Marching into the new Semester

After the amazing and exhausting South Island adventure at the end of February, I began my internship and class in March. More specifically, the day after getting back to Auckland! The class I am taking is an anthropology course called Music and Identity in World Music Cultures. It seems like it will be interesting so far, but too soon to tell.

 For my internship I am working with a researcher at the university, Cate Macinnis-Ng who is studying carbon and water fluxes in the Kauri Tree forests. She wants to see what the carbon  and water cycles are like in this environment since they haven't been documented before. With this information she is hoping to gain some insight into how they react to climate change and how they compare to other forest environments.  Because this summer there has been a drought in New Zealand, she is also able to use data to compare drought and wet conditions in the forest. Very interesting stuff! She works in the lab and out in the field gathering samples and performing tests at the field site in a Kauri forest 30 minutes from the city.

I happened to begin working at the time she conducts a week of intense 13 hour long field days that she does once a year. My first day at work she picked me up from the university at 5:30am and we drove out to the field site before the sun came up. I was kind of nervous for my first day, not sure what to expect or what I was expected to be able to do. We used our flashlights and carried the instruments up through the forest until we got to the site. We were soon joined by two other researchers who were also working on the study. In addition, three tree climbers arrived who were going up into the Kauri canopies to collect leaf samples for the tests. I was introduced to the group and we set about beginning the day's work. The tree climbers cut the samples and sent them down in a bag on their climbing rope, and then I ran the sample to Cate who tested their water pressure in a portable machine she had brought. It was quite simple; I needn't have been worried at all! I had to yell up to the climbers, Freddie, Rossi and Drew to tell them how many samples and what kind to get, which was a little harrowing at first, but became fun after several hours.

Our work shed at the field site

Sap flow sensors in trees and leaf litter collection basket

One of the scientists, Luitgard using the photosynthesis machine

Cate at the water pressure machine

Everyone was so nice that I was working with! The climbers were really cool and liked to joke around. Drew told me how he was hired to climb these trees in South Africa because the government wanted to know how tall they were, and while he was doing that he was bitten by a spider of some sort and almost lost his leg! Crazy! Also his team climbed an active volcano in Australia and they were featured on 60 minutes Australia. I enjoyed listening to all their stories and being so involved in the research process. Cate explained how everything was working and why. The days were long and tiring but productive and exciting at the same time. This was my first experience with fieldwork research!

 

I gave my camera to Freddie at one point and he took some pictures from up in the canopy of the trees. They were joking about letting me climb up one of the trees but we ran out of time unfortunately. Darn! I would have really like to do that!

That's me in the orange hard hat!

Freddie getting ready to go up

Drew up in a tree

After that first week, we said goodbye to our tree climbing friends and went back to the lab. Here we sorted leaf samples into different types of leaves and materials. We found some interesting things in there including a weta, a grasshopper like critter that can get huge in New Zealand. This was only a small one.

Small Weta

 

Before...

...And after!

The work is a little repetitive but I find it soothing and I am in good company with Cate so the time passes quickly. Every week we alternate between being in the lab and going out into the forest to do tests and collect samples. I like the change, it makes the job exciting. I like working with Cate. She is actually not from New Zealand, but Australia, and she happens to have grown up in Manly, the same area that my cousins are from! What a coincidence! Anyways I am also sometimes working with another intern from The Netherlands named Inga who is really cool. She is working on her master's degree currently. 

I ask a lot of questions about the project and last week I asked a question that Cate wasn't sure about, I wanted to know if the sample locations were consistently contributing the same amount each collection time. She decided to let me work on the project of trying to answer this question so we came up with a rough outline of how I would go about that and now I have my own little side project! How cool! I get to see if I can analyze the data in a new way that will contribute new information. This is my first time working on a research project, and Cate is letting me try to figure out my own questions, what a great learning experience! I am really loving my internship so far! Next week we are going back into the forest. I can't wait!