Lake Hartwell

I choose to blog about Lake Hartwell, because it's the lake I always went to growing up. My Mawmaw owns land with two lake lots that my family uses. Lake Hartwell is located on the Georgia, South Carolina border. It was created in the 1950's as a flood prevention for the Savanna River. The Lake is made up of 56, 000 acres, with 962 miles of shoreline. The three rivers that provide in flow are Savannah, Tugaloo, and Seneca Rivers. 

This is a picture of Lake Hartwell.

Information Link

The Fall Line

The fall line is the area where the Piedmont land meets the Atlantic Coastal Plains. Thousands of years ago, this area was where the ocean meet the shore. Rivers that cross at the Fall Line have rapids and waterfalls at this land mark. The land was important for people to settle here for many reasons. For one, it was the farthest inland you can go via water travel, making it a prime location for trading. Also, the water falls and rapids allow us to create an ample amount of water power. The rivers and large volume of trading allowed large amounts of settlements to occur in places such as Macon, Columbus, and Augusta. When standing on the Great temple mound in the Ocmulgee National Park, you can see the difference of land because of the Fall Line. The land north of Macon has rolling hills; while the land south of Macon is very flat. 

 This is a picture of the Ocmulgee River Walk. This is the main river that passes through Macon, and over the Fall Line. 

Fall Line Information Site 

Information about Macon

 

Blood Sugar

What’s the response to your body when you eat sugar?

When a person eats food, the body breaks the food down into glucose (sugar). This is important because the cells use the sugar as energy to fuel your body throughout the day. Once the sugar is broken down Insulin, which the pancreas secretes, transports the sugar from the blood stream into cells throughout your body. Reaching this point of homeostasis is important, because without the balance your body can be contaminated with too much, or not enough sugar, causing multiple problems to occur. This process on restoring your body back to a normal blood sugar level can be seen in the graph below.

This information is from the day in class that Dr. Rood recorded his blood sugar during the class period. He took his blood sugar at the beginning of class, then ate a candy bar and drank a sprite. Every 5 min he recorded his blood sugar. You can see how his blood sugar increases to a certain point, then his body brings it back down to it's regular state. 

More Info!!

Lab #4

Today we went to one of the Macon Roots community gardens to look at different types of soil and plants. The Macon Roots program was established to help promote a sense of community, local farmers markets, and healthy food choices. The Roots program is also focused on creating a sustainable food system for Middle Ga. After more research through their webpage, I found that they hold events downtown that provide fresh food from local markets. They are also responsible for helping the farmers market to get debut card machines at their events, to allow better connivence for the people who go to the markets. Macon Roots also held a lecture concerning obesity and malnutrition that occurs in Macon, allowing people to gain education about the foods they eat and how it affects their body. The Roots webpage also has a separate tab for information about food markets.

Although what the Macon Roots is working towards is good, there are many concerns about the soil. The problem is that since Macon is a major city, they can have what's called urban soil. Urban soil is a potential problem because pollution form the city can be in the soil, which in turn can be in the food that is grown from the soil. The reason this could be a potential problem, is because the people who work in the gardens, may not know to look for this, or that the problem exists. To prevent this, community gardeners need to be educated about the health of the soil they are planting in.

Below is a picture of the gardens from their webpage.

Macon Roots

Type of Soil

The type of soil I chose to look at is Andisol. This type of soil is formed from volcanic ash. because its formed with ash and other volcanic components, it is found to have andic properties (high in water-holding capacity). This type of soil is almost rare, it is only found in ~1%of the ice free land area. Below is map of where this type of soil can be found.

I think this type of soil is very interesting, because the fact that it comes from volcanic ash. I find it pretty amazing that something so destructive can benefit the land.

The picture above is a picture of Andisol on North Island, New Zealand.

Soil Source/ Picture Source
12 Types of Soil

Lab #3

In this lab we walked around campus and identified many different types of trees, shrubs, and plants. Here are a few of each we found.

Trees:

 This is a Sugar Maple tree (Acer, saccharum).

 This is a Pecan tree (Carya illinoinensis).

 This is a Sycamore tree (Acer, pseudoplatanus).

 This is a Magnolia tree (Magnolia grandiflora). 

 This is a Laurel Oak ( Quercus virginiana). 

Shrubs:

 This is a Holley (Ilex opaca).

 This is a Rhododendron ( Rhododendron maximum).

 This is a Hydrangea (Hydrangea macrophylla). 

  This is a Japanese Privet (Ligustrum japonicum).

  This is a Lingustrum ( Ligustrum lucidum).

Plants:

Ophiopogon japonicus

 This is an aloe plant (Aloe vera).

 This is Monkey grass (Ophiopogon japonicus).

 This is poison ivy ( Toxicodendron radicans).

 This is a mexican petunia (Ruellia tweediana).

 This is a crysanthamum ( Chrysanthemum morifolium).

Lab #2

In lab #2 we went to the Ocmulgee River in Macon.  The map above is a picture from Google Earth. The white box marks the outline of shallow water/ sand.  Based on the time of year this level changes, however this is what the land looked like during our lab. During our Lab we looked at the number of clams in different areas of the river as well as the difference in elevation across the river.

The blue balloons are used to represent the places that clams were dug up. We used a shovel to dig under the surface, and then placed to dug up dirt in a pan, allowing us to find the clams. The blue number next to the icon is the number of live clams that were found. By mapping out the number of clams we are able to infer that clams prefer to live in areas that are neither shallow nor deep, and in medium water flow areas. They do not want to live too far under the water, but not on top in the sand. The slower currents, close to the shallow water level, provided a better living environment for them, which is why more were found in the slow current area.

The red line across the river represents the place that elevation measurements were taken. Each red thumb tact is placed 100 feet apart from each other. The red number next to the tact is the depth of the land from the staring point, the river walk. The First red point is closest to the starting point, representing 100 feet out, then second point being 200 feet out, and so on.