Last week Samara Almonte wrapped up her time in the Blesh Lab by presenting a poster titled: “Do cover crop traits vary across monocultures and mixtures? An assessment of belowground biomass and specific leaf area.” Samara is an undergraduate at Western Washington University, and joined the Blesh Lab as a first-year Doris Duke Conservation Scholar. Though she was only with us for 8 short weeks, she jumped right in and learned all about cover crops while helping to collect, process, and analyze samples from an ongoing research trial conducted at the UM Campus Farm. We enjoyed having her as part of the team this summer!