenting the Dungeness River Management Team with the working watershed model ,(wahoo!!!!) details yet to be discussed.

After talking more with Dwight about researchers’ needs and data resolution, we have decided upon a good scale to use when converting all of the Elwha GIS data into KML files. These files will be posted to the web for researchers to use and quickly examine spatial data. The format will be viewable in Google Earth, so those without expensive software can still see what is out there. On that note, I am using a GIS textbook as pleasure reading, it’s pretty enthralling: Remote Sensing for GIS Managers

Other research work right now is dropping road block after road block on the wildfire GIS hazard assessment. Dwight found an interesting article that might turn a block into a ramp (hopefully we won’t use it like Dukes of Hazzard and wind up in a worse situation). But I have that to go over as well as a BLM article that might give some other insights as to how to refine the study.

Main thing is I need to get off my ass and do some of this stuff.

Time to start...

It’s been a damn long time since I have posted a blog. So a little update on what I have been up to for starts. After finishing school in June (not just the quarter, but graduating from WWU) I got to stay in Port Angeles for a few months working and playing. At the end of July I started my seasonal roller coaster. I took a working vacation down to Costa Rica with Dwight to aid in GIS research at the La Selva research station. After returning, I had one day to prepare for my next job.

After digging out last year’s work gear, I packed a few bags and got on a plane headed for NorCal to work for the US Forest Service once again under TEAMS Enterprise. My seasonal job last year included painting and counting trees, this year was assumed to be the same. I spent three weeks in Willows, CA marking a timber sale on the Mendocino NF. At the end of that tour of duty, I was assigned to spend three weeks in Wyoming (wahoo!). However, during my time off between tours I was reassigned to Tennessee…

When I arrived in TN, we were doing a job for an Army ammunition plant doing a timber inventory. That job put me in Milan, TN for two three week tours. Just as the job was finishing I started to make plans of how to spend my time off before heading back to school in Port Angeles. Luckily, I was asked to work in Big Bear Lake, CA on the San Bernardino NF. After two days back home I flew south to count twigs. Yes, twigs! We did fuel inventories the forest needed for a NEPA decision concerning a thinning project.

Finally my season with the Forest Service was over and I could take a vacation, for about a month. I traveled to Bellingham, Portland, and moved back to Port Angeles. After the move I spent two weeks in Tahoe with my brother for the holidays.

So now I am back to work with the REU working on the snow surveys and converting Elwha GIS data into more publicly accessible formats. This winter I am also working with Dwight off of a grant we received from FM Global to further refine the wildfire hazard study we conducted last spring…So here goes nothin’.

Melting Snow and Frying Brain

Spring is starting to poke its pretty face around the Peninsula! Work is getting easier with the snow courses because, what, they are gone! Shea and I were living the High Life last week when we drove to the trailhead, packed our snowshoes all the way to Deer Ridge and found no snow. Our one north aspect snow course had snow, but not even on all 5 points. The bummer about the trip is that we went up there to replace a weather station that was on the fritz. It turns out that it was on the fritz because someone cut the wire for the precip gauge, or maybe we did somehow.

The rivers are running pretty high right now, it is interesting to see them so full and for it to be sunny at the same time. That’s not the only thing that is full right now. I wish that I could coast to graduation like I had planned, enjoy my one class, make some bucks…but it is more like an uphill sprint with a yeti on my ass. Soon it will all be over, or at least the stuff with strict time requirements will be.

I am looking forwardish to this weekend. It is kind of stressful, to lose that kind of time to work on other things, but for natural history we are traveling to Mt Rainier for two and a half days. What we will do there in the snow, I don’t know, but I hope it’s fun.

No snow work last week, but to back track a bittle (that’s not a typo, it’s a combo of bit and little). We did kick the Dungeness’s ass a few weeks ago. Dwight said “we will make it if we have to hike from Slab Camp!” and guess what we did. We did just that. We drove until we were scraping in more than one place, then rolled down onto a clear spot…little did we expect getting stuck on bare ground, but we did. The come along got its first work out and it makes me wish we had more tow straps for events like that, it was way easier than pushing and digging to get it out.

We did a momentous hike up the trail from slab camp with some nice views. When we made it up to the top of Deer Ridge it started to snow, it was very wet nasty snow. Because of the warming we have had recently, snowshoes were a must after the set of benches on the ridge. It was more like walking in frozen yogurt, but we got to the top and did our work. For some reason it felt really cold up there, but the met station said it was just below freezing. Well the met station might be wrong, apparently sometime in April it went kablooey on us, the RH sensor read a consistent -200%. So we were met with a boisterous error light flashing in our faces. We reset the met station and how our RH sensor doesn’t even show up. Of course, the expensive piece of technology fails on the most remote location. We did dig a snow pit and collect some samples for bacteria analysis...as boring as that sounds, it is pretty interesting. Just a side note for all of you who go up to Deer Ridge. It is faster to take the trail down than the road...by far.

