Back from Italy

Well, I got back from Bologna Italy, and I come bearing samples. We have collected three new cores. One core was cleaned, processed, and counted while I was in Italy. The other two were cleaned of sediment and brought back here to be processed and counted. When completed, this should bring our total number of cores to 16. These new cores are from a different project (and have different quadrant numbers) but were taken from the southern part of the Po plain. Our sampling in this area has been a bit sparse compared to the northern area, so we wanted to get a descent spread of the entire area. Now we have the entire area well sampled and can do east/west and north/south transects when we analyze the data. The two remaining new cores that were brought back to Virginia will be processed in the early part of this summer, adn then the project will focus on data analysis and the writing of papers.

The time I spent in Italy was both productive and an amazing learning experience. I had never been to Italy before, and had only been to Europe once previously when I was very young. Italy is an amazing place. I hope I get the chance to go back there again.

New Intern Project

As the semester is coming to an end, I am currently in the process of creating an activity kit relating to the topic "Paleo-ecology". I am excited to be able to start on this project and show in a hands on way how this topic relates to the PoPlain Project. When the kit is completed I hope it will be able to effectively help kids obtain a basic background on paleo-ecology and how a specimen relates to its biotic and abiotic environment. Furthermore, explaining that by understanding how a specimen interacted with these environments one can determine specifics regarding how that specimen lived and what the environment was like that it lived in.

Initial Intern Research Experience

Since I have been an intern, I have been working extremely closely with the graduate students in research. I am learning new things about the Po Plain Project through this research every time I am in the lab. To be completely honest, I had no idea how tedious the research actually was because the are numerous things you are looking for on the fossil to categorize them. By the end of this semester I hope to be more efficient with the sorting process to the point where I am more familiar with the fossils so that I can interpret more based off of what I find at first glance.

As, I gain more experience in the research process, hopefully I will be introduced to others aspects of the research besides sorting, because I know there are far more things that are entailed in "Sequence Stratigraphy".

In Action at KTU

The Kids' Tech University Event lasted from 1:30 pm until 3:30 pm. We had numerous children visit our station throughout that duration of time. We would start off giving a brief discription about the Po Plain Research Project. Allowing the visitors to our station an opporutunity to hear what we do with the project and the work that goes into it. After a description was given the children would be given the opportunity to participate in an activitity that simulated "Sequence Stratigraphy", through the use of sand and beads of various shapes and colors. The children seemed to be fascinated with portion of the activity. Microscopes and magnifying glass, of different powers and magnitudes, were also made available. We believed this was a good opportunity to teach the children the proper way to use these scientific tools. Fossil were also present so that the children could look at them. Overall, this was a great outreach event that gave the public an opportunity to furthermore understand the Po Plain Project.

Getting Ready For KTU

On Staturday, Februrary 26, 2011, we participated in KTU, Kids' Tech University, on the campus of Virginia Tech. We arrived early to prepare a crowd that could have possibly accumulated up to 1,000 children. The "Sequence Stratigraphy Kit", created by the previous intern Ceseley Haynes, was displayed at our station as a hands on activity. I believe the visual and physical components of our booth attracted many children. Not only were they able to see what we were presenting, but they were also able to participate. Our team that was present at the event consisted of graduate research students and undergraduate interns assisting with the Po Plain Project. This allowed the interns an opportunity to gain more knowledge of the project by being placed into an environment where they had to learn about it. Also, the graduate students present served as an excellent source for information, providing in depth responses to questions that parents and others curious in the research project had.

Po Plain background

On the far left is an image of what the core looks like when before the sediment is removed. The shell hash beside it is what remains after sieving and rinsing out the muddy sediments.

The cores cut through many difffernt environments that represetnt the history of the area. Some sections are terrestrial deposits (on land). They are generally devoid of mollusks with the exception of land snails. They also contain rocky sediments and plant material.

Many of the samples from the core expose marine environments. There are a few species that are found primarily in shallow environments, such as Lentidium mediteraneum, a bivalve that is the most common species found through out our cores. Other shallow water genera include Donax and Abra. There are also samples from deeper marine waters, recognized by the presence of genera such as Pitar, Euspira, and Nucula.

Since these species still exist today, we know there prefered environment and likely depth range. This allows us to track environment and water depth in the past using our cores.

Presentations

Every year our department holds a research symposium where graduate students present their work. This year, we had three presentations on the research coming from the Po Plains project. The image to the left shows the locations (in red) of the samples have been processed so far from the Po plain in Italy. There are many, many more cores available from this area that still need to be processed, but we are already producing interesting results from what we have collected.

New Intern

Hi ! I am the new intern. As a biological sciences and psychology double major here at Virginia Tech, I am learning fascinating new things about geosciences and sequence stratigraphy everyday in research. I will be working on the STEM Outreach Project and assisting with the Po Plain Research. Stay tuned for more blogs to come!