Research - 2007 Summer

2007 Summer NSF REU

WTU received a National Science Foundation Research Experience award for summer 2007, and we selected Megan Jensen from Nebraska Wesleyan University. Megan spent the summer gaining experience in all phases of herbarium-based work and specimen collecting in the field. Besides the usual tasks such as mounting, strapping, and sorting specimens, she participated in several trips, including a one-day outing to Peoh Point in Kittitas County, a two-day trip to Timberwolf Mountain in Yakima County, WTU’s Annual Foray to Steens Mountain in Oregon (5-days), a four-day backcountry expedition in North Cascades National Park, two days of collecting in Mt. Rainier National Park, and three days of botanical surveys in the San Juan Islands. Megan spent considerable time identifying all of the specimens that she collected during field work, and also worked on annotating WTU’s legacy holdings for several grass taxa. On the technical side, she assisted in specimen databasing, and made significant progress populating the morphological, ecological and phenological fields for nearly 1,000 taxa in WTU’s Plants of Washington Image Gallery. Through the internship she gained a better understanding of the day-to-day functioning of a herbarium and developed knowledge of the flora of the Pacific Northwest. Megan is currently pursuing her Master of Science degree in The Graduate Program in Plant Biology and Conservation offered jointly by Northwestern University and the Chicago Botanic Garden.