Down and Dirty at Langtree Peninsula

Hey! My name is Christine and I am one of three undergraduate researchers who came onto the Polizzotto team at the start of Summer 2013. It's now early August and we've done PLENTY in that time. While my fellow undergrads, Corey and Allison, have been on many a field day, I typically just hang back in the lab and do stuff there. HOWEVER, I finally went along on a field day a couple weeks back and it was definitely a less *cough* controlled environment. Langtree Peninsula is closer to Charlotte, so we all met at the lab at the crack of dawn so that we could arrive in time to meet our liason with DENR-DWQ, Joju Abraham. We met him just outside the gated entrance to the peninsula and then followed him by vehicle just a short distance down the road to our well sites. For those of you who don't know, a monitoring well looks like this:

(Source: water.usgs.gov)

Looks innocent enough, right? WRONG! Some of these suckers go as deep as 600 feet and when you need to purge T-H-R-E-E well volumes before you can sample, these seemingly innocuous wells can be quite intimidating. In order to accomplish this well purge, we use a pump system. This is mainly comprised of a plastic tube of appropriate length, a power source (such as a car engine or some other electricity generating thing), and a device known as a controller that (you guessed it) controls the output of power and therefore controls the rate at which water flows out of the well from the plastic tube. The tube and the cord attached to the controller are lowered down into the well together and some initial measurements are taken to determine how long it will take for three well volumes to be emptied out, which can range from half an hour to 36 hours. At that point, we would simply hang back, relax, and take some readings using the YSI at appropriate intervals as the well was emptying. If things worked. Which, as it turns out, does not often happen. Our first technical difficulty occurred when Joju could not get his pump working (which later turned out to be a quick fix). Then, after we had split people and pumps up in order to tackle more sites, OUR controller broke. Fortunately, we managed to get some water samples before all the technology broke down, which were then filtered and treated at the site and stored in ice for the ride home. We not only battled technology, but nature. Before that day, you could not have convinced me that any other kind of fly besides a horsefly could bite. This is a false assumption because while we were in an open field and therefore spared the danger of ticks, we WERE subject to the constant nibbling of small flies that ran abundant while a hot sun beat down on us. Corey and I did manage to evade both sun and flies for a little while though. While our deepest well was draining, Corey and I went down to the peninsula and jumped into the lake water, fully clothed and dangerous :D A summer camp was taking place around the peninsula, and so there were giant inflatables floating in the water for the kids to play on. Corey swam over the inflatables to climb on top and was quickly reprimanded by a camp life guard :) We finally returned to the lab around 7:00 PM and, after some unloading and some filtering, we were finally able to call it a day. This is merely an abridged version of all that happened, but all in all, I found that field days can be fun and educational, in that you learn what to do, how to do it, and how stuff might blow up in your face anyway.

Audrey wins 1st place!

Congratulations to Audrey for winning 1st place in the overall poster competition at the Soil Science Society of North Carolina 2013 Annual Meeting! Audrey presented her work investigating arsenic loading to turfgrass systems following herbicide application. In addition to lasting fame and respect, this award also came with some cool cash, so be sure to get Audrey to cover the bill next time you're out with her!

Mission Complete: Division of Water Quality Sampling

Seasons Greetings Bloggers! With my first semester over and the holidays approaching quickly, I find myself finally gaining my "graduate-student" feet. Skills and knowledge have been gained ranging from organization to conducting field work to academic wisdom, all of which are ready to be applied to these upcoming three semesters. That being said, I recently got back with Audrey from sampling four wells in Union County, NC that belong to the Morgan Mill Division of Water Quality (DWQ) research station. Since Matt is in Bangladesh, it was up to me to make sure we had everything ready with the expert help of Audrey to keep me in check. It was a good way to get me thinking about what exactly it was we wanted to sample and how to go about doing and preparing for it.

The sampling was primarily for the sake of the DWQ researchers, Joju Abraham and Andrew Pitner, however they were generous enough to let us learn from them and collect our own samples from their site. Due to illness, Audrey was confined to the hotel room, leaving me in charge of sampling that day (Watch out!). The technique for sampling was pretty much the same as in Cambodia, so I had the experience of what to do, which made everything go smoothly. I enjoyed watching how the research station sampled their well water and was intrigued to learn that they collected for similar types of samples, such as metals, nutrients and organic carbon (though they looked for total and we look for dissolved). Their protocol in how to collect was also similar to ours, however their equipment was just much larger! Larger pumps, larger bottles, larger tubing, etc.

The conversations we had were quite enlightening. Both Joju and Andrew were genuinely interested in what we did as a lab and shared summaries of their own work. It was nice knowing that they were interested in seeing the data we would obtain from our own research later down the road and even from what we collected at their station. It reminds me that I am no longer just a student but also a fellow co-worker, which makes me even more eager for the research that is to come!

