These trips are like a formal family meal - something on which many long hours are spent planning, arranging, outfitting and for which every possible need is considered, only to have the meal consumed quickly, even finished before everyone has a chance to sit down and eat. After which we end up in the kitchen washing mountains of pots and pans and wondering if the meal was worth all the work? Then as we complete the cleanup and think about finally sitting down a dinner guest visits the kitchen to let it be known the main course was a bit dry this year and how much they are looking forward to the next family meal when there will be a chance to get it right.
We all relate to being the host of the feast - we all worked long hours planning, arranging, outfitting and considering our every possible need while on a small private island where every item needed must be carried in, used and then carried out. It was hot, hard, humid, tough work and yet oddly we are grateful to have had the opportunity. We look forward to our next trip and to the resulting rewards.
On a more serious note, we experienced great successes. We doubled the volume of samples and of analytical processes for our environmental characterizations and incorporated NOAA's GLOBE Program protocols for each sample type. We increased the rigor and accuracies of the sea floor collection, capturing twice the volume of data while adding geo-located pictures of the sea floor. And we deployed a student conceived methodology to better collect and categorize the shoreline and debris information while also adding tidal data collection and mapping as well as photographic documentation of the debris per collection cell.
Student blog posts and journal content again revealed this experience as life altering and attitude changing. Students credit the class with renewed appreciations and increased interest in the coral reefs and the issues that affect them.
This on-going project will be presented in July in San Diego at the ESRI Annual User Conference, in July/August in Calgary, Alberta, Canada at the GLOBE Annual Partner Meeting and in October in Orlando at the League for Innovation first Annual STEMtech conference.
For more information on our program check out dcccd.edu/gis.
Thanks for following us on the blog and for your interests and comments.
Best regards,
Scott
Just the Beginning
ReplyDeleteHey everyone! We all made it home. I just wanted to take a second to tell everyone, thank you. Thanks, to everyone that followed our blog. I know it is not the same as being there, but I hope you got a good sense of who we are as a whole and what we were trying to accomplish in the short amount of time on the Island. Thanks, to all of my fellow students and facilitators, with out each one you, or trip would not have happened. I know we all worked very hard to reach our goals for this trip and to lay the foundation for future classes. Thanks, to Scott Sires, our instructor, for leading all of us down a path to a better future for all. I know the path is long and has a lot of turns and crossroads, but our goals are attainable. Continue to lead and motivate and all will fall into place. Again, thanks to all!
Sincerely,
Brandon Duffy