May Term 2014 was determined by my acceptance and participation of the Proudian Interdisciplinary Honors Program. This year a natural science course was selected, and it happened to be Rebecca Lyons’ Mile High Chemistry course. We are conducting chemical research on the Lakes in the Eastern region of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
I personally ended up in a work group with Reid and Will, as the group’s Policy and Law expert. We will cover the physical and chemical background of Yost Lake in the High Sierras. On this page, I will document every bit of research we conduct on the lake (from alkalinity assessment to soil sampling) as separate documents, and I will include the Final Watershed Assessment Portfolio as well.
In the mean time, I will keep a running log of our activities (field trips, visiting lecture series, etc.) on the blog portion of my website. Below are some photos to enjoy from our first hike up to Yost Lake.
This is the Status Report for the first week of research: It basically includes the descriptions of the sites we chose, and the alkalinity (how strong/weak of protection the lake has from being harmfully effected by acid entering through precipitation or runoff) of each site.
This is the Status Report for the second week of research: This week includes the Nitrogen readings and half the soil sample work. It includes discussions of how our lake relates to some of the readings we had (Nitrogen stages of lakes, basin characteristics regarding soil).
This is the Status Report for the final week of research: It includes the water data for our deep water sample, and the second half of our soil sample data. I have also written out the discussion for this data, in the context of the final Watershed Profile Assessment.
Finally, this last document is my pride and joy of the May Term semester: The Yost Lake Watershed Profile Assessment. Is it scientifically written? No. Is it all necessarily correct in conclusions and data? No. Does it showcase all the stuff I learned, and my struggle to try to grasp an advanced chemistry course? Absolutely. This has all the methods, data, conclusions, maps, charts, and photos combined into a final document. Enjoy!
Yost Lake Watershed Profile Assessment
Writing Between the Lines 