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June 2023

Field set up is complete! It was a grand team effort with everyone pitching in to help get T-posts, soil moisture tubes, and respiration collars in the ground. We’re starting off the season with some pretty dry soil, so this took an equal dose of patience and brute strength (see below our new RockFACE technician, Mary Durstock, valiantly sledge hammering in a respiration collar). Thankfully, we had established protocols from last year’s field trials to help things move a little more smoothly.

We also welcomed our summer intern from the Phenotypic Plasticity Research Experience for Community College Students (PRECS) program, Hannah Maher, who got her hands dirty on her first day burying basalt baskets. These baskets hold small mesh pouches of basalt that we remove over the course of the multi-year field trial to help gauge weathering rates.

As the plants got bigger, we began physiology measurements to see how our soybeans respond to increased CO₂ levels. Pictured below is Hannah measuring stomatal conductance on individual leaves. Stomata are tiny openings on the leaf surface that let CO₂ into the leaf and water vapour out into the atmosphere, a process known as transpiration. Conductance just means how open or closed the stomata are. So, if the stomata are open, we say the stomatal conductance is high; if the stomata are more closed, the stomatal conductance is low. Hannah’s PRECS project looked at how stomatal conductance changes under increased CO₂ levels and what impact this might have on soil moisture, one of the main drivers of weathering rates.

Later in the month, we had the opportunity to talk about our enhanced weathering research with a group of Illinois high school science and agriculture teachers.

July 2023

At the end of her internship period, Hannah presented her findings at the Illinois Student Research Program Alliance Symposium. Take a closer look at her poster !

August 2023

The soybeans began to develop their pods in August, meaning it was time for our final round of diurnal photosynthesis measurements. Diurnal means “during the day,” so we take rounds of measurements from sunrise to sunset to see how photosynthesis changes over the course of the day. We do this on three different days throughout the growing season to represent different crop development stages. Although diurnal measurements make for a long day’s work, we’re rewarded with beautiful sunrises and sunsets out at the farm.

September 2023

I spent most of September preparing for the Leverhulme Centre for Climate Change Mitigation (LC3M) annual meeting in 91̽��. Once Spoons the cat had finished reviewing my presentation, I headed off to England. It was wonderful to finally meet in-person with all the collaborators we’ve been sending our samples to over the last two years! A massive thank you to Mary for holding down the fort back in Illinois while I was gone, as, sadly, field work doesn’t stop for meetings.

October 2023

Our soybeans were fully dried out and ready for harvest in mid-October. We used a small plot harvester, which allows us to harvest single rows. With all the field measurements we take, there is a lot of human traffic in and out of the field, often with large scientific instruments in tow. Because of this, there can be some accidental damage to the plants over the course of the growing season. To make sure we have completely undamaged rows for harvest, we assign “yield rows” in each plot that we do not take any other measurements in during the season.

November 2023

With the soybeans all harvested, there’s only one task left for the 2023 RockFACE field season: basalt spreading! We apply a fresh batch of basalt to our plots every autumn for the duration of the experiment. As our treatment plots are quite small, and located right next to the control plots, it is impractical to apply the basalt with large farming equipment. This means that the whole lab gets a good workout in spreading it by hand. We mark the plots into rectangular sections and spread out two buckets worth of basalt across each section. This lets us spread the same amount of basalt across each treatment plot as evenly as we can.