AuthorMason Howell Archives
March 2021
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Testing Plan3/31/2021 'ePart of what I wrote about a few months ago, at the beginning of winter, was that come spring time I wanted to have a slightly more established plan regarding my testing schedule.
Due to the unavoidable flexibility with testing, it is impossible to form a perfect plan. That being said, my working plan right now is to try and concentrate as much testing as I can as soon as I can. If the weather goes as predicted, that may be next week. The ideal order of testing is one that allows for the most complete data set as soon as possible. Specifically, it would allow me to compare as many variables as I can even if I don't test every location.
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Update on the Weather3/31/2021 I may have been a little optimistic in my last blog post, where I predicted being able to test by mid-late march. The weather got nicer in bursts, but as is expected in Maryland, it has gone up and down. This, combined with rain, made me unable to test so far.
That being said, the weather is getting better, and I hope to start by next week.
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The Weather Outside is Less Frightful2/28/2021 With March around the corner, it looks like winter may be in its last stages and boating weather is returning.
In past years, I have been able to go out on the water as soon as spring break (barring any freakish outliers, like that time it was 80 degrees in February). I doubt the temperatures will rise enough to test by then, but I anticipate being able to test some time in mid/late march. Hopefully then I'll have some interesting blog posts with pictures and videos on the water!
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Winter Work2/28/2021 My project experience quite a lull this winter due to the nature of the project. Most of the work is centered around water sampling, and the weather prevented me from being on the water (and occasionally from being outside at all),
That being said, I managed to get some important work done. My main focus was to reduce the weight of non-testing work in the late spring. Towards the end of the project, I figured that I could give myself more time for testing if I finished some "endgame" stuff now. So I began to gather my data in a central location (excel) and began to decide how I would present my findings (possibly in the style of a scientific journal article). I also worked on mapping out a more firm scaffolding for my spring testing
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Summary of Fall Goals12/31/2020 The end of fall and an analysis of my fall goals brings some good news and some bad news.
The bad news is that I completed less testing than I had hoped. I got a full profile on 3 locations out of the 7 I had planned for. Looking back, I can outline the main reason for this shortfall. The problem with fall testing is a myriad of timing issues that compounded to get in my way. First, I have a window of a few hours to get my water samples, which means I can only get a location or two in a day. Second, the temperature was only consistently in my window for about a month and a half. Otherwise, it fluctuated enough that I lost a lot of good opportunities. In the future, I need to have a more concrete schedule. I can't plan for everything, but if I plan more I can read signs early and make adjustments to better account for timing issues. The good news is that my experiment was specifically designed so that an incomplete fall dataset would not be a big deal. Data analysis relies on comparison between two samples that are different in one variable. I only technically need one full fall profile to test for the variable of season, the rest can be analyzed purely with spring data. Ideally, the spring will bring better conditions, both environmentally (as I will have a longer temperature window) and in terms of my schoolwork.
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Moving into January12/31/2020 With winter setting in and spring in the far future, I've moved away from a period of testing and into a period of organization and data analysis.
My skeleton plan for winter is to organize the data i've collected over the fall (most likely in an excel document) and setting a spring schedule. I ran into a fair few timing issues this fall, so I want a more concrete plan and schedule as I move into spring. It's hard to predict since my testing is so reliant on environmental conditions, but I plan to do my best.
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Process Overview11/30/2020 For this blog post I wanted to overview my data collection process in preparation for my next two posts, for which I will try to do a video blog showing the two processes in full
When I say two processes, I mean that overall data collection can be broken down into two steps 1: sample collection: I drive out to the spot I've designated for water sampling, collect three samples (1 for each depth), bottle them, measure turbidity, and record some prelimenary information 2: sample testing: this is where I bust out the kits and actually test the water for all the pollutants I'm examining More detail to come (hopefully) in my next few posts!
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Fall Goals Mentor Meeting11/3/2020 In a meeting with my mentors I established my fall goals moving forward
Most of these goals were discussed in my meeting in September, so this meeting was mostly a restatement of the goals already outlined: finish the first round of testing (2-3 times per location) before the temperature drops below my accepted range
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Early Takeaways10/31/2020 Though its a bit too early to be talking conclusions, I thought I'd discuss a few of my early takeaways from my data
So far, the bay has been remarkably clean. In terms of nitrates, phosphates, and pH, the numbers I've recorded have been mostly healthy. I've also detected very little E-coli, though relatively high levels of other bacteria has been present (this can be an indicator of normal environmental processes). I have yet to test what I expect to be high risk areas, but so far so good.
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October Testing10/30/2020 So far, this month has been spent taking tests and recording my preliminary data. I did a few rounds in the beginning of the month, then was interrupted by the weather (again), and was recently able to get out and continue testing
I'm looking forward to completing my fall testing in the coming weeks |