1 post tagged “yellowstone”

Today, I saw the first Master's thesis presentation that I didn't believe was actually going to be defensible.  I guess I should give some background on how you earn graduate degree in geology.  Basically, you go out, do some sort of research, bring the data you have collected back, then analyze and make conclusions about that data that are scientifically "defensible".  You then present these data and conclusion to a group of your peers and professors, for them to try to pick apart, and if you have done defensible work they usually will not be able to find any big holes.

So I saw the presentation of Jake Mohrmann, who did a project attempting to find the causation of fluctuation in the discharge of hot springs in Yellowstone NP.  The general thought today is that changes in barometric pressure, tidal forces, rainwater input, and earthquakes all affect the discharge of these hot springs.  To test this, Jake went down to Yellowstone and placed instruments that would measure how much water was being discharge from a few specific hot springs.

Jake had originally planned to measure several springs for two weeks, a couple of times.  Unfortunately he had some hardware issues, was only able to spend two weeks measuring the discharge in 3 different creeks.  The result of this was a data set that was too small to make any significant conclusions.  But, when you are doing a project like this, and you are raring to get on with your life, it is really hard to convince yourself to go back for another year so that you can make good on the project, which is what I believe Jake desperately needs to do.

Jake's presentation skills are not the greatest, he had a difficult time remembering details of his project, he had a difficult time explaining analytical techniques that he used, and he seemed to have a lot of things that he still wanted to do.  It is not unusual to have things that you still want to look at, but in Jake's case, it was unclear that he really looked at anything to begin with.

I will be very interested to see what comes of his defense meeting.  Whether they will let him get away with this sloppy work, or if he will be forced to make something productive out of his project.  The one thing I can say is that his presentation was a great experience for me; it convinced me that if I don't feel that all of the work on my thesis is done with it comes time to defend, I am much better off to tack on another year, and do things right.