by Hannah Dion-Kirschner | Jul 4, 2017 | Uncategorized
Last Monday I began the journey to analyze my plant samples on the IRMS (isotope ratio mass spectrometer). This beast of a machine is really a scientific marvel: using what is essentially a fancy lightbulb filament and a giant magnet, it sort out the lighter isotopes...
by Hannah Dion-Kirschner | Jun 25, 2017 | Uncategorized
The project that I’m doing this summer is actually a continuation of work I’ve done since last September, and it builds off of fieldwork that a Ph.D. student in my lab completed in the summers of 2015 and 2016. Here’s the rundown of everything that’s happened so far:...
by Hannah Dion-Kirschner | Jun 25, 2017 | Uncategorized
It can be tricky to grasp the mechanics of paleoclimate research. In part, that’s because it usually involves taking something we can measure, and using it as a proxy for something we can’t. For example, maybe we’d like to know what temperatures were typical in the...
by Hannah Dion-Kirschner | Jun 5, 2017 | Uncategorized
This summer I will be living in Evanston, spending my days in Dr. Maggie Osburn’s isotope geobiology lab and Dr. Yarrow Axford’s paleolimnology lab. What motivates me to spend eight-hour days in a room with minimal windows (apart from grant funding…)? I am looking to...
