Monthly Archives: September 2011

Beach cows… or, my senior thesis.

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Choosing a senior thesis topic had been something I was trying to push to the back of my mind, but as the year began and I received an email saying that it was finally time to choose an advisor and a project topic, I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I brought my list of potential topics in for review, and my advisor really liked one of the ideas I had. Just like that, I had a topic and an advisor.

The topic I choose came out of my summer research I did after my sophomore year when I was funded through the College to work with a faculty member on a science research project. I went to Cedear Island off the coast of North Carolina and collected sediment core samples from a marsh in an attempt to study the shoreline change (you can read my abstract here http://summerscience.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2010/06/22/sediment-records-of-holocene-sea-level-storms-and-shoreline-change-in-coastal-north-carolina/).

That summer on Cedar Island I had also helped collect data for a smaller side-project my advisor had been collecting for a number of years, but never compiled. We used a GPS to map the vegetation line along the coast of a particular beach that had cows and horses from a nearby farm grazing on it. The idea is that these animals eat the vegetation, which is helping to keep the dunes in place. These dunes are helping protect the beach from erosion. Essentially, the data would help us see if the grazing animals were exacerbating the problem of shoreline erosion.

I was especially interested in this project, so I proposed that I would pursue this as my senior thesis project, and my advisor was more than willing to pass on his data for me to look through and use for my project. Although my thesis is in the very nascent stages so far, the main questions I am trying to answer is whether these animals affect the coastal geomorphology. It’s a bit complicated because of course there is natural erosion occurring as well, as well as erosion caused by big storms like Irene and other anthropogenic factors, like a jetty that was constructed right next to my field site. To do this I will have to compile past mapping data and historical images of the site, along with a whole lot of reading and researching! It might also expand to include other barrier islands with grazing animals, like Assateague in Virginia. My thesis is not due until the end of the year, so I have lots of time to sort this out and come up with a conclusion!

So, to start off my project, Anna (a fellow geology major), my advisor, and I headed back down to Cedar Island to continue collecting data for our projects (Anna is working on another project which you can read about here http://summerscience.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2011/08/04/holocene-depositional-variability-in-a-coastal-estuary-cedar-island-north-carolina/). We braved high temperatures, mosquitoes, mud, particularly sharp marsh grass, and even quicksand, but it was all worth it to get all of the data we needed. Plus, my advisor’s parents’ graciously hosted us, cooked for us, and let us test out their new swimming pool, so we had some relaxation time as well!

It’s only the start of a long project, but my recent field work has me really excited to start looking at the data and get going with my thesis!

Here’s some photos from the trip.

Looking at the creek in the marsh. The backpack Anna is wearing is actually a GPS satellite receiver.

Anna and Don collecting samples and GPS points in the marsh. It was really buggy out.

Anna helping me collect GPS data at my study site. You can see some of the vegetation on the beach in this photo.

Anna's study site is only accessible by boat.

This is my study site--the southeastern-side beach on the North Bay of Cedar Island, NC.

A beautiful sunset after a long day of collecting data.

 

 

New year, new classes

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During customs week my freshman year, the advice I heard over and over from upperclasswomen was to try new things. They said that finding your place at Bryn Mawr was a trial-and-error process—you had to try new things, find what you love, and move on from the things that you didn’t enjoy as much as you thought you would. I took this advice and readily threw myself into the newness of Bryn Mawr my very first semester.

I joined the varsity crew team having never rowed in my life. Knowing I wanted to be an English major, I took an English class, but I took it in a subject I previously didn’t even know existed—Postcolonial Literature. I took a geology class just for the hell of it. By the end of the semester I quickly realized that 5am crew practices weren’t my thing, and that I absolutely loved my geology class.

Five semesters later, I find myself a very content geology major, and the captain of the rugby team. It’s certainly not what I imagined myself doing when I first entered school as a first-year, but I love what I do at Bryn Mawr and I am forever grateful for the wise older women who advised me to try new things.

Now I am a senior, beginning my last year here at the top of the food chain, so to speak. However, I have retained that mentality through my time at Bryn Mawr and while I have found my niche at college, I still find the value in trying totally new things. And that is how I found myself in an Introduction to Drawing class this semester.

So far it’s been an interesting experience. I have always enjoyed art so I figured I would take this class just for fun to provide some relief from the other difficult classes I am taking. Here’s a drawing I did during the first class. Hopefully I will get better as the class goes on!

The hockey skate I drew on the first day of drawing class. Hopefully I'll improve!

I’m also taking two geology classes—marine geology and invertebrate paleobiology. Marine Geology is a fun elective class for me. It is taught by one of my favorite professors at Bryn Mawr and it deals with the subject matter that I am interested in. Invertebrate Paleobiology is a major requirement for geology majors, so originally I was taking it out of necessity. However, after my first class, I totally loved it! It is set up so that we spend half of the class in the classroom learning about concepts and terms, and then for the second half of class we go up to the paleo lab and do more interactive activities where we get to look at all sorts of neat fossils that the department has in their collection. My fourth class is physics. This is also required for my major, and I’ll just say I think it is going to be my most challenging class.

Perhaps the most fun thing about being back at school, though, is that it’s rugby season! This is my first semester as a co-captain of the team, so the other captain and I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how we want the season to go, organizing practices, and recruiting new team members from Bryn Mawr and Haverford. Today was the first day we did tackling drills and it was a perfect day for it—it’s been kind of rainy outside, so the pitch was nice and muddy. After practice everyone looked like they had been rolling around in the mud (actually, that IS essentially what we were doing….).

I’ve got to head to bed as I have an early class tomorrow (8:15!), but I have very exciting weekend plans that involve beach cows, so look for a post about that next week!

Oh, and check out my flickr set (link on the sidebar) to see some photos of my sweet single in Radnor!