Kendra's annual limnology workshop

During early January, I spent a week in Florida with my CSI-Limnology colleagues. For those of you who don't know about CSI-Limnology (www.csilimnology.org), we are an interdisciplinary team of researchers who have compiled lake and landscape data for thousands of the northeastern-most 17 U.S. states in order to better understand how lakes are responding to changes in land use and climate. We have named our database LAGOS (LAke GeOSpatial) and the lake data look something like:

Our fearless leader is my previous adviser and long-time friend, Pat Soranno. She is the lead-PI on our NSF MacroSystems Biology grant that funds these workshops each year. Our team includes researchers from across central and eastern U.S. (and even one who person who lives in the UK), so every year we meet somewhere for a week to work together. This year, we met at the Archbold Biological Station (http://www.archbold-station.org/) in Venus, FL. Convenient, right? Right! As soon as Mom and Dad heard that I had to be in FL in early Jan for work, they started planning for us all to come to The Villages to see them for the holidays. Anyway, here are some pix of us working and exploring.

Lake Annie on the Archbold Biological Station property. The Director, Dr. Hilary Swain,
took our group there one evening to tell us about the Station and this really unique FL lake. 

Most of CSI-Limnology

Hilary was very cool...she told us all about the history of the station and was quite entertaining. 

Loving the break from our conference room (below)!

We are working on a variety of publications that use data from LAGOS, and we spent a lot of the week conducting data analysis and interpreting results for these publications.

We also had fun getting to know everyone, including our new team members. Below are a couple of pictures from our mid-week half-day excursion kayaking on Fisheating Creek, which flows into Lake Okeechobee (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheating_Creek). We saw SO many spiders, snakes, and vultures!

Wait...what? Where did the Creek go? Ha! Wrong turn... Just a short portage.

Chris and Pang-Ning

Me and my grad student, Nick, surrounded by a bed of exotic, nuisance water hyacinth

Not sure if you can see it, but there is a water moccasin in the hole in the tree.
They were everywhere! Staring out at us from these holes!

We had a very productive and fun week in FL! I'm already looking forward to our next workshop, although I have to admit that I am growing weary of work-related travel. I miss my family when I go away! And, what is it that makes me think I will sleep and exercise more when away from them? NEVER happens!

Here are a few other random pix that I like from our week in FL.

Poor Kath was sick the whole week...

There was a nice balcony we could sit on, until the mosquitoes came out! Beautiful sunsets from there (below).