Thursday, May 31: First meeting with Thom Wilch since I returned from Washington. Found out that before we can begin research of Rice Creek, we must first draft a Quality Assurance Project Plan (QAPP) - sounds similar to an infant trying to pronounce 'crap'. The QAPP is rather long and tedious, and from what it looks like, it will take us more than a week to compile all of what needs to be written. This is rather disheartening, seeing as how our grant is set to go into effect June 1 (tomorrow), and now we are setback with this requirement by law that should have been brought to our attention over a month ago.
Today was the second FURSCA session where students give presentations on what they are researching this summer. Six presentations were given.

Friday, June 1: Met with Thom, Doug White, and Ellen Wilch to discuss preliminary QAPP agenda. As we discovered, we have much work to dig through before we can get anywhere with this. Luti Erbeznik was unable to attend the meeting today, so we were without imput from our microbiologist. He will hopefully be able to attend the next meeting. Sites need to be pinpointed before we can draft much of this report. Sarah Hepinstall will be returning next week, so I will have a partner soon.

Monday, June 4: Met with Thom. I had found very little in the way of websites that could be of assistance to us in drafting our QAPP. I was given instructions to create a step-by-step Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for measuring flow in a stream.

Tuesday, June 5: Thom, Ellen, Doug, Sarah, Melinda Sloma, Lisa Carmichael, and myself toured around to the potential sites from where we will be taking measurements. We extracted leveloggers from two sites to download the data upon our return. I assume that the professors will be making the decissions as to which sites to use.

Thursday, June 7: Not much work to be done. Thom assigned me to clean the levelloggers. Met at 1 pm with Thom, Ellen, Doug, Luti, and Sarah. Progress is being made on the QAPP, but there remains quite a bit left to be done. Luti gave us some insight into what the biology section of this project is doing and requires to have done. We chose our big equipment that needs to be purchased using the last funds in the Environmental Institute budget.
Second FURSCA meeting. Five presentations were given (3 biology, 1 history, 1 theatre).

Friday, June 8: Met with Ellen at 10:00 am to calibrate the flow meter with Sarah. We brought the instrument to the Kalamazoo at a relatively calm point along the river. Upon our return, I began to write-up a SOP for calibrating the meter. At 1 pm, all three of us left with Thom to mark increments at the sites that were chosen by the professors. Several sites still produced some problems due to moderate difficulty in sampling from the area. We are looking into ways to get around these problems.

Monday, June 11: Met with Thom in the morning. He has a first copy of the QAPP completed. We are working to finish the SOPs as quickly as possible. Began work on SOP for discharge and also created a data sheet for the same. Russ helped me create an account on the Geology server. Brought rotor A into the field to calibrate it. B is still not functioning correctly. Took a look at the levelogger data and we were able to transfer the document into Excel. Now all we are left with is how to interpret the data using that program.

Tuesday, June 12: Thom had gone out this morning with Larry Taylor to look at some glacial geology. Ellen wasn't around until after nine, so I worked on some more SOPs in the library. Developed a data sheet for discharge. Began researching formulas for measuring flow through a culvert. Dr. Messer provided me with a sheet on the subject that I haven't yet had a chance to review. Will do so later tonight.

Wednesday, June 13: The sheet that Dr. Messer had given me was interesting, but didn't shed much light onto the question I was trying to solve. A little bit of web searching yielded a site with formulas for measuring the amount of discharge passing through a culvert at varying water levels. Up to this point, the only similar formulas I had discovered were for measuring discharge of a culvert filled with water. Unfortunately, in the formula I derived, we are stuck having to deal with Froude numbers (v/(l*g)^1/2). This requires us to make a velocity reading of the stream, which sounds simple, but velocity in a stream is not constant throughout the entire cross-section of the stream. Therefore we would need to make an integrated measurement, which is much more difficult. We were hoping to come across a table of Froude numbers, but so far our aspirations have been fruitless.
Ellen has suggested that we try to construct a Parshall Flume - a type of water obstruction that reduces the size of the stream and also adds a gradient. This is a good idea, and it might be implemented, but I am still desiring to create a mathematical model for this site as part of Liberal Arts at Work.

Thursday, June 14: Sarah and I met today to investigate the Gibbs and Callahan sites and to test out the effectiveness of the SOPs we had developed. Callahan needed to be mapped out, and we decided to test our discharge SOP at Gibbs because it already had mapped intervals.
Third set of presentations today. Eight people in all presented (2 chemistry, 1 music, 1 theatre, 1 history).

Friday, June 15: Doug, Thom, Ellen, Sarah, Melinda, Lisa, and I met today in the Debriefing Room (DR) to discuss our progress over the past week. Doug spoke about the meeting he had attended earlier in the week regarding QAPPs. We are on our way and expect to be making our first measurements by the beginning of next week. I sent out an e-mail to an environment state representative in hopes of receiving a formula for calculating discharge out of our culvert.

Monday, June 18: Met with Thom at nine this morning and began working on finalizing our data sheets. Also created a checklist of what we will be bringing into the field. Sorted through the information and reference we have so far and put them in individual folders, as well as began checking the reference into a computer bibliography program. In the afternoon, Thom, Ellen, Doug, Amy, Sarah, and I went out to 24 Mile Road and went through the procedures for measuring and evaluating a site.

Tuesday, June 19: Met at nine. Decided that we should use the 40% calibration instead of the 20% and 80% we attempted yesterday, and that we should take one less reading. I changed the SOPs and data sheets to reflect this, as well as working on more of the bibliographies. This afternoon, went out to 22 1/2 mile to sample and guage the stream. The changes to the SOPs have made our jobs much easier and faster.

Wednesday, June 20: Met at nine. Prepared data sheets into finalized forms and began working on programing sheets into Excel. In the afternoon, went out to sites 7, 13, 14, and 23 with Sarah to perform gaging, stream sampling, and field data sheets.

Thursday, June 21: Met at nine. Imputted the measurements taken yesterday into Excel. Began working on a database sheet for each category on the Field Data Sheet. Due to a misunderstanding, had to start over and so should be able to complete work on it tomorrow. In the afternoon, went to Callahan and Gibbs sites and performed gaging, stream sampling, and completed field data sheets.

Monday, June 25: Met at nine in the DR to discuss our past week's work. Thom had us take a few measurements with Derek and Jack. In the afternoon, Thom discussed his plans for us to complete during the next week in his absence while he attends field camp.

Tuesday, June 26: Derek did not show today. With the assistance of Jack and Amy, we managed to sample each of the seven major segments of the stream. However, due to a mechanical problem with the Swoffer, we were unable to take complete measurements at the Callahan site. Doug is to look into fixing the machine.

Wednesday, June 27: Doug was successful in fixing the Swoffer. In the morning, Sarah, Jack, and I set out to fill out field data sheets along the southbranch of the stream. In the afternoon we finished up a large portion of the southbranch, leaving only a few more sites to do in this section. Next week we will likely focus on the northbranch.