Quick, look busy, the PIs are coming!

Last week, the TIDE crew battled through the final week of July toward its culmination in the mid-summer All Scientists’ Meeting.

Just when we’d finished celebrating our victory over the giant trailer full of Nitrate, we were greeted by a new shipment to keep the tanks happy and our biceps in shape.

The Plant Crew resumed coring with a vengeance and took a record-tying ten cores this week. This concludes their coring for the summer, and brings their total up to 40! They also began surveying the marsh to get a profile of the creeks.

The algae duo, Sam and Austin, were accompanied by Sallie Sheldon for part of the week as they surveyed Rupia coverage in ponds. They also assessed productivity levels at the different creeks with two extensive light-dark bottle sampling events. The end of the week was also the end of the field season for Austin, who will surely be missed by all.

The REU’s, Ashley and Meghan, continued with their litter decomposition experiments, replacing deceased critters in Petri dishes and making final preparations to collect their litter bags. As part of those preparations, Imogene showed those microbes who’s boss by measuring their respiration with the IRGA machine.

Sarah and Kate continued with the saga of Sigma repair, and began to sort through the monumental amounts of data collected during the nutrient challenges.

PIs began to filter in at the start of the week, awaiting the mid-summer All Scientists’ Meeting on Thursday—an opportunity for TIDE-ers and others involved with our beloved marsh to share their summer’s progress and hear about others’ projects. The meeting started off with a presentation by the biogeochemistry crew, who shared the preliminary findings of July’s nutrient challenges. This was followed by presentations by other groups, as well as a general discussion of all things TIDE. All presentations were met with rapt attention.