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Today marked the second to the last day of mine and Reina’s stint in Kensington working with Echinacea. The past week we have been remeasuring photosynthesis with Helga our LI-COR 6400 and today we finally finished. Pam and Reina were the lucky ones who spent this last week outside working with Helga while I took wet weights of leaves and pressed them so we can obtain dry weights later. It has been a little strange this week remaining separated from the group, even at lunch time. Oh well, it was necessary so that we could finish!
Today the rest of the group spent the morning crossing and finishing measuring the common garden, an arduous task that required quite a few days. After their lunch, they continued to work on seedling refinds, a important but often frustrating task. It will be sad having to say goodbye to the whole group tomorrow, but school is about to start, and so perhaps it really is a great time to be heading home. That’s it for today, and goodbye Team Echinacea!
Today we spent the morning working on the recruitment experiment at Hegg Lake and a waterfowl production area southwest of Kensington. We were quite productive during the morning, finishing four plots! While we were in the field, we found an array of new forbs flowering for the first time. After today, we are finished with the recruitment experiment and will be moving on to work in the common gardens.
In the afternoon we were treated to a presentation by Amy Dykstra on seedling recruitment. It was helpful to get more background information on Echinacea and the different ongoing experiments we get to be involved with. We ended the day by preparing for tomorrow and readying the necessary flags for flagging common garden 2 at Hegg Lake.
My name is Mike Howe and I am a senior at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter Minnesota. After spending one summer studying plant demography and pollen limitation in prairies, I was lucky to get involved with the Echinacea Project for this summer.
This summer I will be working with Dr. Pamela Kittelson focusing on how genetic diversity interacts with herbivory and ecophysiological traits. One of the ecophysiological traits we hope to explore is photosynthetic rate using a LiCor-6400 machine. It should be interesting to relate photosynthesis and other ecophysiological traits to genetic diversity.
In my spare time, I am an avid cyclist, runner, and I Nordic ski for Gustavus. I am planning on exploring the roads around Kensington via my bike and rollerskis! Hope to see you around up here!
Valle Hermosa, Future Patagonia National Park, Aysen, Chile
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