June 2012 « The Echinacea Project

Hi, I’m back!

Maria here. I’m back for my second year with Team Echinacea on the field!

I plan to continue work on Dichanthelium this summer. I had written a proposal for my summer project for a research scholarship earlier, here it is for your reference:
Krieghbaum Scholarship _Wang.pdf

And updates from the maternal lines germination experiment with seeds I collected last summer!
URG Final Report.docx

Currently trying to figure out the nits and grits of the Dichanthelium hand pollination technique. Wish me luck, Uff da!

Also been poking through my photos from last summer. It’s so funny how similar some of them are to this year’s photos.

This week in pictures

Katherine here.

Most of the Echinacea crew arrived on Sunday. The week has gotten off to a running start. Here are some pictures from our first few days in action:

Data Sheet for Echinacea Hybrids at Josh’s Garden

Here’s a data sheet that will show locations where we’ll plant Echinacea Hybrids. Echinacea at Josh’s Garden-Excel.xls

Protocol for common garden aphid survey

Last summer I conducted a biweekly survey of aphids and ants in the common garden, an experimental prairie restoration containing Echinacea from various remnant populations. I was interested in the spatial distribution of aphids and ants within and across years. This year I plan to scale down my survey to once a month, beginning next Friday. Here’s a detailed protocol:

Common Garden Aphid Survey Protocol 2012.doc

Cabinet for Cornell Drawers

We just reorganized the bee collection into a cornell drawer, and need a cabinet to start storing drawers. Once we have better humidity control in the Hjelm house this is the cabinet we are considering.
cabinet

The good old days: when just one weather forecast would do

We delayed our fieldwork for a few minutes this morning because of scattered showers. Who knew we should have delayed for a few more minutes because of Solar X-Ray Flux?

The National Weather Service’s weather radar indicated that the rain (aka atmospheric H2O flux) was mostly south of us, so we knew it would be a short delay. However, we should have checked NOAA’s space weather forecast…

When we arrived at the site, the atmospheric weather was OK, but the space weather was poor and our gps machine, Sulu (a Topcon GRS1), had a difficult time getting oriented. It may have been groggy because of the burst of solar X-Ray Flux. Here is the graph of Solar x-ray Flux from NOAA: