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For the past 12 years I’ve been studying Echinacea angustifolia on this little part of the prairie and I thought I knew a few things about the timing of its flowering. Every year, I’ve started the field season before flowering begins, so that we have time to get settled in and trained before we start taking data. Just after solstice has been our typical time to start. This year, I had originally planned the first day of work to be 24 June. Ruth & I thought we would want a week to search for seedlings, so we decided 18 June. That start date fit in with Dennison’s summer schedule too. But we were a little worried that we may not have enough to do before flowering started.
Echinacea in the common garden started flowering a lot earlier than normal this year. Arg. We are behind in the sense that our equipment hasn’t all arrived, we don’t have all of out data collection protocols, the crew isn’t a well-oiled machine yet, we missed the first days of flowering phenology data for a few plants, our computers aren’t set up, reinforcements from Illinois (Gretel, Per & Hattie) arrived only hours ago, etc.
On one hand, I am bummed to feel behind and know that we need to catch up. This unanticipated stress, frantic rushing about, and sleeplessness is unpleasant. However, we will do the best we can, problem solving and thinking on the feet are the name of the game in field biology!
On the other hand I am exhilarated. The unknown is the raw material of science. Research is learning about things we don’t understand, gaining new knowledge, making discoveries! We have learned so much about Echinacea and from that new knowledge, we have gained insight into basic biological processes common to other species. But, there is still much to learn, even very basic things, such as what causes variation in flowering time.
Well, when I feel like a headless chicken running about, then I know it’s time to make a list. Hmm, a bummed, sleepless, exhilarated, headless chicken. I’ll write the list tomorrow.
We ladies of the Raj (Rachel, Amy, Julie) Mahal are officially joining the flogging scene. In an effort to increase our cyber space visibility, and also repudiate rumors started elsewhere in this blog about potential negative characteristics of ours, we have decided to take Jung-Meyers-Briggs personality tests and offer to you, the readers of this field journal, the results. Amy was a iNTj, also known as a mastermind rationalist…. now aren’t you glad we have her Stuart. Rachel was a eStJ, also known as a supervisor guardian…hurray she can lead the team and make good food later that night. Julie was a eNFj, also known as a teacher idealist…. so she can explain the significance of the project and keep us motivated with her random facts as we sweat and toil in the field.
Also, we have just been graced with the arrival of our fourth roommate, Amy Mueller.
This morning we kicked off the flowering phenology experiment in the common garden. It was a successful and efficient morning, despite a couple of small errors with our hard data sheets. Hopefully switching to data taking on our Visors on Tuesdays will take care of this. After we finished up in the field, we headed to the local berry farm, where each condo quickly picked themselves a large flat of delicious strawberries. Ian and Josh took pictures; maybe they’ll post them at some later date.
Something not to forget this coming week is to get to Stuart our banking info, so that our labors do not go un-payed.
If any future summer residents of the Ande’s Condos are T-Mobile users, be warned: the service here is non-existent. All phone business must be conducted 12 miles east of here, which although inconvenient, is quite a nice bike ride.
Julie of the RAJ Mahal here. This is my first blog entry, ever. But I am excited to spend Saturday night flogging.
I’m also very excited to be involved in the KAP project this summer. As Stuart has noted, “aerial photography from
kites is one of the oldest forms of remote sensing of the earth’s surface.”
Stuart constructed the rig:
Brooxes Basic KAP Kit purchased from http://www.brooxes.com/newsite/BBKK/index.html
We attached the camera, a Canon Powershot S70, and sent it up on a test run on our Flow Form 16 x 4ft, which is suitable for winds of 8-25 mph, but (as we found) becomes increasingly difficult past 15mph.
Our other kite is a G-Kites Dopero, good for 5-12mph winds. It’s a bit smaller (6ft by 10ft).
Everything went fairly smoothly until we returned and were frustratingly foiled by technology. We shot the images in RAW format (necessary for the fine scale images we hope to produce) which are supposed to be accompanied by a JPEG thumbnail. Turns out we don’t have the software to open and work with these RAW files and we couldn’t find the JPEG files anywhere! We have a couple promising leads on programs to manipulate the RAW files – hopefully Josh, our resident techie (would you prefer tech guru? I just don’t like to encourage technology. We don’t mix, technology and I), will help us overcome this obstacle.
