Meteorologic and hydrologic instrumentation will be used to improve field laboratories and computer studies in Geology and Biology courses at Williams College. The instruments will be used at a weather station in Hopkins Memorial Forest, an experimental forest managed by Williams College, and the focus of field classes and independent research in the environmental sciences. The sensors and data loggers will be installed at the existing weather station, and three portable meteorologic and hydrologic stations will be assembled for use at remote sites. Use of state-of-the-art instruments which encode data in digital format will permit easy transfer of weather and hydrologic data to computer files. Portable instrumentation will significantly improve the quantity and quality of data collected in the field and used in required courses such as Geomorphology, Environmental Biology, and Communities and Ecosystems. Computer files of weather and hydrologic data will also be used to develop new field and computer labs in elective courses such as Weather and Climate and Computers in Geology. Biology and Geology majors most likely to go to graduate school, those students involved in field studies for senior honors theses, will gain invaluable experience using modern instrumentation and computer reduction of data from their field sites.
