The team is starting to wrap up our season as we say goodbye to more members. We’re sad to see them go, but our remaining group has continued to power through- business as usual!
Emma, Mia and I started the day off with demo in some sites previously untouched by the 2020 team. First, we went to Hegg Lake, where I harvested some Echinacea pallida as well as Echinacea angustifolia, the last field-work step of our hybrid experiment (Stay tuned for an update on that in the coming weeks!). Emma and Mia practiced demo in some smaller sites so that Mia is trained in on Darwin, or “Chucky D”, when Emma and I leave.
Mia and “Chucky D”, or Darwin, as we affectionately call our GPS!
Photo opportunities call for action! I think this one was pretty successful. Thanks Emma for the help with this one!
In the afternoon, Emma headed off to do some more work on sling, while Mia and I harvested heads. Emma not only managed to finish the sites she planned, but also went on to tackle Staffanson! Big sites like that are hard to manage, especially on your own. Go Emma!
Mia and I continued to pick away at P1 harvesting. We got a good portion done, and plan on finishing it in the coming week. I also took some pictures of plants in different stages to improve our protocol, which will help newcomers and oldtimers in the following years.
It’s important to hydrate during field work! (Not sponsored… but Hydro Flask- if you’re looking for someone…)
Overall, our small team turned out to be pretty successful! We were productive, pushed through, and made it out alive. Here’s another success story for the books- or, maybe just the flog.
Today Amy D. came up from the cites to help kick off sling refinds!
I had never done sling before, but I thought it was pretty cool. It’s kind of like if measuring and demo had a kid, because you have to measure all of the seedlings but also still find nearest neighbor. We were able to finish three sites today, East elk lake road, KJ’s, and south of golf course!
Amy D. and I on the hunt for seedlings!
This afternoon we worked on some p1 harvest as a team and Emma went off to work on her independent project.
It was a hot one out here today but we all made it out alive and are ready to get some more stuff done tomorrow!
Sadly today was my last day. We started off the day by moving the goats, which was really fun. Then we keeping going on rechecks in P1, and ending the day with cutting big blue stem.
I had a wonderful summer and I wouldn’t change it at all! I have always said my dream job is where I could wear rain boats and fun hats and in thing job I could. I am so thankful for all the people I met and all the experiences I got to have.
I don’t know what I will miss more, the people or my cone?
My coworkers know that P2 has held a special place for me and that sometimes they may find me staring off into the vastness of it. P2 currently being harvested and most flowering plants were decapitated, but some are still left but not for long. I sometimes daydream in P2 that its a couple hundred years ago and i am just a visitor passing through West Central MN and all i see is acre after acre of prairie. But P10, located at West Central Area Schools with its observation tower where i have spent dark evenings with my Astronomy Class is also special for me. And now P10 with its Echinacea angustifolia plots and plants flourishing in their first full growing season, it may have taken the edge over P2. We’ve been able to check to see how many plants have made it through year one and it’s at about 2/3s. Hopefully those plots can provide many years of students using the plots to collect data and learn to appreciate the prairie.
Abby VK (Echinacea Project alumni from 2015 and 2016 helps 2020 team member John VK measure P10. Abby stated “i was on the A Team for measuring plots and flower phenology back in my days, along with Will and Amy.”
This morning was spent doing P1 rechecks and Emma had 3 search and finds in a row, remarkable. The afternoon had team members help Leah collecting seeds from predetermined plots at Aanenson and East of Town Hall.
Anna, on East of Town Hall balance beam fence, just prior to her double tuck backflip dismount. Incredible.
Ohhh heyyyyyyy its your friendly Team Echinacea yearlong intern who found her hair brush under her bed after it being lost for at least three weeks, Mia Stevens.
Oh boy do we have some updates for the flog!
Yesterday was a tumultuous weather day out here in Dougy county. Approximately at 4:30 am the thunder and rain began, this was some serious not messing around rain. I couldn’t sleep through it. Then at 6 there was the loudest thunder crack you have ever heard in your life. All of Andes crew jumped 6” in the air in shock. Then as we moseyed out of bed, we realized that not quite all of the lights were turning on. As we slightly began to panic about breakfast, the refrigerator, morning cups of tea, etc. Lea came to the rescue and checked the circuit breaker and fixed it all! Yay real adults! However, the one thing that did not turn back on and still hasn’t is the Wifi 🙁
We set off to Hjelm for a morning Zoom to learn about this awesome new mapping function made by Jared. The rain was still coming, enough to make even me drive the speed limit on 27. We were able to sneak in some remnant phenology, p1 phenology, demo, and even some p1 rechecks before lunch.
At lunch we enjoyed a wonderful vegan chocolate cake made by Jean, Penny, and Tulula to celebrate Jared’s week with the team. Then, the clouds came back with strong gusts of winds. We decided to call it quits on field work after lunch, and head over to Hoff house to empty it out.
Allie and I were working on some coding while double fisting halo pops when Stuart sent out a group me warning the group about the ongoing tornado warning! As two non-Midwesterners tornados are a fairly unknown phenomena, us New Yorkers know snow but that’s all about it natural disaster wise. Nothing too crazy happened in Hoffman, just some hard rain and wind. However, Lea reports it was raining sideways at Andes! But once we heard that John/Bonnie and Clyde are on tornado watch duty we instantly felt much safer. However, the lack of spotting the tornado in Evansville has made their further employment as tornado spotters come into question by some authorities, but not this one, we love you Clyde!
Clyde keeping watch!
After a recreating a scene from the Wizard of Oz we returned to Andes with a lifetime supply of halo pops. We went to bed with dreams of working Wi-Fi in the morning.
