Hello again CLM fellows, here at the Provo Shrub Lab Science we are working hard. It is almost a year since I came here and I have to say that work at this place has been such a great experience. A couple weeks ago we finally started to catch sagebrush smell in the field at the common gardens. As I mentioned in my previous post about applying chromatographic technics to our analysis, the results were very useful in supporting our smell profile experiments and giving us a better idea of the volatile compounds in the smell of sagebrush.  We have a lot of data and we are looking at what is the best way to discuss our results and write our report about the different smell pattern between all the populations that we have evaluated since starting our experiments. There are also some new things that I started this week.  One is to do statistics with R software which I consider to be a valuable skill for me to learn.   Also, we started a new project looking to apply some microscope technics to sagebrush, including the use of imageJ software.  I have wonderful work companions and a great mentor who is teaching me many things. I have to say that there a lot of things that I have to learn still, but this great experience at the Provo Shrub Lab inspires me to keep exploring and learning. As I said before, thank you all the CLM staff for the support and for this opportunity.

Hector

Provo, UT

Forest Service, RMRS, Provo Shrub Science Lab