What Excites You About Leading Field Research Teams?
Most of my students are from the city, and they’ve never really seen a swamp or a forest. They don’t know what to expect into the field at the beginning. But after the first week, they love it. They see all sorts of wildlife, and they get a better understanding of the environment and how it changes. That is the fun part: that we as educators can help people understand this ecosystem.
What Keeps Your Research Interesting?
What’s particularly interesting in the swamp here is that the concentration of tannic acid [a chemical that leaches into water from plants, such as tea leaves] can be up to five to ten times higher than in the Sacramento Delta. We have really high content of dissolved organic matter [e.g., leaves], and it’s exciting to look the swamp and water quality and how organic matter affects the drinking water here.