As Lin-Manuel Miranda famously sang in Hamilton, “What is a legacy? It’s planting seeds in a garden you’ll never get to see.” Well, here’s the garden I helped plant, but won’t ever see. Using the findings of my research, the resources crew and I collected...
How visitation is affecting the air quality in Carlsbad Cavern Carbon dioxide is a naturally occurring gas in Earth’s atmosphere, but in high concentrations, the gas can act as an asphyxiant. OSHA and other government agencies recommend a 5,000 parts per million (ppm) workplace exposure limit of 8 hours...
My Mosaics in Science internship concludes this week, and as I say 再见(zàijiàn)—goodbye to Carlsbad Caverns, I wanted to reflect on my experiences here over the past three months. This summer, I collected data on current environmental conditions in Carlsbad Cavern in order to establish a...
I know that I’ve talked about the volcano before, but I don’t believe I adequately described what it’s like, physically. It’s basically a mound of cinders and loose rocks. It’s not nearly as solid as, say, the Rocky Mountains. That means it erodes very quickly...
Today I spent a good deal of time catching hummingbirds. Unfortunately, our bander isn’t coming back until the end of the month. However, we can still capture them and take various measurements because it is good practice. Until this point, we had only caught...
Participating on Derek Bristol’s expedition in Carlsbad Cavern was a very special experience for me. I had forgotten how much I loved the feeling of being on an expedition surrounded by likeminded people that are equally passionate about contributing to our common goals of safety,...
Where does your wastewater go? It’s not a question everyone thinks to ask (I certainly never cared to), but it’s an absolutely critical question. Why am I asking you this? Well, as an environmental science student, I’ve taken a planning class or two, which was really the first...
My grandpa’s favorite saying was, “When you assume, you make an a** out of you and me.” This past week, I learned a costly lesson from making assumptions and it was a hard lesson in what NOT to do. I assumed that my data loggers...