Hi, my name is Jasmine Taulu and I am a recent graduate of Nipissing University. I completed my degree in BSc Environment and Physical Geography this past spring and was hired as a research assistant by Dr. April James for my second summer working in the Integrative Watershed Research Center. As this is my second summer working in the IWRC, my work is focused on larger specialized projects and mapping in ArcGIS.
My main project this summer is setting up and running a pilot water isotope survey of the French River Water (see link here). For this summer’s surveys survey, volunteers, often cottagers with property of the French river, were sent sampling kits and sampled the river for stable water isotopes on three specific weekends. To our knowledge there is no existing stable water isotope data for the French River. This makes this survey particularly interesting and complimentary to the bi-monthly stable water isotope sampling of the inputs to Lake Nipissing IWRC already runs. I have also been compiling available water quality data from existing government sampling programs for sites across the Sturgeon-Lake Nipissing-French Basin. With this data I have been looking for where there is an overlap in monitoring, if gaps in monitoring exist and creating a data set where archival data can be compared to current data in order to view changes in water quality over time. This information will be used in the first Lake Nipissing State of the Basin report. Additionally, I have created a variety of ArcGIS maps for various projects within the IWRC and have been working in our lab tackling the cleaning of all of our sampling containers.
I am passionate about my work in the IWRC. Working here as a research assistant last summer led to my own research for my undergrad thesis under the supervision of Dr. April James. This was followed by my choice to continue researching stable water isotopes for a portion of my Masters beginning this fall at the University of Victoria. I enjoy being a part of the IWRC team and feel my experiences here will be invaluable in my future academic and professional endeavors.
