Day 15, June 17

Today was a bit of a hodge-podge. The morning hours were spent refining our research interests and trying to come up with a workable question. I have waffled back and forth over many idea but now I think I’ve found one I am happy with and that I think is doable given the time and resources constraints. It’s still a work in progress and quite rough but while working in Ka’a’awa valley it became apparent that the walls in the front of the valley that run down the slope seemed to be related to each other in a very particular manner. I plan to measure the slope, elevation, orientation, and spacing of the walls in order to find any unifying factors that may be common throughout them all. Finding a common type of terrain that may indicative of these features. I plan on mapping the length, angle, elevation, soil type, and presence of water in the area to get a better idea of the types of environment that was sought for these features. If we are able to determine the relationship between the features and the environment it can serve as a predictive model for other comparable sites. During this process I intend to explore the extent of this group of features since only a small portion have been documented. Hopefully this information will allow us a better sense of their intended use. I began looking for articles and literature that would help me understand the features I was seeing and that might give me some insight into the problem.
At about eleven I headed to the valley and took a look around the area of interest in order to refresh my memory, take some notes, and snap some quick pictures. After about two hours I stopped for lunch at which time the much anticipated botanist showed up to help the vegetation group with identifying some of the plant species. I decided to go with them and perhaps pick up some useful knowledge. Three cars went and after about fifteen minutes with the experts, my car, which apparently contained most of the hydrology group, headed to pick up Dr. Becker and take some preliminary salinity readings in order to seek out the fresh water seeps that are found off the coast. I was very poorly attired in my hiking boots to be walking on the beach however I made due as best as possible. It was interesting to see the equipment that they were using. I also managed to talk to Dr. Wechsler for a bit which was very nice. One this was done we headed back to the barn where Greg, Gordon, and Audrey were preparing the food. I must say that they did a wonderful job. After dinner I took a walk to the beach and back with Courtney. These evening group walks are becoming something of a tradition which is nice. Although we were slated to talk about our ideas and questions tonight apparently that has been postponed until tomorrow morning. I’m interested to see what everyone has in mind in the morning.