Welcome to Summer Number Two!
This summer we are continuing the work started on Hog Island. Monthly, we will measure longest leaf, take basal and frontal area pictures of each plant, and measure topographic change at each plant stake. We also installed five groundwater wells with salinity and pressure loggers along a transect extending from the start of the vegetation zone on the beach to the foredune.
After installing wells and making our first round of summer measurements, we are currently working on data entry. Elsemarie and Sara are organizing hundreds of photos and automating the photo-analysis process. While it will take some time to figure out, automating will save us loads of time later on when we need to measure the basal and frontal areas calculated for all our remaining plants!
Our team for this summer looks a little different than last year. While the PIs Laura Moore, John Bruno and Don Young, as well as postdoc Evan Goldstein, remain the same, Elsemarie has assumed the role of graduate student lead (since Theo is graduating this summer!), Sara Hahne has replaced Sarah Margolis as REU, and there are some new helpers! Here are some brief introductions.
Elsemarie deVries
Elsemarie just finished her first year as a Ph.D. student in the Moore Lab (the Coastal Environmental Change Lab) at UNC-CH and is taking care of the dune vegetation experiment this summer. She graduated in May 2014 from Wheaton College, IL, with a B.S. in Environmental Studies.
Sara Hahne
Sara is a REU summer intern working with Elsemarie. She is a junior at Wheaton College (IL) and will graduate in 2017 with a B. S. in Geology.
Margaret Jones
Margaret is a Masters student working in Laura Moore’s Coastal Environmental Change Lab at the University of North Carolina. When she’s not lending a hand to the Hog Island vegetation experiment, she investigates holistic coastline response to climate change and human modifications. Margaret earned her B.A. from Vanderbilt University in 2014 with majors in Earth and Environmental Science and English Literature.
Amber Oliver
Amber is working with postdoc, Evan Goldstein, to make high-resolution elevation maps of our field site with photos taken from a kite. She will graduate in May 2016 from Duke University with a B.A. in Earth and Ocean Sciences and Media Studies.
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