When we arrived at Hjelm in the morning we were informed that the Elk Lake House had declared today Big Hat Friday! It was a hot day without a cloud in the sky, so the big hats were definitely appropriate.
The team split in half to do our morning tasks. One group went to finish up some flagging in the experimental plots to help us out later on in the summer, and my group went out searching for flowering echinacea. We headed out to Riley and East Riley to begin our search. Once we got there Jared gave us all a great demonstration on how to set yourself up to find the most echinacea. The key is to look silly while doing it! We found some to flag, but the bright sun certainly was not making it easy on us and I have a feeling that when we visit again there will be more plants to spot.
Alex and Jared in their big hats searching for echinacea
Before lunch we had a presentation from Jennifer Ison about her projects in p2 and then the whole team got to share short ABT’s about what we are interested in doing this field season. Then we were all off to p10 to flag and measure for the afternoon. Unfortunately, the flagging didn’t go as fast as we expected but we got it done and most of the team got their first introduction into measuring! It was a great finish to a fantastic first week!
Emma and Britney doing some of the first measuring of the year!
This morning at roughly 9:30 am, a team of people were sent out to flag flowering plants at the prairie remnant known as LCE. A second team went out to P1 and finished flagging it (Woo-hoo!). Emma got to flag the last Echinacea.
Daytona and Emma visited Around Landfill (ALF) and Northwest of Landfill (NWLF) today. Each site was visited for around 15 minutes and was observed from the side of the road.
ALF did not look burned and contained a lot of shrubs and brome. We also noticed the warm grass big blue stem, as well as the forb dandelion and the legume veiny pea. This concluded all 4 plant communities within this site. We discussed how the shape of the land, namely the hill and the ditch, were both naturally occurring and man-made. Among the site we saw trees, some fences (one of which was electric), and a few cars passed us, which we made sure to wave to! We managed to spot some echinacea as well as the veiny pea at this site, which was exciting.
NWLF did looked burned. We agreed upon this because of the lack of previous years’ growth and the lack of brome in the area. We found lots of plants in each of the 4 plant communities, some being brome, silver leaf pea, big blue stem, and dandelion. At this site we saw echinacea plants, but did not find any veiny peas.
Pulling up to these two “empty” fields after crossing Highway 55, I think that everyone in our group immediately felt let down by what seemed to be a run-down patch of farmland split by an equally run-down gravel road. It took about 5 minutes of investigation which, aided by our Visors, encouraged us to paint ourselves’ a picture. What jumped out to me initially was that the West side of the plot housed significantly shorter plants as a whole compared to the East. With a little bit of prompting from our Visors, this led us to the conclusion that the West field had been through a burn in the recent past. We did end up finding a few Echinacea plants, as well as other plants we were introduced to earlier in the day, namely; Panic Grass, Lead Plant, Brome Grass, and Golden Alexander. (Our unknown plant was an orange flower we found on both sides of the plot)
West side of Loeffler Corner
After completing our Visor document and map (pictured below) for the West plot, we turned to the East. The East plot clearly hadn’t seen fire in a long time. It was overgrown and we quickly were able to identify many of the same plants we found on the West corner. Echinacea, Big Blue Stem, Lead plant, Hawkweed, and a bunch of Army Worms. I thought this was a better test of our skill to pick out the plants in an environment with more competition between producers. After finishing the other section of the map, we walked up and down the gravel road to explore the farthest reaches of the fields. Overall I think we all enjoyed working in a new place, and got the chance to flex our foraging skills.
First day of the field season! Today we visited Landfill East and West for the first day directed observation! Our first obstacle was entering the landfill gate and attempting to pass a truck leaving the site. Once we were inside the gates, we soon realized why the sites were named Landfill when we were met with a putrid smell. To get to the prairie remnants, we walked (with big strides) through tall grass filled with damselflies along the tree line.
Johanna and Sophia traversing the site.
First, we worked on using our visors (tiny personal computers from the 90s) to document our observations.
Me (Lindsey) extremely focused on using the visor.
Next, we drew out a basic map of the site! We included the two sites, the fence line, the tree line, the many rocks, and more. We also noted examples of cool-season grasses (like brome and poa), legumes (like leadplant), and forbs (like milkweed). We also tried to look for some warm-season grasses, but found it difficult at this point in the season.
Johanna and Sophia hard at work!Johanna’s incredible cartography skills shown here.
We compared both sites and noted the differences between Landfill East and West. One notable difference is that Landfill West was recently burned! Johanna also demonstrated proper walking technique through the prairie.
Here you can see the burn line between the two sites!
On our way out, we stopped to say hi to some cow friends! Then, we returned to the Hjelm house to write our flog post to conclude our first day on Team Echinacea. Woo!
After navigating uncertainties about weather and electricity, we ventured up to western Minnesota for a promising burn window. Steady northwest winds, dry fuels, and suitable conditions left us eager to burn on Monday, May 16. Alex, Per, Stuart, and I worked all morning to ready burn breaks in preparation for the afternoon. We were joined by Brad D., Dwight, and Ed C.