Not all technology is worth bitching about. Dwight and I finally got to go to the WAURISA (GIS) conference in Seattle. After a little planning fiasco, I was able to sneak in and spend my birthday in a workshop about project management for GIS, skills I probably won’t need until I am about 35. Hopefully I can use what I learned to appeal to someone who is 35+ and has something I want. Above all, the food was the best part of the conference, while we were there we had Mexican, Thai, and sushi…as well as realizing the beauty behind top shelf tequila, and not in a “get crunk” kind of way.

At the conference there were some interesting ideas presented, met some pretty good contacts and presented the wildfire work. I took second in the student presentation…once again the UW grad students took top honors. I kind of look forward to going into a masters program so I can beat undergrads. All in all I learned quite a bit and had a good time…next conference, San Diego...maybe?

It's raining, it's snowing.

Well, all is quiet on the REU front. We have been working on the google mash up to present at the GIS conference, well Dwight has been working on it and I have been gathering some info. It looks like we can make it as robust as we want or as simple as we want.

In the mean time I have been working on my student presentation for the GIS conference. After presenting to the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department, I got some ideas for some changes to make and a little strike of confidence that I actually know what I am talking about.

The weather is starting to get nice, emphasis on the start portion. Cabin fever hasn’t quite set in because I can get out once in a while, but I would like to go out and see something new. Speaking of getting out, following the previous snow storm we had a few weeks ago in April, we have been unable to get up to our snow courses because 20 inches of new fell in a weekend! Tomorrow we will kick the Dungeness’s ass and get up to Deer Ridge, and hopefully make it back before dark.

We will see how next week’s conference goes. If nothing else it is going to be a nice trip to Seattle, celebrate Cinco de Mayo, take in a Mariner’s game and enjoy some more free food, probably no free beer this time.

A conference and some acronyms

Well it’s a little late, but I wanted something juicy to write about.

We are getting socked with some winter weather right now. Hail, snow, wind. It’s a nice last hoorah, but will it ever end?

I got to attend the Western Snow Conference in Hood River, OR this week with Dwight, Erin and Shea. Needless to say, we learned a lot about snow. The whole climate change idea is a big deal to them (duh) and it looks like there are lots of resources and approaches to dealing with it…or at least describing the impacts and predicting them. One of the more notable presentations was about the impacts of snow depth and density on wildlife in terms of predator/prey interactions. It was presented by a guy who did his first snow survey before most of the people in the room were even born.

We met lots of interesting characters and drank lots of good brews at Full Sail…well the interesting characters were usually in the hot tub. There was a good field trip up and down the gorge on Thursday. We got a tour of Bonneville dam and locks, Crown Vista, ate lunch at the top of Multnomah Falls and got a nice nap on the tour bus…then drove home to PA.

Snow stuff on our end is carrying on…Still getting to go out, go hiking and collect data points and downloading met data. Also, working with the PUD is pretty fun, lots of GIS work and a little bit of inturd data entry, not a bad gig. I am learning a bit about CAD too.

My one class, Natural History of the PNW had our first field trip today. We were a bit snowed in and could not go out to the Soleduc to check out the forest. Instead, we just hit up Heart o the Hills on the way to Hurricane Ridge and froze our feet off (standing around in the snow is not very fun). Then we got some moss and lichen samples and keyed them out back at the lab on campus, not too bad for a snow day.

Well back to work, quite a bit to do revolving around GIS. At least it’s crappy weather this weekend.

Last shout out for winter.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Well this has been one of the fastest quarters of my college “career.” Maybe that is because I only took one class.

The last few weeks have been pretty uneventful. All of the weather stations are out (except #7 which might not be launched at Louella); which means we have been adding data collection to our tasks in the woods. Our days in the woods are getting shorter and shorter as the daylight grows longer and longer. The snow level keeps going up, we can drive more so there is less hiking.

Our trip to Deer Ridge last weekend was more like the hike into one of the easy sites. We had done nearly all of our snow courses before lunch, including the three mile uphill hike.

Back in the lab, we are still sending out the data we collect, even though most of it is zeros….but zero is still a data point as Master Dwight says.

The weather has been awesome for us. A little bit of snow or light rain here or there, but the weather is always better than down in PA.

We have been taking lots of photos and video in the past few outings to prepare for our vidcast. She and I have written some scripts, made some drafts and ended up with a badass vidcast. Dwight knows the concept of “work smarter, not harder” and asked us to finish our vidcast in time for the Dungeness River Management Team meeting and used that as part of his presentation. Sounds like it was well accepted.

Next week is the Elwha Research Consortium meeting. Luckily, I get to ditch part of it for work. Then we get to have a dinner with researchers, learn about the projects going on in the Elwha, then I think I will be taking off sometime on the 26^th to go to Tahoe!