What do Katy Perry and Peat Cores have in Common?

So my first week of work has come and gone. It has been interesting returning to work where I had worked before. It kind of felt like returning to school in September and remembering what homework is like. Perhaps I wasn’t as excited because there is no prospect of field work (my favourite) and I already know what a long winter of sample prep and lab work is like. Things are similar yet different, there are new people and some people I knew have moved on to other jobs or other departments. I am sure I will soon fall into a nice pattern at work and that “returning to school” feeling will disappear. Already I dived right in and tackled a year’s worth of peat samples (from one research site) in a week.

Today at work I was thinking how our samples experiences are kind of like a Katy Perry song:

They’re hot and they’re cold

we store the samples in a -10°C cooler, cut them in a -2°C room and dry them in a 100°C oven. 

They’re yes then they’re no 

starting any new activity in the lab always seems like a stop and go process as we figure out

 what to do and how to do it.

They’re in then they’re out 

Most of my time during the day seems to be transferring samples in or out of freezers, 

holding containers, trays, or ovens.

They’re up and they’re down 

we use a hydraulic lift to move our samples through the building

That’s pretty much were the similarities end- I definitely had the song stuck in my head all afternoon while I was working, at least it kept me entertained.

So what is it that I actually did this week? Not very much, and yet a lot,- it is fairly repetitive work. Basically I went to the freezer and got Peat cores. Then I unwrapped peat, handed the peat to a co-worker to cut, measured peat, weighed peat, dried peat, grinded peat, and sent the peat to the lab for further analysis. If this was all I knew about my work I would probably go crazy. The work is tedious and repetitive. Fortunately I also know that the peat was collected from the Far North of Ontario along the shores of Hudson Bay and near a Diamond mine in Northern Ontario. We are analyzing the samples as part of a project to map, conserve, and understand Boreal peatlands and their contributions to global biogeochemical cycles. One of our project aims is to make an accounting of the Carbon in the Far North and understand where it is, how long it's been there, where it is going, and what impacts it’s movements through the ecosystem. All this ties into climate change research and also has important impacts on the forestry, mining, energy, and other industries. The data collected from the peat samples I am processing will be used by multiple researchers and help multiple projects. So Ontario taxpayers rest easy- your money is being well spent.