Vernal: A Spring Photo Project (Day 61 through Day 70)

To this point I've shared two months worth of spring photographs.  As of today (June 21st) spring has reached its end, but I have a months worth of photographs still to share.  Here are the photos from day 61 through day 70.  To see the previous set of images follow this link.

Day 61 (19 May 2019) - Plum flowers

We have a plum tree right outside our back door.  It rarely produces much fruit, but every spring it is absolutely covered with blossoms.  I photographed these flowers after a light rain covered everything with water and softened the light.

Day 62 (20 May 2019) - Audubon Woods Creek

Another rainy day.  This image was taken in a light drizzle at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Audubon Woods Preserve.  The CWC owns 23 separate properties, but Audubon Woods is my favorite because of the mature trees.  The center of the preserve can often feel ten degrees cooler than the edge.  The water trickling over these rocks helps add moisture to the air cooling it even further.  Even the color of the woods feels cool as the mist in the air diffuses the light making everything glow green as the sunlight penetrates the forest canopy.

Day 63 (21 May 2019) - Dandelions 

Spring wouldn't be spring without dandelions.  Homeowners may not love them, but the bees and other pollinators do.  Some people are taking notice - the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture has adopted the policy of not mowing until the dandelions have gone to seed.  I photographed this dandelion bloom in the lawn at the Isabella Conservation District office.

Day 64 (22 May 2019) - Forest Ecology Studies 

Most of the programs that I do are in the classroom out of necessity, but every year I take students from Winn Elementary out to Audubon Woods to explore forestry and forest ecology.  In this photograph the students are measuring the distance from a stake (representing the center a 0.1 acre plot) to a tree in their study plot.  If the tree is within 37 feet of the stake (the radius of a 0.1 acre plot), they will then get an azimuth to the tree, measure the diameter of the tree, and record all of this date on a map of their plot.  I keep copies of all this date in the hope that it can be used to record changes in the forest over time.

Day 65 (23 May 2019) - Look up...

May 23rd was another day of forest ecology studies at Audubon Woods.  I think actually took more photographs of students on this day than I did on the 22nd, but my favorite photo of the day was taken when the students had gone back to school for lunch.  Looking up, I spotted this combination of blue sky, white clouds, dark branches, and yellow-green leaves.  With the sun lighting up the edge of a cloud formation I couldn't resist this photograph.

Day 66 (24 May 2019) - Honey Locust Thorn 

This photograph was taken right outside my back door.  We have a large honey locust (Gleditsia triacanthos) growing only a few feet from the house.  This tree provides lots of shade in the summer and a home for many species of birds and insects (not to mention squirrels).  The most interesting thing about the tree is the large thorns that grow from a few branches.  The honey locust originally developed these thorns as defense against ice age mammals - now they are just a reminder of a time when elephants walked the tundra and forests of North America.

Day 67 (25 May 2019) - Fern Frond 

Another photograph from home.  This fern covered with a layer of fine spider webs was photographed in the garden on the side of the house.  This image has been cropped to a square from its original format.

Day 68 (26 May 2019) - Home, Sweet Home

On May 26th we drove about forty-five minutes from home to visit my parents near Laingsburg, MI.  At one point I took a few minutes to walk around their property looking for something to photograph.  As I walked past this nesting box in a wooded area, a wren popped its head out of the box.  It's not grand architecture, but it's good enough for a wren.  If you look close you can see the wren's toes gripping the entrance hole.  The bird looked at me for a few seconds and then flew off into the underbrush.

Day 69 (27 May 2019) - Iris

When we moved into our house eight years ago there was already a patch of irises planted on the south side of the house.  I think these are Siberian iris, but am not certain.  I love the nectar guides on each large landing pad of a petal directing pollinators toward the nectar (and pollen).  The large serrated leaves in the background belong to cut-leaved coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata).

Day 70 (28 May 2019) - Wild Columbine 

My final image from this set of photos was taken at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Williams-Blackburn Preserve.  Wild Columbine (Aquilegia Canadensis) is one of my favorite late-spring wildflowers.  It's very photogenic when the flowers are fully mature (like this one), but I often miss out on finding them so it's always exciting to find a perfect bloom.  One really interesting thing to me about these flowers is how hairy they are.  Look close and you can see that the petals, stem, and leaves are all covered with minute hairs.  I like being able to peer in and see that level of detail.

Fall Forestry Studies

The best part of my job is getting students outdoors.  I especially enjoy getting them into the woods to study forestry and forest ecology

Want to make a kid's jaw drop?  Tell them that they are going to count how many trees are in a forest.  Even better is to tell them that they have to find out how many leaves can be found on the forest floor or that they have to find out how the leaves weigh!

I always manage to get lots of students outdoors in the spring, but this year I made an effort to schedule more field explorations for the fall.  Over the past three weeks, I was able to get eleven classrooms from four different schools out into the woods.  Two of the classrooms have been out in the woods with me before, but for the other nine classes it was a completely new experience.  It's always interesting to see how the students (and their teachers) react to the independence.

Here are a few pictures from three of the schools.  (Unfortunately, it looks like I did not take any photos of the two classrooms from the fourth school.)  The students in these photos are counting leaves in a square foot plot (or quadrat), collecting leaves to weigh, measuring the forest canopy using a clear grid, and identifying leaves using a guide. 

12 October 2018 - Winn Elementary at Audubon Woods
 

 

16 October 2018 and 19 October 2018 - Mary McGuire Elementary at Mission Creek Park

 

25 October 2018 - Beal City Elementary at Beal City School woodlot

Aquatic Macroinvertebrates in the Little Salt River

The school year is almost over, but the past couple of weeks have been among my busiest of the year.  In addition to spending several days doing forestry and forest ecology with classrooms, I have also spent multiple days at the Little Salt River in Shepherd with students collecting and identifying aquatic macroinvertebrates (animals without backbones that live in water and are large enough to see without magnification).  Over the course of the fifteen days I will have spent five days along the river.  Among other things, the students have found hundreds of crayfish, Green Frog tadpoles, dozens of small fish, scud (amphipods), mayfly larvae, damselfly larvae, caddisfly larvae, water mites, and crawling water beetles.  We also found several examples of a species that I had never seen before, Creeping Water Bugs.

 
I have also taken dozens of photos of the students at work.  Most of the students get super involved in the work and their allotted time just flies by.  A lot of words have been written in the past decade or so about the disconnect between children and nature. 

It gives me a lot of hope to see students elbow-deep in a bucket of muddy river water trying to identify snails.  Why does this give me hope.  People who understand things like aquatic macroinvertebrates tend to understand their importance and care about them.  People that care about things like aquatic macroinvertebrates will want to protect them and their habitats.  These kids learning to identify snails today are the land stewards of the future.

 

Fall Forest Ecology at Audubon Woods Preserve

Whenever I can, I like to get students out of the classroom and into local woods or wetlands.  Last Friday, I had the opportunity to meet Third, Fourth, and Fifth Grade students from Winn Elementary at the Chippewa Watershed Conservancy's Audubon Woods Preserve.


Winn Elementary students are no strangers to Audubon Woods.  Located only a few miles from the school, Audubon Woods is a great place for them to put science concepts into action.  For the the Third Graders, this was their first trip to Audubon Woods as a class; Fourth and Fifth Graders have made multiple trips the preserve, beginning in Third Grade.

It was homecoming for Shepherd Public Schools - that explains all the blue and yellow (including the hair)

Before the trip to Audubon Woods, I had visited each grade in the classroom at least once.  Third Grade began the year learning about trees - their parts and adaptations, how to age a tree and measure diameter, and learning to classify leaves.  My Fourth Grade presentation focused on plant adaptations and how plants use adaptations to overcome challenges.  The Fifth Grade program repeated much of the information from Third Grade, but with a deeper emphasis on adaptations and using growth ring patterns to analyze past growing conditions.

In the woods, the focus shift a little.  Here I ask all three groups of students to measure diameter of trees.  While in the classroom this was easy - students simply measured the distance across prepared slices of tree trunk (AKA "tree cookies").  In the woods this is not an option.  Instead students must measure the circumference (distance around) of the tree and divide that by pi (approx. 3.14) to find diameter.

Measuring circumference with a tape measure

For Third Grade students this can be quite a challenge.  They have to be able to measure the circumference with a tape measure, convert that that circumference from feet and inches to all inches, and finally use a calculator to divide by pi to find the diameter.  We do one tree as a whole group before the students measure two more trees on their own.

Calculating diameter

Fourth Graders should be able to do all of these things on their own.  Just as a refresher, we go over one tree as a group and then they measure three trees on their own.

Fifth Graders have already done this activity as Third and Fourth Graders.  They measure three trees on their own without a demonstration.  This might seem like overkill, but in the Spring when the students return, the Fifth Grade students will learn a shortcut to estimating diameter - the Biltmore Stick.  I just want them to have a firm understanding of how to calculate diameter before they learn the tricks to make it easier.

During this Fall visit, the classrooms have a very limited amount of time in the woods (about 1 hour to 1.25 hours for each class).  This means that they have a limited amount of work to accomplish.  For Third Graders, tree measurement and diameter calculation may take all of the available time.  If they finish this activity, they are also given the assignment of finding, drawing, identifying, and classifying leaves.  Most students do one or two leaves in the time allowed.  If time is short (as it was this time), Fourth Grade students are assigned the same work, but are expected to accomplish more.

Student drawing of an American Beech leaf

Fifth Grade students are given two additional activities to complete.  First they are asked to determine the total number of leaves to be found on the forest floor.  Audubon Woods is forty acres!  This seems impossible, but it is a much less daunting task if broken into parts.

Counting every leaf in one square foot section of forest

Instead of counting every leaf on the forest floor, students are asked to count the number of leaves in a single square foot of the forest.  This number is then multiplied by the number of square feet in an acre.  An acre measures 43,560 square feet.  Then that number is multiplied by the number of acres in the forest.

Using this method, six groups of students came up with estimates ranging from 179 million to 390 million leaves on the floor of Audubon Woods.  The average of the six groups was approximately 254 million leaves!

Once students have found an estimate of the number of leaves, they are then tasked with finding the weight of all the leaves on the forest floor.  This is accomplished by determining the average weight of a single leaf and multiplying by the number of leaves in the forest.

To find the weight of a single leaf, students count out 100 random leaves from the forest floor.  The leaves are placed in a plastic bag and weighed (in grams).  Next the weight of the bag (already known) is subtracted.  This number is then divided by 100 to find the average weight of an individual leaf.

Estimates for the weight of the leaves on the floor of Audubon Woods ranged from 100 thousand kilograms to 241 thousand kilograms with an average of approximately 138 thousand kilograms of leaves!  Converted to pounds this more than 304 thousand pounds.  (If you had the equivalent weight in $1 bills, you would have approximately $138 million dollars!)

Why are all of  these leaves important?  They provide the organic matter (humus) that is providing food and homes for billions of bacteria, fungi, and invertebrates such as insects.  These organisms break down the organic matter into forms that can be taken up by plants (including trees).  Essentially by releasing their leaves, the trees are providing food for themselves.

Here are a few more photographs from the day.