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EVA Post – October 28th

October 28, 2016

Quadrats for Hypoliths

 

Our goal on this EVA was to look at the abundance of hypoliths under quartz pebbles. Hypoliths are lithobionts that live under rocks. Anastasiya, Anushree and I walked east from the hab. We set up a quadrat, which is a one metre string frame that is laid over the ground as a square to act as a method of assessing local distribution. We found north with the geological compass and began to mark orientation on the surface of every quartz pebble with a black arrow. When all quartz pebble were marked within the square metre we then remove them and sort them into colonised and non-colonised groups to see the percentage of life living under rocks. We did this activity over four different locations. Then tourists arrived and parked their car near us and took a few photos out the car window, which we ignored of course and just stuck to our job, otherwise we would be breaking simulation.

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