day: 2

woke up, ate corn pops, went to class at 9 am. we talked about the history of itasca! the name itasca originates from the latin: verITAS CAput, which means "true head," in reference to the headwaters of the mississippi. the park is 32,000 acres, and is located at the edge of a coniferous, boreal, and deciduous forest--the park itself has been pwned by oaks. oh, fun fact: there's also a bison kill site which indicates that 8,000 years ago, there were in fact people inhabiting the area. AND in 1922, there was a wave of intense forest fires that burned all of the organic matter/"slash" residue left after logging (when the organic matter is burned, it is very challenging for the environment to recover--think of it as the ground trying to create another "biotic juice" to grow life...except there's no foundation to make juicy life...make sense?). the park was glaciated til 10,000-11,000 years ago by the wadena lobe (the des moines lobe covered northfield). park rapids was the "delta" of the glacier and the hills around itasca/minnesota/any glacial underground is due to the till (mass of silt, dirt, sand) dropping off of a giant ice cube and the ice cube melting and leaving a giant hole in the ground. enough about itasca. we then went over the reading about black carbon/albedo/dust. asia has the highest industrial emissions (surprise, surprise). there's other stuff about black carbon, but i don't want to write about it. anyway, we went on to do an experiment to measure albedo on the top 2 cm of snow on the lake ice! we walked on water! yaaaaaay! and sometimes the ice made a booming sound, like thunder! except, it didn't really crack. well, maybe it did. i don't really know. i don't have x-ray vision, so it's impossible to see underneath the snow. it wouldn't matter if it did in the area we were because it would freeze shut instantly (that's what prof. told us, at least...). the process of our experiment: 1) make 26 1 m x 1 m plots in the snow (we used my compass to make sure the lines were straight!); 2) sift black carbon and dust over the plots--in varying amounts on plots 1-4; 3) scoop the affected snow into a baggie with a 2 cm (1/2 beaker); 4) while in the baggies, melt the snow; 5) tare the scale and measure the mass of each sample; 6) use deionized water to clean out the rest of the carbon or dust, if needed, and then put the water through a vacuum-pump-filter-thingy; 6) after letting the filter papers dry, put in the spectrophotometer and measure the turbidity of the filtered-solution with imitated solar radiation waves. it sounds more exciting than it actually was...but, it was still SUPER cool! :) then we ate 7 boxes of kraft mac&cheese, 3 bags of frozen veggies, 3 cans of chunked pineapple, 30 tennis-ball/golf-ball diameter chocolate chip cookies, and water. i just finished my reading about snow/snowflake and frost formation...and will probably be asleep by 11. class at 9 tomorrow--studying snowflakes as they are falling and snowpack characteristics. i think after class we're also going to ski up to the headwaters! and then tomorrow night i'll work on my zooplankton project (yesssss!). ciao4now <3