A lot of what we do here, and what other scientists do elsewhere, may sound complicated but when broken down into component parts it is predominantly simple menial labor. The aquatic team fills bottles of water while the terrestrial team clips plants and digs.
Seth Spawn doing some advanced water collecting at Duvannyi Yar Lake.
My project is the first steps of the biodiversity survey. I find, picture, and identify as many of the flora and fauna in the region as I can then put the pictures and names together to create a field guide to Cherskiy. It would be impossible to categorize all life here in three weeks so I am focusing on the plants. As such the distillation of my project is flower picking.
Of course nobodies’ project is quite as simple as we joke about when teasing one another’s work woes. “O, rough water today? Yeah, that water bottle filling looks tough.” “Hey, I have been running DOC analyses and you just lit stuff on fire.” Et cetera.
There are four components to my project: a guide, a database, an herbarium, and basic questions and protocols for future biodiversity analyses.
The guide is the largest component. For now it is being created in PowerPoint. Each slide is equal to one page containing a picture of the plant along with the name if I know it. Most of the names have been provided by Sergei Davydov. Having lived in Cherskiy for thirty years with an interest in plants he has become a walking encyclopedia of local knowledge. Twice now I have met with him.
The first meeting was in the field at a place called Rodinka. He would point and tell me the name of whatever plant had fallen along his path or I would walk up to him clutching something with an expectant look on my face. Whenever I came to him with something new I had found I carried a proud feeling with me like what I imagine a toddler does when giving their parents a pretty weed to exclaim over.
Our second meeting took place at his house. I came with plants I had pressed but not yet identified. One by one he went through my pages of flowers telling me the Latin name along with any interesting facts he knew about it like edibility or medicinal qualities.
The other three components –database, herbarium, and protocols- are satellite projects that have popped up over my time here due to suggestions from many of the PIs.
The database is simply a spreadsheet containing the names of each plant with locations and habitats found, along with descriptive characteristics. It isn’t terribly useful as of yet because it would simply be easier to use the guide that has pictures built in instead of descriptions. My hope for the far future is somehow integrating the two so one can search for the descriptive characters currently in the spreadsheet and pictures from the PowerPoint will show up to choose from.
The herbarium is all the plants I have pressed to show to Davydov but with names written nicely next to them. Nothing too terribly exciting.
The protocols are currently in the works. It is how to survey an area for biodiversity that can be used in the coming years so all the data is collected in the same way. It would allow year to year comparisons. This is something I am not familiar with and as such have been getting a lot of help particularly from Sue Natali (University of Florida).
Tonight the barge leaves for another trip and I hope to test some potential biodiversity protocols and collect plants to bring to Davydov for further identification. Wish me well!