Our first unit of the afternoon was the ironically named “nice island.” This unit comprises an eggplant-shaped peninsula of grass extending into an agricultural field. We are studying Green Milkweed and Rough Blazing Star reproduction at this site. After taking weather, discussing the burn plan, and orienting new crew members to their tools, we ignited a test fire in the southwest corner of the unit. The crew then split in half. One group secured the eastern burn break while the second group ignited and secured the western burn break. Once sufficient black had been established, Brad ignited west along the northern edge of the unit while I ignited east along the southern edge. Our hope was the fire would close on itself rapidly but this burn was much slower and smokier than expected (probably owing to the higher relative humidity and the abundance of brome that had greened up after rain and warm temperatures). Slowly but surely, the flames came together leaving a uniformly black burn unit. We are excited to see a nicer post-burn version of nice island this summer.
Thanks to Alex C. for this series of photos illustrating our smoky and slow burn at nice island.
Temperature: 64 F Relative Humidity: 44 % Wind Speed: 11 mph Wind Direction: NW Ignition time: 1:32 PM End time: 2:29 PM Burn Crew: Jared, Stuart, Alex C., Per, Dwight, Brad D., Ed C.
Continuing our May 6 burning adventures, we departed mapp and drove west to nwlf. Our goal was to burn nwlf when conditions were most extreme to maximize burn coverage at nwlf.
After arriving at the site, staging equipment, and taking weather, I ignited a test fire in the NW corner of the unit. We were pleased with fire behavior and went ahead with securing the north edge of the burn unit. After rounding the tricky northeast corner, I tried extending the black in the ditch with little success. The fire did not carry well in the bottom of the ditch. We decided the best course of action was to ignite along the eastern edge of the unit before igniting in the ditch. I used a lot of fuel in the bottom of the ditch. This generated a lot of smoke but didn’t dramatically improve burn coverage in the bottom of the ditch at the north end of the unit. I ignited one more line along the western edge of the unit for good measure. The smoke soon subsided and we were left with a sufficiently charred ditch to leave us proud of our work. We packed up and departed for our last remnant burn of the afternoon.
Igniting along the north edge (Alex’s photo)
Securing the north break was strenuous work (Alex’s photo)
Lighting in this ditch bottom was an exercise in futility (Alex’s photo)
Jared re-evaluating tactics from the ditch (Alex’s photo)
Fire carried much better along eastern edge of unit (Stuart’s photo)
Jared dismayed by ratio of fire to drip torch fuel in the bottom of the ditch (Alex’s photo)
Who made all this smoke? (Stuart’s photo)
Pretty complete burn on south end of unit
Patchy burn in ditch on north end of burn unit (Stuart’s photo)
Temperature: 69 F Relative Humidity: 31 % Wind Speed: 13 mph Wind Direction: SE Ignition time: 3:30 PM End time: 3:58 PM Burn Crew: Jared, Stuart, Alex C., Trygg
Our current data collection system software is pendragon forms run on Handspring Visors. This system works well, we love the visors, they are cheap and do the job. However, the Visors are 2000’s technology and the system is starting to become somewhat precarious. So we are starting to consider alternative systems. Gretel looked into potential new systems in 2016 with minimal luck.
We are hoping in the past six or so years that technology has devolved that will allow us to potentially replace the visors!
What we need in a Data Collection System:
allow for pre-loading data (list of positions to be measured)
allow for fast and efficient data entry (including ability to switch between records using a back or next button)
allow for parent-child form relationship (plant — heads)
auto-repeat of child form
safeguard against data loss
allow viewing of form/data entry in record view vs. field view
include dropdown, multi-selection boxes
ability to hold more than 250 records without slowing down
physical hardware is backlight making it easy to read in the field
This week I continued to make progress on cleaning and scanning for the lilium project (Figure 2). All the pods have been cleaned and we have established a scanning protocol for lilium pods. These protocols allow for others to replicate our methods in future projects with lilies.
Jared and I conducted a couple trials with x-raying the lilium seeds. We will experiment with adjusting the settings on the x-ray and after effects for the images. Further experimentation is necessary to generate high quality x-ray scans in order to classify the seeds. In the x-ray images, the seeds that contain fertilized embryos will appear bright white (Figure 1). We use this to classify which seeds contain fertilized embryos and which ones are empty. The contrast of appearance in the x-ray is due to the increase in density of the fertilized embryos.
This week I was able to clearly define the research question for the L. philadelphicum project. My research question is focused on investigating pollination and reproduction success in wood lily. Specifically, does seed set increase with the proximity of neighboring flowers. If lilies have closer proximity to neighboring flowers, then the proportion of fertilized seeds will increase as well. We will be able to test our hypothesis with the collected seed data and recorded GPS location of each individual plant. Additionally, I made progress on cleaning lilium seeds and started writing the scanning protocol. We found that using an ionizing bar will help prevent static which causes the seeds to be difficult to handle (See Fig 1).
Furthermore, I was able to create a graph representing the progress of the lilium project with the help of Alex (Fig 3). Similarly, to echinacea, the lilium project will also go through the main steps of cleaning, scanning, counting and x-raying. This graph allows us to visualize the progress being made in the ACE protocol for L. philadelphicum. Stay tuned for next week while we experiment with methods in counting and x-raying lilium seeds!
Figure 1. Sophia cleaning ilium pods with ionizing bar
