I played around with my blog today, trying to customize it a little. I'm not sure if I'm done, but it's okay for now!
We headed to the Spoonbill Lakes to plant in the wetland today (those are the lakes that I showed an image of before). We had about 2000 plants to put in, but we also have a bunch of volunteers so it only took a couple of hours. We checked the treatment system that was there, and I got my first redback spider sighting - it was inside the big well-like thing that holds the system. I actually was surprised, because it ran away pretty fast, and I always assumed they were a little aggressive. I guess it's like any animal that would rather just leave. We also found this weird bug in the soil, but I forget what its called. The front section of its body looked like a cricket, and the back section looked like a wasp - apparently they live in the soil, and pretty much tunnel around eating stuff.
Did you know that ladybugs are called 'ladybirds' here?
Unfortunately, this picture probably won't get much bigger, but it gives you an idea of how red the water is in some of these wetlands because of iron either in the water or attached to the soils. The iron also leaves "burn marks" along the sand that show the changes in water level.
The one thing that seems strange about treating water, is that the untreated water looks better than the treated water when the wetland isn't full or flowing very well. Even though it's slightly off-colour, the untreated water is still pretty clear, etc., but the treated water has white and black stuff floating on top, and algae, and all sorts of stuff. I think it's what causes people to think that the dirty water's safe, when really it's just because the it is so acidic and full of arsenic that nothing can actually survive in it (but plants obviously survive in the treated section since we just planted so many haha). The treated side will look better when we have rain, because flowing water always seems to look nicer.
I just finished reading 'Black Order' by James Rollins - for anyone who enjoys those "fiction but based on real ancient mystery/science involving the cracking of some code"-type books, this one was good. And left me actually interested in knowing more about some of the things it touched on.
We headed to the Spoonbill Lakes to plant in the wetland today (those are the lakes that I showed an image of before). We had about 2000 plants to put in, but we also have a bunch of volunteers so it only took a couple of hours. We checked the treatment system that was there, and I got my first redback spider sighting - it was inside the big well-like thing that holds the system. I actually was surprised, because it ran away pretty fast, and I always assumed they were a little aggressive. I guess it's like any animal that would rather just leave. We also found this weird bug in the soil, but I forget what its called. The front section of its body looked like a cricket, and the back section looked like a wasp - apparently they live in the soil, and pretty much tunnel around eating stuff.
Did you know that ladybugs are called 'ladybirds' here?
Unfortunately, this picture probably won't get much bigger, but it gives you an idea of how red the water is in some of these wetlands because of iron either in the water or attached to the soils. The iron also leaves "burn marks" along the sand that show the changes in water level.The one thing that seems strange about treating water, is that the untreated water looks better than the treated water when the wetland isn't full or flowing very well. Even though it's slightly off-colour, the untreated water is still pretty clear, etc., but the treated water has white and black stuff floating on top, and algae, and all sorts of stuff. I think it's what causes people to think that the dirty water's safe, when really it's just because the it is so acidic and full of arsenic that nothing can actually survive in it (but plants obviously survive in the treated section since we just planted so many haha). The treated side will look better when we have rain, because flowing water always seems to look nicer.
I just finished reading 'Black Order' by James Rollins - for anyone who enjoys those "fiction but based on real ancient mystery/science involving the cracking of some code"-type books, this one was good. And left me actually interested in knowing more about some of the things it touched on.
Labels: Miscellaneous, Research
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