Hola senor and la senora blogeros,
I'm a little late to the table with my blogging this summer, but hey I've been working hard trying to save the planet, so lay off with all of your incessant requests. I can't log onto hotmail without having to shuffle through hundreds, possibly thousands of emails with headings like "please do another blog or I may throw myself from a bridge" or "when will you lift this darkness with another illuminating blog" or "Shea will you father my children." O.K., that last one was wishful thinking, but the rest is all true. This is just a background entry so you can catch your bearings as to what your cyberhero has going on this summer. I don't want anyone to O.D. after such a long layoff, but rest assured that more will follow. Be prepared.
Here is the background and itinerary for my summer trip to Costa Rica. Basically, I'm getting paid two round trip tickets, room and board, along with 5 G's to be Dr. Bill Eaton's research b##ch, er I mean assistant. Dr. Eaton, for those of you who havn't heard of the legend, is the vice president of Peninsula College and a fairly respected microbiologist. Under his expert guidance myself and three other students (more later) will be doing lab work at the La Selva biological research station (you can Google it to learn more) from July 7th to the 21st, then collecting samples in the Monteverde cloud forest preserve for three days. Then I fly home to Port Angeles for a memorial on the 25th and coming back to La Selva on July 28th. On August 23rd, I head up to the Laguna de Largo lodge near the Nicaraguan border where I'll do work in the Maquenque preserve until the 7th of September. Then I have a week to do whatever I want, which will probably include beer, a beach hut and a surfboard, until I fly home on Sept. 15th. All and all, I'll be in Costa Rica for about ten weeks.
The work wer're doing is soil microbial analysis to understand the effects of global climate change and different land management practices. Soil microbes are a great indicator of ecosystem health and change for a number of reasons. They respond rapidly to change, they aid in decomposition and humus production, and they're key players in nutrient cycling and availability. So what I do is: take soil samples -> determine pH and bulk density -> determine the Total Organic Carbon (TOC) using K2SO4 extraction -> determine NH4, NH3, and total nitrogen using KCl extraction -> then I extract different types of DNA (for presence) or RNA (for activity) from the soil, clone it many, many times using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), then see if I have what I'm looking for using Gel Electrophoresis. The things I'm looking for as far as presence and activity are concerned are: genes for nitrogen fixation, methane production and digestion, lignin digestion, certain fungi and archeabacteria, and a bunch of other s##t. I left a bunch of other steps out and if you want to know more, just email me as I'm sure most readers have quit by now.
Anyhow, it's a pretty cool project, I get work at one of the premier jungle research stations in the world, and hob nob with some fairly big names in the business. Plus it's like working in a zoo. Costa Rica has more biodiversity per square kilometer than anywhere else in the world which is about 4-5 times that of North America. I've already seen monkeys, a jagarundi, sloths, a kinkajou, wild pigs, pacas, and snakes, turtles, insects, frogs, birds and butterflies of all shapes, sizes and colors. Also, there's three kick-ass class IV & V white water rafting runs in close proximity to where I'm staying (the Sarapiqui, Reventazon, and the Pacuare) as well as world class surfing. Tune in again to see how the adventure unfolds
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