It's been awhile!

    Sorry for the very long delay of updating my blog! The past two weeks have been busy! In a short explanation, I've taken two trips to the field to measure CO2.  I won't go into much detail with this post, but I'll try to include a general picture of what has happened the past two weeks.

     Last week, a field trip was scheduled for Monday and Tuesday. This was my second trip the field, and we were scheduled to measure methane. We met at ZALF at 7:30am and headed on our way to Dedelow. Dedelow is a cool place north of Berlin that is one of the most windiest places in Germany. The drive to Dedelow was easy and quick (probably because I slept during most of it haha!). Once we got to the field, I pulled out my camera and snapped a few pictures. The place is so beautiful, although hard to see in some of the pictures, there were a lot of gently sloping as far as the eye could see. There were also a ton of wind farms all over the horizon. The cool thing about all the wind farms is that the make great tools for a meteorologist who doesn't have access to the best information about the wind direction. If you have a compass (which I need to install on my phone), determining the wind direction is quite simple, just look at a wind-mill! The weather wasn't too bad as I was thinking it was going to be. The early afternoon was a little chilly, the winds were whipping a solid 15-20mph, and occasional gusts got up to 25mph. Thank you Mom for suggesting that I bring the red wind/rain breaker. The workload there was quite easy, the only thing we did was put chambers on the sites, open the bottle, close the bottle, and then go back to the shed and wait 20 minutes to open another bottle, and then go back to the shed and hangout. Measuring methane is a nice break once you've experienced measuring CO2. The weather at Dedelow eventually progressed into a much calmer, and sunny scene. The winds by the end of the day calmed down quite a bit, and went down to 5mph. Pretty much that's all that happened on Monday. Tuesday was a day to sort more roots, protocolize data, and get ready for my first 2 day field trip to measure CO2. We were headed back to Dedelow (with better weather expected).

     Wednesday morning started at 7:30AM with meeting the other interns at the warehouse to load the vans with materials for the trip. We loaded chambers, data loggers, chamber extensions, and other tools vital for the research. I fell asleep again on the trip over. I think do this date, I have fallen asleep on all of our trips to the fields. Once we got to Dedelow we unloaded the vans and dispersed quickly to our measuring sites. The weather was nice, a comfortable 82 degrees and a nice 10mph breeze to keep things cooled off. First on the list was to measure CO2. Measuring CO2 isn't the easiest thing to do. First, you have to be very careful to avoid breaking all of the maize (corn) plants. They are very fragile and break at the slightest bit of pressure. In order to do this (specially if you have extensions like I did), you have to position yourself very awkwardly to put the chamber down in the correct spot. After you put the chamber on, you have to immediately turn the ventilator on, switch the status on, and run to the logger and record values of: CO2, PAR (sunlight), temperature of the inside, and the time on the logger. In order to be correct, you're supposed to do all of this within 5 seconds, but this usually doesn't happen and we strive to get all results within 10 seconds. This isn't all too difficult but the process that makes this difficult is: repetition. At each measuring site, there are 3 plots, and you have to measure all three over the course of the day, aiming to measuring when the temperature falls within pre-set ranges. You're also trying to get measurements under certain PAR values. These values need to be measured at ALL three plots. For the duration of the measurement, your eyes are fixed on the logger's output screen because if the CO2  goes up/down by more than 30ppm, you're supposed to stop the measurement. If the PAR goes up/down by more than 10% you stop the measurement, and lastly, if the temperature goes up by more than 1.5 degrees C you stop the measurement. All these values must adhere to these rules for a hopeful 2 minutes. Between the clouds passing over the measurement site in a sporadic fashion, and the sun heating the insides of the transparent chambers like a green house, it isn't an easy task to complete. By the end of the day you've have lifted these 20 pound chambers at least 200 times, or more, because you'll start the measurement only for it to have to be redone when the data goes awry. Besides the warm temperatures slowing things down slightly, it is a pretty easy thing to do. It is also fun trying to make a game out of it and catch all the PAR slots. The best part of the trip had to be the wonderful dinner prepared by some of the ZALF interns. It was a wonderful spaghetti, with meat sauce and some other ingredients. We all had a nice beer to wash down the dinner as well. After dinner at 7:30pm, we all got ready for bed. On field trips, you have to get to sleep very early (often while it is still light outside), because the next morning, we had to be up by 3:30am to beat the sunrise.

