No Longer Swimming Upstream

After a two hour meeting with Kate, a lot of my confusion was cleared up.  She taught me some of the basic commands to use in terminal and how to edit files and input data, in addition to showing me how to export results into VisIt in order to make 3d plots. I’m currently working through some sample problems in order to refine my skills, and am compiling my ArcGIS map.

My research differs from typical research in that it is not experiment based.  Therefore, I can’t really tell you all about trial 1, and my immediate results.  My results are more of a synthesis of current data in order to create and demonstrate a need for more data.

My results from the Geophysics 190 class came back, however! Shockingly, we managed to image the San. G. fault that runs through the hillslope and separates two wells.  This shows that the faulting in Pescadero may be causing some aquifer compartmentalization, which is complicating the hydrology in the area.  I understand all of this jargon may be confusing- please leave a comment if you have any questions.

Me, hard at work.

The geophysical results showing the San. G. fault running through the ranch.

Figuring things out!

(Sub) ParFlow

Hello World.

It’s been yet another week of research for me, and I’m entirely on the struggle bus this time. On Wednesday, Kate helped me install ParFlow on my laptop.  It was an educational and intense endeavor, which took about 3 hours total.

We’re slowly turning my laptop into a maptop, which is pretty cool!

Since then, I’ve been struggling to use ParFlow.  Armed with the user’s manual and a series of short exercises, I managed to open the program and run a sample problem.  Oh, and somehow erase a large number of old documents from other files.  That’s the thing with using Terminal to do things…

I’m making progress with ArcGIS, and developing a comprehensive map.  Since my background isn’t in computers, there’s been a pretty steep learning curve to this project.  However, I’m making steps in the right direction. Workshops at the library and consulting with my peers has helped with the growing pains.

The process is…frustrating…to say the least, but I feel like if I keep trying, the lightbulb may go off.

In other news- I’m headed to Pescadero to take water samples soon! I’m excited to do some fieldwork and have physical data to analyze.  I’ll be running them through the ICP-OES to see how many parts per million (PPM) of significant elements are in them.

That’s all for now, folks.

Selena

GIS Wizardry; Spending Quality Time with Mendeley

Hi Everyone,

In my last blog post, which was tragically deleted, I mentioned that I was reading up on ArcGIS.  What is ArcGIS, you ask?

Well…ArcGIS is a software package that lets you share and compile maps.  It allows you to layer and analyze the maps so that you can see trends and data across layers in order to draw conclusions.  It’s dauntingly powerful with almost an infinite number of toggles, buttons, adjustments, and functions.

Today, I spent 3 hours in the Geology Library taking a workshop on how to use this glorious monstrosity.  Although I wouldn’t consider myself “tech-savvy”, the workshop was extremely beneficial.  I now feel ready to compile my maps.  Which is good…because that’s what’s on the table for this week.

I’m excited to layer topography, groundcover, subsurface geology, stream paths, soil types, land use, and vegetation and start figuring out exactly what’s going on in Pescadero.

Tomorrow, Kate is going to help me download ParFlow, the modeling software that I’ll be using to create my hydraulic model. Learning that software is going to be significantly more difficult, but hopefully the Internet can teach me a thing or two.

Or three.

Besides acquiring all of these mad software skillz, I’ve been spending a lot of quality time with Mendeley.

No, Mendeley isn’t a person.

Mendeley is a bibliography tool that allows you to compile a digital library of your sources.  You can annotate them through it’s “view” feature, and share them between collaborators.  Then, when the time is right, you can compile them into a bibliography page. It’s great because it allows you to keep all of your documents in one place, without cluttering up you desktop with folders and folders of papers.

Now that I’ve accrued a decent number of papers on the region, I’ve moved on to finding papers about how surface and ground water interacts, and how water management can be treated under the lens of ecosystem services.

For all non-scientists out there:

Ecosystem Services: a service or good that has value, that is provided by nature.  Ex: Forests provide timber, Mountains provide a good time, and lakes provide drinking water

If I can find a picture of the map I created today in the workshop, I’ll make sure to post it under this post.  I’m sure I’ll be posting again soon with a poignant description of my misadventures with ParFlow!