More pictures

Dad and Emma and me at El Cholo (dad-o is holding the camera). - Also, doesn't it look like I have a bob?






OMELETTE at Santa Monica farmers market







Santa Monica Sunday farmers market - live music!










...more of the market

Lemon tree! The green ones are just unripened lemons, but they do look like limes...sorry for the confusion in my previous post.

Some LA pics

The Santa Monica beach (see the water way in the distance?)



The inside of my building! Palm Court.



















The outside of the geography building - Bunche Hall.







Hanna and I surrounding some delicious Ethiopian food in Little Ethiopia.







Dad and I in front of Royce Hall (a lot of concerts are held here - Bela Fleck 10/22! and commencement will be held)

Jacaranda

I live in Jacaranda Court, but have been unsure as to how to pronounce it ever since I've been here. Apparently, it's [jak-uh-ran-duh] with a nasaly a in the ran. A jacaranda is a pretty, flowering bush/tree usually found in very hot places; India, South America, Central America, Australia, Southern California!, etc. In Cali they bloom twice a year. Both pictures compliments of wikipedia.

testate amoebae 101

Picture 1: Peat!
Picture 2: Sphagnum moss, a common habitat for testate amoebae

So, today I was doing some leisurely reading, and I thought it was pretty enlightening and that others might just enjoy some enlightenment as well. On to today's main topic: peatlands and testate amoebae analysis! Bear with me.

To begin, peat is formed when organic productivity is occurring more than decay. So, this organic matter (such as moss, leaves, etc.) is thus stored since it is not decomposing fast enough. This can build up over time storing many layers of peat - and the deeper the peat layer is the older that peat is! Peat tends to be present only in certain geographical locations such as northerly latitudes because once temperature increases, decomposition also increases. And since decomposition releases methane, this adds to global climate change...thus making temperatures warm ever further and peatlands disappear more and on the cycle goes. This is what really gets me excited about climate change issues, these positive feedback cycles. Everything fits together into this crazy situation and every little detail becomes important. And these peatlands that store vast amounts of carbon are also an amazing wealth of knowledge! Onto that...

Peatlands do not experience water runoff such as farmlands or city streets. So the only thing that affects the water table in peat is precipitation and evapotranspiration. This makes them amazing indicators for climate change! Becaaause there are these little types of protozoans called testate amoebae. Each type of testate amoebae lives in a particular type of wet zone, so a certain type being present in a certain layer of peat indicates the climate for that given time. Cool eh?! So you can tell the amount of water that was present at that time, pH, nutrients, and possibly other factors such as anthropological disturbance! According to this guy Warner (cited at end) "Testate amoebae can be 'early warning' indicators of environmental change." BAM!

I am stoked to start some research

Warner, B. G., T. Asada, and N. P. Quinn. 2007. Seasonal influences on the ecology of testate amoebae (Protozoa) in a small Sphagnum peatland in Southern Ontario, Canada. Microbial Ecology 54:91–100. CrossRef, PubMed
...I'll post some of the other articles later.

future research endeavors

Today I had my first meeting with my advisor, Dr. Glen Macdonald For those of you on the East coast, he will be speaking at Clark University on Thursday, October 8th at 7 as the Atwood speaker. We discussed the research that I will be working on for the next 2-7 years. Basically, I will be exploring the relationship between climate change, water table level, and Carbon storage in arctic peatlands. I'm looking forward to continuing work similar to the research I did last year <www.thepolarisproject.org> (sorry for all of the links).

My MA paper will look at peat samples that are currently in storage at UCLA from Western Siberia. In summer of 2010, another PhD student here, James Holmquist and I will be able to do some field work in the Canadian arctic! If all goes as planned, we will be at the Northern Studies Center in Churchill, Manitoba (see map). There are a lot of exciting aspects of this Churchill place. For example, it lies on the border of arctic tundra and sparse boreal forest, which could lead to some very interesting studies! It is also called the "Polar Bear Capital of the World," ...and you can see the Aurora Borealis there ...and Europeans and natives have used this area as a fur trading post/shipping harbor ever since the whites first arrived in the 1600s, ...AND the station itself used to be used by the Canadian government as a rocket launching experimentation area. Pretty cool eh? (no pun intended I do use the word eh)

Anyway, we will be looking at carbon storage along a northern transect (and perhaps another transect further south). This will be the foundation of a doctorate paper...by the future Dr. Willis? Speaking of which, here's another fun link.

That's it for today.
-Kate

First impressions

I'm almost through my first week as a resident in the big (ridiculously big) city of Los Angeles. One thing that I can't wrap my mind around is how this city is designed. The tallest apartment buildings I've seen are about 5 stories high, but the majority seem to only have one or two floors. Why would a major city be designed this way? It makes it inevitable that people will have to travel ridiculous distances to get anywhere at all. Anyway, I am hoping to become more knowledgeable about this in the coming months of discovering LA by traveling by bus and bike, and maybe by doing some research on LA city planning as well.

Today I made my first visit to the Santa Monica Sunday farmer's market. It was awesome. I ate roasted corn and bought some dilly beans. There are many vendors at the market, most of which offer organic options (there was even a meat stand wooo!). I look forward to taking advantage of the year round California growing season.

In other big news, yesterday afternoon was cloudy! Apparently a rare sight.

Overall, I am excited to learn more about LA! Also - the stereotype that people are more laid back and friendlier here appears to hold true! (Must be the lack of clouds and hail and slush and such). Until later - Kate