So, as of yet, we don’t *really* know how our test run went. The lens had retracted back into the body of the camera both times we sent it up, but based on the number of files we uploaded, it does not appear that it stopped shooting images. Don’t know what’s up with that. I find it a little troublesome. I don’t like when gadgets do mysterious things that defy control.
Important notes:
*Wear gloves
*Stay away from trees
*Electrical tape is great for affixing the LED over the camera’s remote sensor – it’s opaque, which is good because the system doesn’t work as well in direct sunlight. And it’s easy to remove and re-attach.
*Make sure to use the fuzzy tail – increases stability
*Pin the rig on as close to the kite body as feasible/practical (not *too* close)
*When bringing down the kite, hold the wheel vertical as you roll in the line. If you hold it horizontally, the line twists as you roll is, which is bad for storage
*When bringing the kite down, it works for one person (in gloves!) to pull the line down, hand over hand. The other person should stand behind with the wheel to roll in the line. Try to keep up so that the line doesn’t get dirty (which, as climbers know, severely shortens the lifespan of a rope)
*A second person is necessary for assisting in bringing the kite/rig down, especially in high winds
*A second (and ideally third) person is necessary for determining exactly where the rig is flying. It’s hard to tell where it is (what it is taking pictures of) without people on either side (say, 50m away) for rough triangulation.
*Holding the kite can be tiresome, especially in high winds. Don’t be shy about taking turns.
Suggestion:
Build a kite-flying contraption. I am imagining something with handles like a rolling pin (so that you can roll and unroll smoothly, without twisting the line) and some sort of a clamp to hold the line in place once the kite has reached cruising altitude. I don’t think it should be something that affixes to the ground because you need to be able to walk around (in an attempt to coax the kite into a transect). I don’t fish – how do fishing poles work? I presume they have some sort of locking mechanism – perhaps something we could mimic on a larger/cruder scale?
Here are some links (from Stuart):
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/kaptoc.html
lots of info and links to good Q&As and safety stuff
http://www.brooxes.com/newsite/index.html
great resource
http://www.gentles.info/KAP/Index_KAP.html
looks good
http://scotthaefner.com/kap/gallery/
looks good
http://www.kaper.us/Links/index.php#research
good links here!
blog: http://www.bults.net/kapnet/index.php
blog: http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap2/php/wind/
http://becotus.chez-alice.fr/aerophoto/anglais/e&aerophoto.htm
looks good
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap2/php/wind/discuss/
old discussion
http://www.tucit.com/index.html
http://www.jonesairfoils.com/html/index.html
e-resources: http://www.kaper.us/
Abers at Emporia State U
http://www.geospectra.net/kite/kaphome.htm
http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/abersusa.htm
http://www.emporia.edu/kas/trans104/aber1/aber1.htm
http://www.emporia.edu/earthsci/aberjame.htm
science: http://www.bults.net/kapnet/links/Scientific_use/
knots: http://www.geospectra.net/kite/knots/knots.htm#intro
http://arch.ced.berkeley.edu/kap/equip/equip.html
comprehensive, but old
http://www.schmidts-pit.de/kap/technik/rig1/index.html
info on rigs
I am sitting here feeling the pain of many mosquito bites on several different parts of my body. I want to scratch them but I know that will only make them feel worse. The mosquitos are terrible here and at dusk you have to go indoors to avoid being eaten alive. I stayed outside to finish planting my garden. After I put on long pants and a long sleeve shirt I thought I could brave the outdoors, but after putting 4 plants in the ground I was forced inside by the relentless attacking horde. I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.
Today we went into Alexandria. Alexandria in the only town around with more than 1,000 people. I don’t know if that number is exactly right but it gives you an idea. Kensington is the closest town and it has a population of 286. Alexandria is a big deal around here. It’s right off of I-94. It’s motto is Easy to get to. Hard to leave. We went there to go to the grocery store and the laundromat. It’s about 30 mi away. The grocery store is pretty cool -you can go to the website petescountymarket.com. They even have a link to a live webcam of Alexandria there, which you can control yourself with the click of your mouse. To get there click on the bell at the top of the page in the banner. I bought some tomato plants at K-mart today while we were in Alexandria too. I asked in the grocery store if they had seeds but he thought I meant seeds for eating and directed me to the produce department. I asked where i might be able to get seeds to plant a vegetable garden and he directed me towards Wal-mart. He said, and I paraphrase, ‘If you’re looking for anything, Wal-mart’s probably the best place to go’. I have a nice vegetable garden here now at Andes Tower Hills. Andes is a winter wonderland, except that the downhill skiing is a bit lacking. Now thought is hot and stuffy and mosquito infested. There are some beautiful lakes on the property as well as some cool forests that the cross country trails go around and through. I’ll put some pictures up later.
Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. It certainly seems so when driving around here. We probably go by 10 lakes on the 8 mi drive to work everyday and we see many more went we’re out collecting data at the prairie remnants. Nearly every remnant has a lake next to it or in it or at least in sight of it. There are lots of wetlands and wetland birds. Everyday while working we see groups of pelicans floating in the sky or cooperatively chasing fish in one of the lakes. But enough of that, this place is also infested with mosquitoes, ticks, chiggers, non-native cool-season grasses, and it’s freaking hot. The temperature has been approaching 90 for the last two days and will for the next two. it’s not supposed to be so hot in Minnesota. It is? As I sit here scratching my mosquito bites. It’s 22:44 and I have to be at Stuart’s by 8 tomorrow. The Echinacea are flowering early this year. There is a lot of data to collect. I really need to get to bed.
Dearest floggers:
Well, it is 7am on my day off, but I can’t stop thinking about science and the possibilities to learn more about how Echinacea fares in the rich community we have in the common garden. Florid, yes, but I am pretty excited about possible data. It is like gold.
Truly, there are tons of projects to do, but the trick is to find the ones that:
1) Can be done in a timely manner,
2) Are interesting and important in advancing our knowledge about Echinacea and prairie plants in general,
3) Are educational for the students (and researchers!),
4) Can be repeated well into the future of the CG or remnants, and
5), Have a good chance of filling a gap in the literature so they can be published in good journals (this, of course, is related to #2).
This last point is not crucial in the moral sense, but crucial in the practical sense, as papers are the currency of our profession, as my advisor, Rick Karban, once told me.
Anywho, as we do phenology every other day it occurred to me that we could also quantify the percentage of ray florets with herbivore damage at the same time. Perhaps some genotypes accrue damage faster than others…I’m not sure if many researchers have looked at florivory over time in such detail. There seems to be quite a bit of damage this year. I did some ‘quick and dirty’ sampling last year, but did not have the plant IDs recorded, DOH , oh well, live and learn.
We also have to figure out how to measure fluctuating asymmetry (FA) so that we have multiple measurements to account for measurement error. Measurement error is important to quantify because the small deviations from symmetry that we may observe may smaller in magnitude than our error, but we can’t know unless we have replicate measurments! One way to do it is to take several pictures of the same plant, perhaps by different people. Or, you could have several people measure the same plant. Also, I wonder if FA changes with phenology or with organ under consideration…
Stuart and I are going to try and run electrical cord from the granary to the CG so that we can run the videocameras for a good long time each day. It is 120m from the granary to the SE corner of the garden, so this will take lots of cord to complete. Since I know very little about electrical wiring, save that you shouldn’t stick live wires into tubs of water, I will wait until Stuart gets some advice in Chicago before diving in.
BTW, I took video of the biggest plant in the CG yesterday and didn’t see any pollinators in 90 minutes of filming, so perhaps an even longer interval would be better to get good, non-zero data.
Signing off until this afternoon. I never knew I would like blogs, but they are useful, especially if people read them (hem hem)
Reminders:
We should measure style persistence as a measure of pollen limitation when we can (perhaps on Tuesday). Also, damage to ray florets would be excellent to measure. I wonder if damage to ray florets has greater indirect effects through reduced pollination than the direct damage to styles that we have seen?!
