Blog #5 – Mountain Lakes Survey

05 Nov Blog #5 – Mountain Lakes Survey

Throughout the course of my internship, I was given the opportunity to transfer over to the natural resource department and work under Steve Fradkin. Since then, I surveyed and collected samples with three of my colleagues here at Olympic National Park’s “mountain lakes crew”. These fieldworks require us to hike, and sometimes even bushwack, through roughly 15 to 20 miles of Olympic’s mountain regions. It sure is physically demanding but honestly, I don’t mind it because I get to go to all these remote areas where most visitors do not get to go to. I joke around with my colleagues that we get paid to go backpacking. But in all seriousness, this is part of a long-term monitoring study on how the alpine/subalpine lakes are being affected by climate change. This includes but is not limited to, collecting data on the lakes’ fish and amphibian population, temperature, and water chemistry such as dissolved oxygen, pH, salinity, etc.

Here is a photo of Audrey going to the deepest part of the ‘Milk’ lake to collect some data using the YSI!