Our dreams were disappointed. We have spent the day finding ways to occupy ourselves without Wi-fi. Activities include but are not limited to: eating, drawing, cleaning your room, napping, becoming a dog groomer, reading, cleaning out your downloads folder, sunbathing, thinking about studying for the GRE, field work, and more eating.
Hopefully soon the Wifi can return and then I can choose to avoid answering emails instead of it being chosen for me.
Monday was the start of a new week. We traded Anna M. for Anna A. and hit the ground running.
The returned Anna A. – without braces!
Anna and I started the day off herding aphids in p1. Sadly, the number of aphids is slowly declining, after never really going up in the first place.
At lunch we all got to chat with Jared Beck, visiting possible post-doc. We talked about setting things on fire, like prairie preserves and experimental plots, and statistics. Jared will be here for the whole week, scoping The Echinacea Project out and looking at possible experimental sites.
After lunch, Emma, Anna, Mia, and I headed up to p2 to try and finish the last of the measuring. We made it all the way to row 73, meaning we have 7 more rows left. If John had been around we probably would have finished measuring (we miss you John!).
It has been a busy and at times stressful few weeks in and outside of work, but I’m thankful for the supportive and reliable people around me in both aspects of my life who help me stay positive and hopeful.
In terms of work some of the people I’ve been grateful to count on the past few weeks are Allie, Anna M., and Anna A., who’ve been working with me to do demo––we’ve done one or two sites every day the last week and a half, and it’s been going smoothly. It can be kind of a zen time, just me, the GPS, and the point I’m staking to…repetitive, routine, peaceful. I’m really glad to have teammates who do their jobs well, that makes my part easy! Another thing I enjoyed doing this week was ID’ing native milkweed Asclepias viridiflora with Anna M. Something about plant ID is just fun! And fun to see someone learning it for themselves.
Today I also got to work on my independent project some, doing a pilot study out at East Elk Lake Road, a favorite site. I collected microhabitat data around maternal Sling plants, including plant community composition & flowering plants, distance to roads, slope & aspect, and litter depth. The end goal is to learn to what extent microhabitat characteristics are related to Echinacea seedling persistence! I learned a lot on my test run today about my protocol (if anyone knows how to use a clinometer hit me up), and was reminded of how much I love doing community composition sampling! It felt so natural and fun to be doing again, even though it was just a little.
One last thing is a special mention of the apple of my eye, the native grasses in P1. There is awesome species representation and it’s been so fun seeing each one’s phenology as they take turns sending up seedheads throughout the summer. First was porcupine grass (Hesperostipa Sparta), then sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula) started, then big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii), followed by Indiangrass (Sorghastrum nutans), and we’re now approaching my favorite grass, little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium)’s flowering. So great, so diverse! Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Grass Corner with Emma.
An insect predator-prey interaction? I heard that the green bug at the bottom is a predatory species, so it may beSometimes instead of woody encroachment it’s ag field encroachment––a lone Echinacea between the soybean rowsThe most beautiful color on this sideoats grama pollen! I’d never seen such bright red pollen before.
I love Montana! My mom and I decided to take a trip out to Montana to visit colleges. We arrived in Bozeman, Montana on Friday. Since Friday we have done tons of hiking, visited Yellowstone and took a tour of Montana State University. Yellowstone had lots of people and it took us about 5 hours to drive only 30 miles! In Yellowstone we saw the grand canyon and some geysers. Today we had a campus tour and I fell in love with Montana State University and later today we are going on a cave tour.
I have done a lot of hiking in my life but this hike was by far my favorite! My mom and I woke up at 5 am to get to Hyalite Trail by 7. We hiked for about 7 miles and it was gorgeous!
Amy headed back to the Twin Cities on Friday, which left me alone at the Hoff House. Since I don’t feel risking my life everyday biking to work on 27, I moved into the Andes Tower Hills condo Friday evening.
It has new topography (a hill) and new wildlife (Lea’s dogs). Given the general lack of dogs and elevation gain in the past 1.5 months, this is much more similar to my living condition at home (upstate NY).
I’m looking forward to fun new adventures with the Andes crew!
Andes Tower Hills – elevation of 1620 ft (290 ft rise)! Bellamy (left) and Huxley (right)
It’s Anna Meehan (Alpha Mike) coming at you with an update of our demo/measuring adventures. This week our active team consists of exclusively girls! And of course, no insult to the lovely men on our team, we have got a lot done. Specifically, demo and measuring have been flying by at a faster-than-usual rate.
We started off the day with some demo and phenology, which is typical of our mid-season schedule. Emma, Allie and I took on Loeffler’s Corner this morning. This is a large demo-site with approximately 175 plants. Usually, Darwin (our GPS system) would count as a man, but he is, in fact, a GPS. Meanwhile, Anna Allen conquered P2 phenology, all on her own! While our tasks seemed somewhat daunting, we completed both in a timely manner well before noon. We wrapped up the morning with some extra measuring in P1.
Superstar Demo Team Emma and Allie stake some new flowering plants!We had the chance to jump/crawl under some barbed wire fence today… in the name of science!
We took the afternoon to measure some more segments of our P1 plot. Today was significantly nicer than others, with lower humidity and temperature levels than Wednesday and Tuesday. Amy even joined in on measuring for the first time in ~3 years! Sadly, we weren’t able to get a picture of this precious moment, but it will live on in our memories. Mia, Allie and I found some aphids along the way, which have slipped our eyes the entire field season. Now, we may be able to continue our aphid addition/exclusion experiment from previous years.
APHIDS!!! At last!
Overall, our day was pretty typical. This week has reminded us of the importance of women in STEM, and just how much we are capable of as a team. I’m incredibly lucky to have some awesome, efficient, kind, and strong women to look up to as I continue my journey through science.
