Hello, everyone on the blog post. Since this is my first post, I will introduce myself. My name is Kaden Melton and I was partnered with the Blue Heron Nature Preserve, along with Kayla. For the past couple of weeks, our main objective has been completing a weather station for the preserve. As part of our community project, we built a wooden weather station that would measure various aspects of the environment, such as rain level, humidity, temperature, and CO2, in two different ecosystems, allowing us to compare them to each other and their potential effect against climate change. 

To build this weather station, we went through various phases. The first and easiest phase was planning the design and layout of the station. We completed this in under 20 minutes and decided that we would make a station with a front-facing sign and a shelf on top to hold some of the measuring instruments. The face of the sign would also contain descriptions of the purpose of the various instruments attached to the station, as well as both the GSU and Blue Heron Nature Preserve logos. The second phase of the project was to build it. I was responsible for actually assembling the structure, so I went stumbling around Home Depot trying to find the right type of wood and screws to buy. After getting the proper materials, I went home and assembled the structure. After finishing the structure, I gave it to Kayla to paint the sign, including writing the descriptions and painting the logos. Once the signs were finished, we returned to our partner next week to put the stakes on the station and put them in the ground, but we ran into difficulties. 

We didn’t have the proper tools to drill the screws into the stakes, resulting in the screws getting excessively hot and starting to smoke, eventually leading to the drill dying on us completely. Since we could not finish the signs that day, I took the signs and the stakes home and finished them over the weekend. We came back the following week, aka this week, and we were able to successfully install the stations in the ground and take our first measurements. After all the time we invested into the stations, finally being able to successfully install them was an extremely satisfying feeling, and I’m excited to begin the other half of our project.