Hi. I'm Marge Seguin. I am a junior environmental studies and philosophy double major, and this summer I was a research assistant for the Restoration Ecology Program. So what is the Restoration Ecology Program, and what is restoration? So basically, restoration is fixing damaged ecosystems. The REP aims to address that through research, practice, and outreach. Research is informing the restoration, practice is doing the restoration, and outreach is getting people involved in the work. 

How to apply to this internship-- two resources are the Miller Worley Center Internship and Fellowship website, where you can learn more about this internship as well as others that are similar; and the MHC-REP website, where you can learn about the program and this internship. So then you assemble the necessary materials, prepare for the interview. Something that I think helped me secure this internship was not only my interest in research and environmental science, but also I had a farm internship two summers ago, which prepared me for the physical demands of the job. 

I used LYNK funding to get paid for this internship, and that's $3,000. It pays for food, housing, transport. And the application deadline is around January 20. 

The research overview for last summer was how restoration efforts impact geochemical processes, how restoration efforts can decrease greenhouse gas emissions and affect nutrient filtration, how biochar impacts restoration efforts. Biochar is charcoal formed from organic matter, and it keeps carbon in the soil, so we were looking to see how biochar affects the vegetative community and nutrient cycling. And we also looked at how restoration affects microbial communities-- the diversity, function, and competition between sites. 

So what I did. In the field, we established experimental plots with soil amendments. To establish the plots, we surveyed the area. It was pretty flooded because we were in a wetland. We prepared the select supplies. We put in stakes. We trenched and pumped water out. We then dug holes to make way for the soil amendments, which were BiocharPEAT. We added these, covered the plots, and that was basically it. 

In the lab at Mount Holyoke, we helped with the PCR process, which is a method that makes many copies of small sections of DNA, which tells you what microbial species are in the soil. And specifically, we made the plate shown in the photo, where you put small pieces of soil into each well. 

At the Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies, we did DEAs and CFIm. DEAs uses the production of nitrogen gas to measure denitrification rates. And for that, we put soil into beakers, we added the DEA media, we evacuated and flushed the beakers with nitrogen gas, put on a shaker table, added another gas, and then took gas samples. 

For CFIm, this measures carbon and nitrogen, and this was done in two parts. We weighed soils, we put them into cups and beakers. In the cups, we added KCl, put on the shaker table, and then did this drip station thing. And for the beakers, we fumigated them to kill the microbes in the soil. We put the dead soil into mason jars with fresh soil for those microbes to feed on. And then we took gas samples after incubation because the microbes were producing gases as they were feeding on their dead siblings. 

[LAUGHTER] 

We also had this teaching opportunity, which was the Restoration Ecology Summer Scholars Program. I assisted with the weekly activities like stream assessment, soil analyses. At the end of the week, they got to do a design [INAUDIBLE], where they created the next steps for what Project Stream would be. But the biggest thing I contributed was creating and presenting lesson in plant identification and plant use in restoration. And here I'm looking at a frog and not a plant, but still very exciting. 

Some challenges. It's important to know that environmental research entails long, labor-intensive days. Includes a lot of cleaning as well, with rehabilitation, which wasn't a problem, but it's just something important to know. Also, I wasn't as involved in the entire process as I'd like to be in the future. What was exciting about the research was knowing the background science and the reasoning behind the experiment, so in the future, I think I'd like to be more involved in that. 

What I learned. This is just an overview, but broadly, more about the research topics, I learned that restoration efforts can improve nutrient filtration and water quality. The use of biochar can be used to increase biodiversity, increase nutrient cycling, and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. And I learned that not much is known about microbial community composition and function and how composition and diversity influences function. 

Broader takeaways. I learned more about what research is like, which is why I wanted to do the internship. And I learned that it can be physically challenging. And also, it's a long path where you have to go to graduate school, and it's hard to get a job, so that was important to learn about. 

I learned I'm very passionate about teaching. I loved creating and teaching a lesson. I loved working with students and seeing them become engaged in the science. And so this gave me direction on next steps to take in a career. 

So continue to look into research, but maybe do a thesis and become more involved in the entire process. I appreciated how our research informed practice. That's not always true, so that's an important part for me. And I learned that I definitely want to teach. Thank you. 

[APPLAUSE]