An Update From Team Ecosystem Services

What a summer it has been so far :)

Team Ecosystem Services (Ashley and Lauren) has been busy wrapping up our research and we are quite pleased with the way things turned out. We have finished our intercept surveys and have been analyzing the data, writing reports, and finishing up. This project has been the most awesome way to learn about the research process!

A major focus of our study was to investigate the values that people place on the environment and ecosystem services in the Pemigewasset watershed region of New Hampshire. After the initial interviews and data entry, we were able to dive into the analysis portion and see what we could find. Here are two samples of analyses we ran to compare the averages for all of the environmental values and ecosystem services against survey site. We ran this spatial analysis using ArcGIS.

At the beginning of this project, we spoke with Sarah Garlick about her science and community outreach programs. We were inspired by Sarah's ideas and believe that engaging the public with understandable science is a great way to spread the word about environmental issues and topics. We have enjoyed learning and discovering the way people value the environment and we hope our efforts will be able to contribute to community outreach and engagement on a broader scale. We also wanted to try to help create awareness of the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation since it is so important in the science world. Surprisingly, the majority of survey respondents we spoke with had never heard of it before. We gave people a quick overview of what we do here and handed out HBEF pamphlets.

We can't thank our mentors, Amy Villamagna and Shannon Rogers, enough for all of their guidance and dedication throughout the duration of this project. They are truly awesome advisors and we are forever grateful for the skills and knowledge they have provided us with this summer. You guys rock!

We are looking forward to giving a more in depth presentation of all of our hard work at the final conference next Tuesday. We hope to see you all there! -Ashley and Lauren :)