Hi all-
Things have been getting started rather slowly. We finally got the second truck from Hollister yesterday. But just when we thought we'd gotten through with all the administrative stuff, HR at the state office informed Holly and I that our fingerprint cards (which had to be the ink kind) were unreadable and we have to go to Sacramento to get them redone. What a hassle! That will probably happen next week. Aside from the administrative stuff, things have also been moving slowly because of restrictions on where BLM will let us enter the wilderness, as the marijuana eradication project is still underway. Last week we were near the staging area for the operation and saw them helicoptering the special agents away 2 at a time to drop into the gardens... they removed over 55 thousand plants and arrested a farmer with an assault rifle. The good news about that is, I am now allowed to get into Harley Gulch. But... none of us are to go anywhere by ourselves, so I have to work around Jim's schedule (he is doing several hours of shorebird monitoring on the coast each morning until mid-July). He'll be over tomorrow afternoon, and I believe we are going out to do some sampling technique practice.
That brings me to the main point of my post- in speaking with Jim this week I have deduced that I will not actually be sampling any water for mercury. A gentleman from USGS (whose name currently escapes me) will be doing that. I may accompany him, but the only water sampling I will be doing is for general water quality indicators (temp, pH, electroconductivity, etc). Jim has informed me that the methyl mercury in the area is a methyl mercury chloride, so he's hoping that electroconductivity will let us know about the salinity of the water and we will be able to infer from that which areas are potentially high in methyl mercury. I will be taking sediment samples from the Harley Gulch "Delta" (confluence with Cache Creek) as well as soil samples which will be analyzed for mercury content. Jim would also like for us to get into Davis Creek, but that is off-limits for now.
That's it for now! Please let me know if you have any questions!
~k
Things have been getting started rather slowly. We finally got the second truck from Hollister yesterday. But just when we thought we'd gotten through with all the administrative stuff, HR at the state office informed Holly and I that our fingerprint cards (which had to be the ink kind) were unreadable and we have to go to Sacramento to get them redone. What a hassle! That will probably happen next week. Aside from the administrative stuff, things have also been moving slowly because of restrictions on where BLM will let us enter the wilderness, as the marijuana eradication project is still underway. Last week we were near the staging area for the operation and saw them helicoptering the special agents away 2 at a time to drop into the gardens... they removed over 55 thousand plants and arrested a farmer with an assault rifle. The good news about that is, I am now allowed to get into Harley Gulch. But... none of us are to go anywhere by ourselves, so I have to work around Jim's schedule (he is doing several hours of shorebird monitoring on the coast each morning until mid-July). He'll be over tomorrow afternoon, and I believe we are going out to do some sampling technique practice.
That brings me to the main point of my post- in speaking with Jim this week I have deduced that I will not actually be sampling any water for mercury. A gentleman from USGS (whose name currently escapes me) will be doing that. I may accompany him, but the only water sampling I will be doing is for general water quality indicators (temp, pH, electroconductivity, etc). Jim has informed me that the methyl mercury in the area is a methyl mercury chloride, so he's hoping that electroconductivity will let us know about the salinity of the water and we will be able to infer from that which areas are potentially high in methyl mercury. I will be taking sediment samples from the Harley Gulch "Delta" (confluence with Cache Creek) as well as soil samples which will be analyzed for mercury content. Jim would also like for us to get into Davis Creek, but that is off-limits for now.
That's it for now! Please let me know if you have any questions!
~k
Well I think as long as we can get as much of this sampling information as possible for our model that is the important thing. I will continue to put information in our joint spreadsheet as I find more samples. The issue we will probably come across is that (like this summer) there is sampling for short periods of time or just one day for an entire year. So I am not really sure how we will be able to fill in the gaps, but we will just have to do our best.
ReplyDeleteKrista, can you find out from Jim if he knows of sources of data from the past (e.g. water quality)? Nick and I will continue to collect as much as we can but maybe he knows of other sources or other people who might have more data.