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good press

Read this article about prairie conservation from the Glencoe newspaper.

Peeking at p1 phenology

Some observations about phenology in p1: the peak day of flowering seems to vary quite a bit from year to year. In 2007, peak was the earliest observed, on July 3 (!) and in 2008, 2013, and 2015 the peak was latest, on July 27. Curiously enough, 2008, 2013, and 2015 were all burn years. But then again, so was 2006. Hopefully we’ll be looking into this dataset more closely this year. Stay tuned for updates!

Year Peak
2005 12-Jul
2006 12-Jul
2007 3-Jul
2008 27-Jul
2009 14-Jul
2011 24-Jul
2012 4-Jul
2013 27-Jul
2014 19-Jul
2015 27-Jul

All heads reporting for duty

We brought all of the harvested heads back to the lab. There are still 4 heads back in p1 that aren’t ready to harvest but everything is officially in Illinois!

All the heads with Amy and Ali for scale

All the heads with Amy and Ali for scale

28 Sept – 6 Oct: a week in Minnesota

September 28 started as any ordinary fall day would – in the lab at the Chicago Botanic Garden – but if one were to pay attention they would notice slight change from usual. Our backpacks were more full, the lab tasks were taking lower priority, and both Amy and I had brought a full bag of carrots as snacks. At around noon, Stuart arrived at the Garden after an already long day of traveling, informing us that he and Gretel had just arrived and we would be leaving as soon as possible for Minnesota. After a little more time in the lab, we were off in a white pickup truck with a skybox bearing the crest of the CBG. The journey was long, but uneventful besides a stop in the Twin Cities for ice cream. We arrived in Kensington after 11pm and quickly fell asleep in our former summer residence.

The next 4 days proved to be very productive for the group. We finished measuring at Caroline’s and Lydia’s plot, finished seedling refinds, finished all the “can’t find” rechecks in both P1 and P2, and we removed all the flags from P2. We prepped the burn site by mowing the burn breaks and cutting down branches that were in the path. The weather didn’t cooperate so we weren’t able to burn last week but the forecast was hopeful so we planned to try again Monday, October 5th. Amy stayed up in Kensington with Ali and Katherine and together, the three of them finished dissecting all the heads from Q3. I stayed in Northfield for the weekend, and Stuart and Gretel went back to Illinois.

Monday came and Stuart and I headed back up to the farm with hope in our hearts that we would have a successful burn. We got all the supplies ready, including water packs, buckets, giant containers, and most importantly, drip torches. We started the fire at 3pm, worried about the high humidity and lack of sunlight, but we knew we had to try. After an hour of patchy, inconsistent, slow moving fire, we decided to put out the fire and wait for a better day. Though we weren’t able to burn p8, we were able to create a great burn break and get the team experienced with our fire fighting gear.

On Tuesday, Ali, Katherine, and Amy drove the Ranger down to Illinois, while Stuart and I took the train. It had been a long week filled with many victories and only a single defeat. Though the weather won for a day, we know that we’ll be back and ready to burn once more.

Stuart and Amy visit the WCA Enviromental Learning Center

Stuart and Amy visited the West Central Area High School Environmental Learning Center on October 1st to work with Matt’s plant science class. The students helped harvest heads of echinacea purpurea that will be used in a competition study with echinacea angustifolia. Stuart also talked to students about prairies and some of the various prairie plants and then wrapped up the lesson talking about flowers and how they work. The students enjoyed the talk and had fun collecting the heads. WCA is excited to see what kind of experiments we can do in our ELC! Matt was hoping that Ali an Katherine might have been with also, but still plans on having them come and speak to his classes.IMG_0212

Ben’s Poster!

Here is a link to the poster I created for my independent project this past summer.

 

The efficiency of different collection and sorting techniques on the seeds of Galium boreale

Ben_poster_galium