With great weather and company, the day of sampling was a wonderful experience and left me ready to sample some more! Thanks to Joju and Andrew for teaching me about North Carolina's geological and hydrogeological environment, for showing me their sampling techniques at DWQ, and overall great company!

Mama Audrey's Animal Post

Since Liz posted earlier, she was not aware of the importance of an animal picture at the end of every post. Due to this, here is a whole post dedicated to the animals of Cambodia. Enjoy!

Mama Audrey and the Go Girl

Liz Gillispie reporting here for the Polizzotto lab group!

With the patriarch of our lab no longer overseeing the work here in Cambodia, Audrey has been left in control and me as her humble grad servant, I mean student. Despite multiple pieces of equipment getting broken, excessive amounts of water being poured on the floors of the RDI lab, overuse of paper towels, and catching random lab workers clipping their finger nails with our nail clipper from the surface water kit, I'd say Audrey and I have things all under control.

Since all the well sampling and surface sampling has been completed, Audrey and I set out today to collect well water and rain water samples from various homes in the village on a main street that runs parallel to the Mekong.  It was the same road where we collected much of our well samples from before.  As Audrey and I collected the water, Dina, a local Khmi RDI member, talked with someone from each site to see how they used their water, how many people used it, whether they filtered/boiled it, and if anyone ever had stomach issues.  All went smoothly and now Audrey is hard at work preparing to test each sample for fecal bacteria (I'd give the specific names but I can't spell them let alone pronounce them!).

Our lab was able to find some entertainment throughout the sampling process, however, such as watching Audrey attempt to get out of the mud, performing titrations for large gatherings of interested locals, working around the ambitious children who were bold enough to not stop touching our equipment, playing with tree leaves, and from a competition of long jump made my our driver Pon.  We were exhausted by the end of the day and found ourselves completely ready for bed by 7:30 or 8:00 each night.

As our trip comes to end, I think we can all agree that we will truly miss the closeness of the families here and their generosity of welcoming us into their homes.  There was not a day where we weren't greeted with a big smile from Da's Aunt at the local coffee shop or waved at by little children to and from RDI (Da is another Khmi member of RDI).  Audrey and I were also blessed to have the chance to eat dinner with Da's family one night, which turned out to be a huge gathering (a typical evening dinner for them apparently).  I was able to sit next to Da's grandfather, Grandpa Da, which was completely the highlight of my trip.  That man is awesome.  But I digress.  The point is, family is important all around the world and you don't have to be related to be a part of one.  So thanks to all the wonderful people that made us feel at home during our stay here at RDI!

Cambodia: Thick Thighs, Big Feet, Swollen Lips, and a (smelly) Rabbit

Hello from Cambodia, I hope all is well. Our first (almost) week is already over, so time is flying by. As soon as we landed, we found out that the old king passed away. Apparently he had been ill for some time, so this was not a huge surprise (and he was 90!). His son has been in power for a few years, so this was not the current king.

Since the king passed away, all of Cambodia went into mourning. This meant that the lab was closed on our first sampling day which put us a day behind. The past few days have been really hectic trying to catch up on lost time, but after some long days in the field and nights in the lab, we are now mostly done with all of the well sampling. Next week we will be surface water sampling and collecting water for fecal indicator bacteria.

The 'wet' season is not so wet this year and river and wetland water levels are much lower than last year.  Luckily the government has declared that the wet season will extend until December this year.  Thanks.

A few other things happened while away:

-Liz and Audrey's room was a nesting ground for a large spider and cockroach. Matt had to keep coming in to shoo them away, but they kept coming back. In the end, Audrey's dirty socks got placed in some of the holes in the ceiling to capture these creatures, but unfortunately they got out. Audrey's socks are still in the ceiling holes.
-Liz got a high five from a kid after Audrey got groped by one.
-Audrey accidentally ordered Milo (iced chocolate milk) instead of coffee one morning...an international incident almost occurred as Matt suffered through caffeine withdrawal
-There's not much space in the van due to all the thick thighs, big feet, swollen lips, and a (smelly) rabbit

(you know Audrey had to post her favorite animals of Cambodia. Shown here is a little dog named Pupsy)

The New Glovebox Is Here! The New Glovebox Is Here!

OK, we've actually had it for a while, but are just now getting around to writing a post. We had a glovebox custom made by the Precision Instrument Machine Shop on campus.  As you may be able to tell from the pictures below, this glovebox is a stainless steel monster.  It allows us to conduct a wide range of experiments under anaerobic conditions, and two transfer chambers can be used to bring samples and equipment in and out.

Some pictures during set up:

And the fully functioning beauty: