Today was the first day of serious science!  We spent the morning discussing the research and the lake and planning for the next few days.  The goal of this research is to study the transfer of nutrients from lakes to the land, which would eventually be applied to agriculture.  Aquatic insects that have one life stage in water and another on land are the major carriers of these nutrients - those would be midges in Iceland and things like mayflies in Wisconsin.  Different parts of the lake have different midge species due to changes in temperature and depth.  The lake is only 4 meters deep at most, and is 25 C where water from hot springs drains into it.  Near the river outlet it is closer to 5 C.  The midges should be out in about a week, so we're preparing to take samples.

Today I was part of the crew that went to a neighboring lake that has no midges.  We set up several data stations at varying distances from the lake with collection tools called pitfalls and infalls.  That sounds really fancy, but actually infalls are plastic cups tied to a pole, while pitfalls are cups buried in the ground.  The cups are filled with a liquid that kills insects.  The infalls are to measuring flying insects (the midges!) while the pitfalls catch crawling insects. These stations were set up as controls to compare with lakes that have midges. We also worked with one meter plots, some of which have been supplemented with dead midges brought from Myvatn.  You can immediately tell which ones these are because of the tall grass growing in them!  We labeled all the plots with their appropriate numbers, replaced any stakes that might have gone missing, and spent the majority of our time fixing up the fence around the plots.  Why the fence?  To keep the sheep out.  Can't have livestock grazing on your experiments.

The second crew spend the day getting our boats ready for the season.  I should mention who exactly is here - there's Claudio Gratton, one of the professors running the project, Jamin and Maddie, two graduate students, and Patrick, another undergraduate from Madison.  More people will be in and out throughout the summer. 

Today it was very windy and a little bit chilly out - the wind is strong enough to knock you over and will blow away anything left unattended.  Hopefully it will calm down soon, since I'm borrowing other people's warm clothes until mine get here.  Also I don't think the wind would be too good for the midges.

Yesterday evening we visited the volcanic hot springs nearby (but were quickly chased back to the car by the wind blowing up dust and small rocks) and a sheep farm at the tail end of its lambing season.  The little lambs were pretty cute!