     The next morning we started out very early, arriving to the field at 4:30am (30 minutes before sunrise). Things had to start quickly so we were able to get a measurement while there was zero PAR. Everything went according to plan, at least all the measurements before around 10am. The only downside to my first CO2 measurement trip was pulling a muscle in my back. I did it while bending down to put a chamber on one of the plots in the early morning. My back hurt the whole day after that and it still hurts to this day (although the pain has been wearing away, only to flare up when I went to the field this past Tuesday and Wednesday). Despite hurting my back, one thing did make it better, and that was the most beautiful sunrise I have seen in awhile. I forgot my camera on this trip, but will say that there were some cirrus clouds streaming over the horizon and just brought out so many colors in the sunrise. Hopefully I'll remember to bring my camera whenever I head to Dedelow later in the summer. The rest of the field trip wasn't anything too special, just a repeat of Wednesday. The only thing that was aggravating was getting the par values between 1200-1650. For some reason, the PAR just jumped from below 1200, to above 1650 in about 30 minutes, leaving me no time to get those measurements (clouds were also in the area messing with the PAR). When I came back to Muncheberg from the trip, I took a nice cold shower, and ate a large meal, and relaxed! Friday was a nice and easy day at work, with not much to do. 

      I didn't do much that weekend, but I did get a chance to experience the Berlin nightlife. Right after the sun goes down, Berlin turns into a different city completely. Most days (except Friday afternoon's), you will rarely see citizens drinking on the streets. On a side note, it is completely legal to drink on the streets of Germany. When Saturday night rolled around however, probably 60-70% of the people walking on the street had a beer in their hands, and a cigarette in between their fingers. Nathan, Andrej, and myself headed to Warschauer Straße around 11pm to meet up with some of the interns who lived in Berlin, and they would show us around the city at night (night being allllllll night.). It took them a little while to meet us so we walked around for an hour and a half. It was very interesting seeing the variety of people in the streets. It was actually pretty cool how diverse the nightlife was. After some time, we met up with Javier and we walked to a Mexican bar. We all sat down and ordered a 4 Euro wheat beer. It was the best 4 Euro's I've spent on a beer here yet. It was a very mellow beer, but also had a very subtle sweetness to it that just made it fantastic! I'm definitely going to have another one while I'm here some other day. We left the bar at 2am and headed for some pizza. After the pizza, we went looking for a club to go to listen to some music and dance a little. When we couldn't find one, we all just went to another bar that had airline seats in it. At that bar, we played some Foosball with Javier's friends local to Berlin. We beat them in a close game (6-5). After that, we played two German locals who were phenomenal at Foosball, and sadly we lost 6-5. It was a blast though, and they were very nice, and it was cool that they could speak some English. By this time, it was 4am, and we were debating if we should stay the "night" at Javier's place (as it was already light outside). After walking for a little we decided to just take the first train back to Muncheberg at 5:34am. To kill some time we walked to Alexanderplatz, and saw how deserted the place was at 4:45 in the morning. It was a cool, and also eery sight. When 5:00am rolled around, we headed back to Lichtenberg to catch the train back to Muncheberg. A fun night it was.

     This past week was a pretty normal week I could say. Nothing much happened. Monday was spent sorting roots, protocolizing data, and getting preparations finished for everyone's field trips. On Tuesday and Wednesday I went to Spreewald for CO2 measurements. Spreewald, besides Dedelow, is a favorite place of mine here. I took pictures earlier this summer of the location, but it basically is a forest region. Some of the locations for the plots are rather wet, but 3 out of the 4 were dry this time. The only bad parts about the trip were: my back pain flared up again (the day I left for the trip, just when it was getting better), and the bugs. There are so many bugs at Spreewald, especially mosquitoes. The mosquitoes are quite large, I wouldn't know what to compare them too, but trust me, they're bigger than American mosquitoes! Wednesday was a quick day in the field, but a long drive back to Muncheberg. Wednesday was a quick day because were able to attain almost all the possible measurements of CO2 that were able to be attained. Later on Wednesday, I picked up a new intern from Poland who will be starting with all of us on Monday.

      This weekend was filled with adventures around Berlin. Yesterday we visited the Brandenburg Gate, German Parliament, and the Berlin HBnf (a large train station). Today we spent all day in Potsdam. I will post some pictures of out adventures the past two days and let them do the talking. (A picture is worth 1000 words correct?).

      Well, now I prepare for another week of work. Today is Independence Day in America! Here, we just call it July 4th. Like you would any other day. I miss everyone from the States! Have a safe Independence Day!!

If you click the picture thumbnail in the top left of my blog's homepage, you will be directed to an album where I am uploading all these pictures. Check them out!
  

-Wright