All Around Summer 16

         This summer I had many different opportunities and jobs presented to me. During the month of July I was an intern with Build-on (unpaid) and I was placed in Bryant Hill Community Garden with two other interns. In this program, me and the two other interns went every Tuesday and Thursday to help the garden leader Lucia around the garden. During the month of August I began to work at  Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory. This is a program at with Columbia University where teams were set up and given a group leader with a specific task and working on the Hudson River to gather information that would help them towards their goal.

         At the garden me and my other teammates saw that the garden wasn't in the best condition and we wanted to help bring up the environment because we learned how important a community garden actually is. We learned that how a community garden not only helps make the environment more beautiful but actually helps people in nutrition. While we were in the garden we began to do little things like pack things up, tidy up around the garden, pull weeds and more. But later we got to have a much better experience because the group leader began to explain to us all the things that a garden can do for a community. Like this garden specifically lets children come in certain days to help garden and get a better experience with plants and nature, mainly because this is more of a natural garden where the terrain isn't leveled like most gardens you would see. During this time we also learned how to collect honey and plant properly. Lately the garden had a gazebo put in the center but didn't have proper stairs so what we did was help put some into place so it would be easier to access.

         Me and my teammates also saw the garden needed more help then just a few kids in one summer so me and my teammates had some ideas. One idea was that we have kids from the AP Environmental class go during the school year at least once a month to help bring-up the garden. We also talked about how we can have a section in school programs such as day for children where we can talk about the garden and how it can be used to help people and pitch new ideas to the community.

This is a picture of the garden, but not while we were there.

        During the month of August I worked with SSFRP program that had 9 teams each with a different task at their disposal. I was placed into the nutrients team. Marsh ecosystems are important modifiers of nutrients from sewage and agricultural runoff. Piermont Marsh, a brackish tidal marsh located in the lower Hudson River Estuary, is an irregularly inundated wetland system with two tidal creeks and one freshwater creek. My teams objective during this summer was to determine which nutrients have a river source or a marsh source. This means that we were trying to establish weather were nutrients coming in or out of the Hudson. We did this by measuring the marsh nutrient cycle  in 30 minute intervals. Water samples and sensor data (DO%, and Salinity) were collected for nutrients (nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, and ammonium). Our data research shows the marsh appears to be a significant consumer of nitrate during the summer and a source of phosphate to the adjacent river water.

We also had to collect all the data and analyze it and put it all on a poster to present in front of everyone who participated in the program and some scientist.

This is our team and the process we have done thought the summer

I feel like this program has opened my eyes because I honestly learned so much new things and i had a better environment to do it in. This program was more self guided and most independent. It is different from my other experiences because I was always told what to do, in this program they gave you the materials and you and your team had to come up with the solution. Of course we had our own scientist that helped us through the process but he helped us in the way that he was woking next to us not on-top of us. He made it seem like everyones part in the research was equal to his. This experience has been very eye opening and fun for me. Made me think I don't mind doing work like this for the rest of my life.

If you would like to see more pictures of the program check out the SSFRP page on Facebook. This is the first time that this has been used for the program and they are hoping it is used more while the program begins to continue and progress.