Back in the field with SES!

SES is a semester long intensive program where undergraduates take courses, have weekly day-long labs, and process and analyze collected data and present it for 9 weeks. After those nine weeks, student lead an independent project on their topic of choice in environmental science. For the third year in a row, I led the canopy scaling field and data activities. This year, the weather could not be nicer, though we dealt with some herbivory and temperature issues for getting optimal photosynthesis values - such is the challenge when measuring in September on Cape Cod! 

Last year, I integrated a fluorescence element to the lab, and we used a WALZ PAM Jr to take light response curves of sun-adapted leaves and observe the response of non-photochemical quenching and yield of photosystem II at different light intensities in sun and shade leaves. 

Students excelled at these tasks, despite a wonky LiCor 6400 (one was perfect, one gave us trouble) and hot temperatures. The rest of the week we went over scaling equations and discussed the different aspects of photosynthesis and how fluorescence and CO2 concentrations can be measured by different pieces of equipment to inform our ideas!