Final Touch Ups

Today has been a busy day!! Tomorrow, as Caitlyn said, are our final presentations and the time to hand in our final reports that we've been preparing all summer.  It's sad to say goodbye to Virginia Tech, but its been a fun  summer and a great experience!  Many of the watershed REUers will be attending Steppin' Out tomorrow.  I'll even be working the table on Saturday morning spreading knowledge about watershed quality and Stroubles Creek!!  Thanks NSF and VWRRC for making this summer possible!

It has been a good summer

Today is our last "work day" of the NSF REU program. Tomorrow we have our final presentations in the Skelton Center on campus. The past couple of weeks have been jam packed with writing and editing reports as well as constructing powerpoint presentations. I can't believe the summer is practically over! For most of the NSF REUs, we have a couple of weeks before school starts. Unfortunately, Mari, one of our fellow NSF students, has to drive straight back to school when this program comes to a close on Friday! There have definitely been some ups and downs throughout this program. Some days we had a great time out in the field collecting water samples and learning about GPS and water quality sensors. Other days we sat around the office and felt unmotivated and tired. Traveling was definitely a blast for me although it made the summer move so much faster! My trip to the Dominican Republic was wonderful and will be followed up by a trip this fall. I also enjoyed traveling to conferences in Ithaca and Chicago. I felt though, as if I didn't spend enough time in Blacksburg this summer. I suppose that can be a good thing as well since I will be here for another year of school starting at the end of August. This summer has been a wonderful chance for myself and other undergraduate students to get to know other students from around the country and to begin to work in the always expanding world of water research. While stress levels have been extremely high this week with deadlines quickly approaching, we still managed to have some fun by attending trivia night at a local restaurant last night as well as completing a couple of craft projects! This weekend is the local "Steppin Out" festival in downtown Blacksburg and I couldn't think of a better way to end the summer. I hope that everyone gets a chance to see some of the interesting vendors and musicians before they leave to return home. The photo I included is one of the NSF REU group (with a couple people missing) from our very first week in Blacksburg! I can't wait for the next stage in my water resources research!

Stroubles Creek Has Issues :(

Agriculture - not important??

A housing development, Fiddler’s Green, is in the process of being developed in the last space of agricultural land remaining in the Upper Stroubles Creek Watershed. The only saving grace for some of this agricultural land is that in 1991, Katherine Hoge entered into an engagement with the town of Blacksburg, in which thirty-two acres of her land was placed into a conservation easement. According to Andrew Warren, Zoning Administrator for the town of Blacksburg, this type of conservation easement is the only one of its kind in Blacksburg. Additionally, Warren has indicated that it would in violation of the easement if the thirty-two acres were to ever become abandoned or fallow, therefore indicating that this area must remain active agriculture in the future. In an article discussing the easement, it is reported that the land has been recently bought by Jim and Heather Cowan, in which the land will remain ninety percent agricultural with organic farm management practices, and will be used as a horse farm (Collegiate Times, November 19, 2008). Additionally, a second lake is going to be constructed on the property (increasing open water in Upper Stroubles Creek Watershed), which will act as a migratory bird habitat. Ironically, one of the selling points of trying to bring buyers to Fiddler’s Green is the close location to the easement and the beauty of being located near the horse farm.

Humans, always ruining something...

CRAZY!! Look at all that agriculture!! Look at it! It is amazing to go out and look at the world aroud us and to try to image what it used to be back then. Currently, urban land cover accounts for over 90% of the land cover in Upper Stroubles Creek Watershed, whereas agricultural was the dominate land cover in 1937 (about 75% land cover). On the other hand, it is interesting to note the lack of forest cover in this image due to the complete flattening of land in the past for agriculture. So, even though urbanization is the present day man-made issue, there were other issues in the past, such as forest clear-cuts.

The wonderful world of ArcMap

This is a map of the upper Stroubles Creek watershed. This is the area of Stroubles Creek I'm doing research on!
The green dots represent testing sites reported on by student's at Virginia Tech. The watershed has been "clipped" in ArcMap to only show the watershed boundary defined as the upper limits (above the Virginia Tech duck pond). This tool allows me to plot student testing locations along with government and community organizations who have done testing on the stream. The map gives insight to those reading my report and makes the material more comprehensive.

New areas of interest!

This project on designing a rainwater harvesting system for a resort in the Dominican Republic has really sparked my interest in two new areas. The idea of saltwater intrusion is intriguing and incredibly multifaceted. I was born and raised on the coast of Virginia so I love water and love the beach. Unfortunately, however, coastlines all across the world are witnessing saltwater intrusion in various ways. The complex modeling and countless factors that are evaluated in order to calculate the rate and angle of saltwater intrusion is incredibly intricate. I am going to continue to learn more about the modeling that goes into evaluating saltwater intrusion after I complete this project.

The second area of interest is eco-tourism and the need to build sustainable tourism. I really fear that if more resorts and companies don’t start looking towards the environment, so many fragile and one-of-a-kind ecosystems could be lost forever. This project has definitely showed me the importance of looking to see if that future vacation destination is ecologically friendly. It has also made me question the idea of eco-tourism? I hope to evaluate a possible question such as "What is the biggest/smallest/longest/shortest impact on the environment when traveling?" and "What exactly is eco-tourism?"