my work 2 weeks into REU

So, I am participating in an REU this summer in Bozeman, Montana.  REU stands for Research Experiences for Undergraduates.

The project I am working on involves environmental modeling.  We are interested in fleshing out a working model for heat flux in watersheds.  What we are trying to do is develop a software solution that can correctly predict how temperature will change as water moves downstream in a watershed.

This is a rather complicated problem to solve.  There are numerous ways in which heat can be added to or removed from a body of water.  Some of these include evaporation, radiation, conduction/convection with bodies of air or the ground, and water removed from or added to the system via subsurface interactions.

I am working with another REU student on the computer science side of things to achieve our objective of extending and fleshing out the current model for temperature flux that has been put in place.  I have not seen this model yet myself, but to my understanding it is little more than a skeleton - very little has been implemented yet.

We have not done much work on the software side of things yet, aside from getting a basic model to run on our systems.  Most of my first week in Bozeman was spent familiarizing myself with the area and engaging in social interactions with the other REU students.

This past week, my REU partner and myself began doing field work.  We are playing the part of the hydrologist who is collecting the relevant data from the streams and rivers.  This week was only for practice. Next week we are taking a road trip to Oregon to do the real thing.  The sequence of events for gathering river data is roughly as follows:

1. Find an adequate spot in the river to make your measurements.  This should be somewhere that a sensor can be deployed for a long period of time (months) without being disturbed by people, animals, or the environment.  Additionally, the body of water should be well mixed.  The river banks should be uniform, and the river bed should be composed of rocks which are generally uniform in size and shape.  Riffles (steady water flow) are preferred to pools (water is not flowing downstream uniformly).  Obviously, finding an ideal spot to meet all these requirements is not always possible.
2. Once a site has been selected, pound some pegs which have been flagged with a fluorescent plastic into the ground.  These pegs should form a line that is perpendicular to the direction of water flow in the river.  The pegs will then be connected with a measuring tape.
3. Take elevation measurements along the cross section, including water depth where applicable.
4. Take water flow rate measurements along the cross section, including water depth where applicable.
5. Package, disguise and deploy the long term temperature sensor.  This will be securely attached to a rock or some object with wire.
6. Enter the data that was recorded into an Excel spreadsheet.

The entire process will take several hours.  We have repeated this 3 times at 3 different sites during this week.

I am looking forward to next week in Oregon.  I forgot to bring any books with me to Bozeman, and the drive will take between 10 and 11 hours.  Plus, there will be downtime at campsites, and driving to other sites could take several hours.  I found some random free books at the bookstore and in the computer science building that I haven't looked at closely yet.  They will suffice, regardless of content.

~chugstaz