Troubleshooting

Things you should watch out for...

General

• Long pants, hats and boots are ideal, especially in woodlands and swamp areas, to keep mud and irritating plants off your body.

• Bug spray is very helpful to keep your body itch and bite free. 

• Rain gear might be a good idea in case it starts to rain while you are collecting data (a rain jacket also helps when arthropod tests are being done. You can sit on it).

• Make sure you are always prepared for an injury if you are a distance away from a place to get help.  Have a medical bag and a walkie-talkie for communication with a person inside a near building.

• Safety goggles and gloves are important to keep dangerous and acidic chemicals off your hands and out of your eyes.

Project Specific

• A trowel might be needed to create a hole for the algae slide to be inserted into

• Make sure a systematic way of looking at the different fields of view on the algae slides is created (e.g.: look once in each corner and once in the middle)

• Make sure your fields of view are on the side of the slide that was in the ground.

• Labeling your baggies for soil and algae before going outside to collect your samples makes the job go more quickly. 

• If you label one of the slides that is going to sandwich the algae slide and put that, along with a blank slide and a rubber band, into the appropriate labeled algae baggie, it allows your time outside to go much faster.

• Taking extra slides outside in case they break is also useful.

• Putting a piece of tape on the soil core at 6 cm allows to make it easier to collect the soil sample consistently.

• Do both the algae count at the chemical tests at the same time, because soil is alive and it will change.

• Make sure the soil core is cleaned out in between each sample taken to avoid contamination.

• Sometimes, depending on your conditions, the phosphate and pH relationship might not show up.

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