Back to the Lab
Hello everyone!
August has been busy—back from the rainforest and straight into a different kind of jungle: the lab!
First up, I’ve been wrapping up my field report from Peru. It’s always a good chance to revisit the trip in detail—going through notes, photos, and GPS points, making sure everything is properly documented before the memories fade. It’s a satisfying process, though every now and then I catch myself daydreaming about being back on the river instead of in front of my laptop.
A big focus this month has been lab work, especially processing the river trap samples I collected earlier this year. It’s been great getting back into the routine of sample prep. I’m definitely feeling a lot more confident handling things on my own now—especially the trickier steps like working with HF. What used to feel a bit intimidating now feels almost second nature (with all the proper safety gear, of course!). The protocol for these river trap samples, which had to be trialled and tested, is also much neater and more replicable than when I first started, which is a really good sign for future work and potential methodology papers. Now that the samples are processed, I am looking forward to making the slides and finally seeing what’s inside and see what this year’s catch has been like!
On top of that, this month we have begun planning my secondment at Aarhus University with Gavin Simpson. This is going to be an exciting phase of the project—working together on some advanced stats and new ways of improving climate reconstructions. We’ve been bouncing ideas around and setting out clear goals so I can hit the ground running when I’m there. There’s a lot to look forward to!
FInally, I’ve been working on a couple of papers—mainly it’s one from my PhD, which is finally coming together nicely. I’m also in the middle of reading and drafting up another couple manuscripts from the current postdoc, though those are at early stages and hopefully I can dig into them once the PhD paper has been submitted. It’s always a balancing act between new data and old projects, but getting these papers out feels like an important step before diving into the next big batch of analyses.
Right at the start of September, I also had the chance to attend a CREST workshop led by Manuel Chevalier. It was a great deep dive into the CREST modelling framework for quantitative climate reconstructions—a perfect complement to the work I’m doing with transfer functions. Lots of ideas came out of it, and I’m looking forward to seeing how some of these approaches might fit into my own analyses.
In the next month, I plan to spend more time in the lab processing the aerial traps (which will take up quite some time), more coding and modelling, and lots of planning for my stay in Denmark in October. It might not have the soundtrack of howler monkeys or the smell of wet forest soil, but it’s a pretty exciting phase of the project all the same. Results are finally starting to take shape, and I’m working towards sharing these soon!
Stay tuned!
–Dael
PS. I have edited some photos from my trip to Peru. Enjoy!!!
