Wetland sampling

Wetland is an area where the land is wet at certain period of the year and dry at another. It is also being characterized with the vegetation around the land. Here at RIT, there are several wetlands surrounding the campus, these include both natural and constructed wetlands. As a collaboration project between both the imaging science and environmental science, the Imaging Science teams and the Environmental Science teams did a SpecTIR wetland survey at 55 sites across 2 natural and 2 constructed wetland around RIT. This survey started at 7.30 am this morning and ended at exactly 7.30pm. The wetland survey field work was finished at 4.45pm but then we continued with some sorting out and in lab spectral measurement.

It was an amazing experience and the hard work was worth it.

Week 7 - The full treatment experiment set up

After several meetings and discussions with my mentors, i set up the last experiment which is the full treatment experiment for analyzing Tannic acid, phenol and Natural organic matter effects on duckweed growth and how duckweed affect the amount/concentration of these dissolved organic matter in the water. The experiment was set up on three different days according to treatments and these experiments will run for 10days total.

These are the pictures taken from the growth chamber.

Wednesday Photo session and wetland site set up

Today the aquatic ecology research group members went out to set up permanent sampling sites at a wetland in RIT. We worked from 8am to 10 am moving concrete and lumber to the site to build a steady plot for sampling. Later in the afternoon i had a photo session with Qian and my mentors. I also replenished the Microcystis aeruginosa culture medium and did some acid wash (cleaning the glassware). Tomorrow i will be working at the lab over at the NTID building. Megan and I will be working on the folin analysis for my water samples.

Autoclave machine leaking

The autoclave machine i have been using to make the growth media for my plant cultures was leaking and need to be fixed before i could use it again. So today, i used a smaller autoclave machine that i borrowed from Dr Buckley. It was smaller so less growth media could be autoclaved at once. I'm hoping that the autoclaved machine would be fixed soon or it would be very troublesome.

Random Pictures from the incubator

Figure1: Aquatic plant stock cultures

Figure2: Selenastrum culture

Figure3: Duckweed stockcultures

Figure4: High concentration of Microcystis aeruginosa

Figure5: Cladophora cultures

Duckweed week (Week5)

Results from the pilot experiments series showed that duckweed seems to be able to grow in cultures containing Tannic acid and it also decreased the Tannic acid concentration. Based on this finding, i have been focusing on duckweed cultures the whole week. I also collected new duckweed samples from one of the RIT wetland. Below are the duckweed sample collected (including sample from other sites):

Duckweed 1 from Conesus Lake

Duckweed 2 from RIT wetland sites 2

Duckweed 3 from RIT wetland sites 1
Duckweed 4 from Irondequoit Bay

Species used in week 4-Microcystis aeruginosa

Macro-image of Microcystis aeruginosa

taken from:

http://www.utoledo.edu/as/lec/images/images2/microcystis.jpg

Image viewed under the microscope

Taken from:

http://plantphys.info/organismal/lechtml/images/Microcystis_aeruginosa_2386_2.jpg

Week 4 The week of Microcystis aeruginosa :)

Monday

• Last day/day 5 of duckweed culture phenol experiment.
• Stock-cultures containing Microcystis aeruginosa was checked for contamination and cell counts for use in the next preliminary experiment.

Tuesday

• Microcystis aeruginosa species was tested with media containing tannic acid or phenol. Experiment was set up for both treatment and this preliminary experiment will be ran for 6 days (Day 0 to Day 5)

Wednesday

• Stock-cultures of Selenastrum, Microcystis and duckweed were monitored by changing the growth medium used in the flasks.
• Due to contamination(or possible invasion of other algae species) in the duckweed flask containing "Chu's Medium" (a media used as nutrient for supporting duckweed growth), the duckweeds were dipped in diluted bleach (sodium hypochloride) for few seconds and rinsed with nanopure water to killed all pathogens/other algaes.

Thursday

• Microcystis aeruginosa water samples ( from the preliminary experiment set up on Tuesday) were taken out for phenol analysis. There were 12 flasks of Microcystis aeruginosa.
• Cladophora species stock-cultures were set up in Selenastrum growth medium and Chu's medium.

Friday

• A total of 2 batches of Selenastrum growth media was made and kept in the fridge for next week experiment.
• The duckweed stock-subcultures were replenish with new media and transferred to new flasks. The duckweed need to be transferred into new flask because the original flask might contained high salt concentration and this will disturb the growth of duckweed.

Saturday

• Cell count was done on the Microcystis aeruginosa cultures from flask containing tannic acid and phenol. ( A total of 12 samples were counted)

In short week 4, was the week of Microcystis aeruginosa because mostly i have been monitoring the Microcystis aeruginosa stock-cultures and also performing daily cell count (from Tuesday- Sunday) for the Microcystis aeruginosa tannic acid/ phenol pilot experiment.

This is a link of what Microcystis aeruginosa (blue green algae - a type of cyanobacteria) is

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/bay/hab/microcystis.html