SUIRP in Spain

Research Updates

Week 1

I spent my first week discussing the specifics of the project I was starting, taking inventory of the soils we had available for the project as well as the containers we would use. We also acquired and familiarized ourselves with the LI-6800, which is the piece of equipment we would be using to measure soil respiration

Week 2

This week was spent on saturation trials. In order to measure respiration, the soils needed to be saturated to the optimal moisture level. We saturated sample soils to 100% to determine what the maximum capacity of the soils was. From this, we calculated how much water was needed to saturate the soils to about 60% of this capacity, which is the optimal moisture level. We also went out to the field to collect leaf litter samples for the field portion of the project

Week 3

During this week, I ran the first trial of the indoor soil sample respiration trials. I also prepared more containers to use for the following trials as well. I began preparing cores for the outdoor portion of the experiment as well, in which we place leaf litter from different types of tree formations onto a standard soil to see how the leaf litter impacts soil respiration. This week was critical for preparing to run both of these experiments simultaneously in the upcoming weeks. It also involved a lot of crafting and power tools!

Week 4

This week was spent setting up the outdoor plots by setting the PVC tubes (for the cores) into our soil and selecting at random the treatments each core would contain (1 of 5 types of leaf litter or control). Then, respiration measurements were taken to get a baseline for what the average soil respiration was in each sample. Finally, the leaf litter samples were placed, completing the setup for the leaf litter experiment. Simultaneously, the indoor soil sample respiration trials were being done as well.

Week 5

During this week, the leaf litter samples were hydrated and then their respiration was measured. Soil sample trials were still being processed, which marked the midway point of the soil sample trials. This week was also focused on importing and preparing the data collected from the soil sample trials for analysis later down the line. We finally began to see trends in the data to indicate how the experiment was going, although we realized the relationship between soil type and respiration was influenced by many environmental factors.

Week 6

During this week, I continued to work on both aspects of my experiment. I also continued analyzing my results. However, while walking out to the outdoor plots to take measurements, we noticed there were geese walking within the plots and pulling out the media we use as our control leaf litter. We decided the geese may impact our results through either litter removal or excremental nutrient input, so we put up a temporary fence to keep them out of the plot.

Week 7

During this week, I finished both my indoor and outdoor trials of my experiment! This came right on time as the daily temperatures are rapidly rising in July. I began discussing the future with my PI and cleaning up the data. We began discussing statistical analyses and figures, and scheduling the end of the project. Overall, this was a satisfying week as I finally finished my experiment!