POBR25 Day 8: Crane Prairie Campground, Bend, OR 6-22-25

 

Today was another full science day which I love since we did microscope work and tests on our sampling. Dr. Schuster showed us how to do all the lab work while simultaneously getting everything set up and keeping everyone on track so that was nice. I take advantage of using microscopes every time since to me it's super fun to see the microscopic world. Today we ran transported our bacterial growth from the paddles to the plates to multiply the number of bacteria cells we can analyze from each sample site we have visited since the start of the trip.

I got to see the first samples for the MacConkey test and the Nutrient-TCC for the Klickitat River. I got a lot of growth so that is interesting to see what the heck is going on in the water. I can’t imagine its anything good. After our work was done, I actually got to collect a small sample of sand from the shallow sandy part of Crane Prairie Lake which was super cool since I was able to identify a rotifer, nematode, and a diatom while looking for Testate Amoeba. This protist has quietly taken over my interest when it comes to biology and environmental science.

 Tonight's dinner is pizza! Imagine that pizza in the mountains seems s strange to me but hey why not? I'm excited for it too since we are probably hiking out to the field site we are helping with tomorrow. I hear we are going to do a rare plant survey with the park botanist. I don’t know too much about plants themselves, but I do a lot of gardening where I grow vegetables, so I am ready for the hiking and the work on the docket for tomorrow.

 The best pizza out there! Shout out to Monet and the dinner crew James and Liz, this dinner was amazing! 

 A little extra sampling and I found a diatom (center bean looking glass thing) 


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