Finally out in the field

We went out in the field with Dr. Mark Schorr from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.  Dr. Schorr has been sampling the North Chickamauga system for decades, and looks forward to getting data from our project.

We first went to an acid mine damage mitigation site, which has a four stage containment pond system:  plastic lining and limestone:

You can see the "yellowboy", better known as precipitated/oxidized iron.  Good time for a bit of brushup on pH, negative logs, and redox.
 We had the xbee radios attached to our equipment available if needed to save time getting around to different sampling points.  Didn't really need them, though it was nice to have them out...

At our reference stream, we did some old-style colorimetric titrations for parameters like alkalinity and hardness.

After leaving the mitigation site, we went to our reference/baseline stream. 

I threw some botany and geology while we were out there, which I always try to do on a field trip.  The kids had a great time, and as one student remarked, "Now all this seems more real.  I have a more thorough understanding of what we're trying to accomplish."