😉 Andy
here is a series of photos that I shot of colin
Colin would like you to know that he was very angry at the time these photos were taken even though you may not be able to tell from his facial expression
i actually just decided that I am going to put every picture that I have taken of Colin so far this summer in this flog
ok not every picture but almost
Here Colin is bending over to pick something up
Here Colin points awkwardly
Here Colin searches for Echinacea plants
In this series Colin emerges from a dense forest still carrying a large storage container
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2
3
4
photos best viewed in rapid succession
I don’t remember what Colin was doing in this photo
Colin reads a compass from nail to Echinacea
Colin with flags
Colin stares down his enemy
Colin checks himself for creepy crawlies
Colin searches for a nail in the duff
I’m going to cut you
here Colin is watching Ian kill insects
In this series Colin plays with his hat and sits on the tailgate of Stuart’s truck
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5
And this is the series that you’ve all been waiting for
Colin after a long hard day in the Common Garden
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So in the past several days, we’ve had many interesting goings-on. Jameson has built a garden. We went looking for some baby(ish?) raccoons that Amy saw, but they weren’t there. Instead, there were many dead damselflies and dragonflies. We also have a kill jars full of dead insects on our kitchen table as well as a betta fish and some snails. Jameson has also created the next big thing: hard-boiled eggsicles
As far as the Echinacea goes, it was rough work in the ’99 garden today. the east side of the garden was initially labeled 1/3 meter short, but we fixed the problems and made stuff work. I actually got a good shot of a pollinator (some sort of bee) and Amy found a snake skin. After today, my tick count is 5 (the tick I took a picture of was named Marty the Martyr)
Dear Blog-stars,
Well, we are done for the week and it was pretty tiring, but we are doing well! Julie has nothing positive to say, only that our experience thus far has been ‘buggy’. Indeed.
We are now kicking back in the mando and the Raj Mahal on an exciting Friday night. So exciting that I am bloggin’. We survived the 99 garden with its crazy rows and snippiness by all. I did have to eat a little crow because of some mis-lableing of rows on my part and the shocking rightness of Julie and Rachel. Needless to say, we consulted them in the inbreeding garden when Colin screwed up (again). He can, however, add much better than me.
Here are some pictures:
Big clouds at Hague Lake
Jameson planting his garden
Sweet sweet clouds and boring corn
Bee and loads of pollen this morning
Andy
Mowing went well today. The crew did a good job. I have some notes:
Rows 10 – 33 got blasted from the east by the grass clipping etc from the mower.
Rows 35 – 56 got blasted from the west.
Row 34 didn’t get blasted. Row 34 was chosen at random, row 38 was chosen last year. Each year before 2006 I blasted the whole garden from either the east or the west. That was too inefficient.
Here’s the schedule of not-to-be-blasted rows for the next few years:
year row
2008 31
2009 39
2010 36
2011 28
2012 34
2013 27
2014 32
2015 29
2016 35
2017 37
2018 30
I ran over 4 flags (loose or bent) and didn’t hit any rocks. There aren’t very many new gopher mounds. Look for new mounds far N, Row ~ 35, Pos ~925, and Row 56. I don’t think I ran over any Echinacea plants. I was running blind in R~40-42, up to P935, and P865 in R10-12. Also, I had to add flags in R 10 far N. The brome is flowering super thick this year. The CG looks so different from last year because of the brome. Some brome infl are eye-level W of the garden in pos <910! Those fence posts in R 13.5 and ~38.5 are annoying and must go. The cottonwoods need to go to too--too much shade. Deal with trefoil & phalaris.
I can think of some things I will do differently next year. I’ll only do them next year if I remember. Next year I’ll have to look at this flog to find the unblasted row. Here’s the plan.
Preparation:
in fall, leave flags in the 98 garden or put in staples
get flags delivered in plenty of time (consider color coordination)
30″ are much better in non-burn years
sharpen blade, buy gas
mow entry paths & set up stairs
flag perimeter & unblasted row
mow perimeter
mow aisle on both sides of unblasted row
Orientation (print maps beforehand):
wear safety glasses, ear protection optional
place flags 10cm N of each plant
search for plants or staples
emphasize that plants can be difficult to find, but the goal isn’t to find every one (measure if necessary to get good coverage in thick areas)
walk E & W in unmowed areas & anywhere on mowed areas
lift legs over rows
pull pins & collect plastic
start flagging in positions 860, 935, 960, 983, then flag on either side of unblasted row
coordinate so rows are flagged before mowing
after a few rows, get folks working rows 50 – 56 & 10 – 16. Don’t bother flagging cg96.
Remove duff from all plants in an organized fashion.
Equipment:
flag bags
meter sticks (we need more, we only have six)
safety glasses
ear protection
mower sharp blade
gas
gloves for all & gloves for SW. Get the XL; L is too small.
Plan to spread mowing over two days to avoid exhaustion. Sharpen blade in between.
After duff is removed weed thistles, sweet clover, trim shrubs & trap gophers.
To do–cut cottonwoods, ashes in ditch, trees E of CG.
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