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Hi all–“Joker” here. I just spent some time reading all the flog entries from this month–I think I am caught up now! I really enjoyed reading your project proposals, and hearing about them on Friday. I’m excited about what we are going to learn this summer about aphids, ants and spittlebugs, and about floral neighborhoods, pollinators, pollen competition, etc. Good stuff! I’m also looking forward to sharing my experimental plans with the team.
Since I’m not in K-town for the weekend, I thought you might need a joke to tide you over. Here’s the latest from our daily redneck calendar: You might be a redneck if you think re-booting your computer means kicking it twice. 🙂
One of our long-term experiments evaluates the effects of burn treatments on seedling recruitment and survival (see abstract here:http://echinacea.umn.edu/bib/echinacea_abstracts.htm#wagenius_et_shaw_RE). Here are some photos documenting how we prepare plots for burning…
Figuring out which plots need to be burned.
Mowing burn breaks.
Nice job, Brad.
Successfully burned plots.
The east half of Hegg Lake WMA was burned by the DNR. For our recruitment plots located within the burned region, we mowed burn breaks around plots we did NOT want to have burned.
The classic seedling search position.
Young Echinacea seedling–cotyledons only.
Larger seedling with a true leaf.
We marked seedlings with colored toothpicks, so we can re-find them in August, and again next summer. I hope to be able to learn about initial seedling establishment as well as seedling survival through the first two seasons.
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