Wrapping Up Root Scoring

It feels good to blog about the lab after a 2 month hiatus. I have had a jam-packed few days in Chicago working on the project. In particular, I have finished scoring all the MIP root slides for mycorrhizal presence. This has involved a lot of microscope work in a short span of time, but I am very glad to be finished so that I have more complete data to include in my poster presentation at Loyola University Chicago's Undergraduate Research Symposium in April. From now on, I will be working primarily on the graphs and poster rather than the bench top work that I had done last semester. 

Seeing the big picture of the different qualities of the roots that result from the soil has been really great to witness as I scored the slides. The difference in mycorrhizal structures between the soil from the Loyola green roofs has highlighted the variance in sustainability and health of the soil community over time. I feel that the results from the root scoring will be very influential in terms of providing suggestions for biotic sustainability, as there is a pretty clear difference in root structure between the different green roof styles and ages. 

This trusty counter sat beside me while I did my microscope work. It made tallying up the numbers of different structures at the 100 intersections much easier. 

Cleaning up some of the supplies and organizing the bench in the soil ecology lab has been another task of my brief time in Chicago this week.

 It has been such a wonderful journey working with the soil- from collecting it from the roofs to looking at the different aspects of soil health and gathering data. I am so glad to have had this opportunity, and I am very thankful to Dr. Chaudhary and everyone else who was patient with my while I have been researching. I hope to continue blogging in some capacity and provide more details as the research symposium draws nearer. Until then, I hope that this inspires you to look at the ground and consider how you interact with it!