Fire in recruitment experiment « The Echinacea Project

Seedlings found doing Recruitment

Exciting news! Amy and Hillary found some seedlings at a Hegg Lake plot, the one thats on a hill (the hill with all the phlox on the side) near that blind corner. Anyway, there were nearby flowering plants so its great their reproducing! There were also a couple seedlings found outside the frisbee sized circle area.

here are the pics:

This one is a close up of the shriveled cots (with an achene next to it), can you see it!?!

The seedling finders, working hard!

This was in the morning, getting ready for work:

This is just a prairie lilly (Lilium philadelphicum) that I spotted at Staffenson. First time ever seeing one and I think their beautiful!

Lastly, this is a reminder for me to show Stuart my preliminary data collection sheet:
data table for project.pdf

-Katie

pollen viability and identifying distinct plants in the recruitment expt (I)

I was glad to participate in assessing floral phenology Wed morning and, with Amy, checking to resolve uncertainties remaining from this year’s monitoring of the first recruitment experiment (not to mention a very fun lunch with the team!). We sampled tissue from closely neighboring rosettes, where it isn’t clear whether they are the same or different plants, for eventual molecular analysis in Chicago by Jennifer and her team. Resolution of those plant identities should certainly help reduce the problem of counts of survivors *increasing* between censuses. But, in retrospect, I wondered whether the info we recorded was crystal-clear in terms of how this year’s counts should be adjusted, depending on the outcome of the IDing, particularly for the zones where many seedlings were recorded. When the remaining double-checking is done, it would be good to keep this in mind…

Of the many, many other terrific things that I’m excited are being accomplished, I’ll just comment that I’m happy to see Megan’s post that she has sampled pollen and stored it in different conditions to check its long-term viability. Finding a way to keep pollen viable for a month to a year would pave the way for experiments I thought up while observing pollinators out at LF on July 7. I see that Megan noted the amount of pollen available for that sample wasn’t large, so it would be great if another set of samples could be taken, also so other plants are represented.

Things to check in recruitment zones

Apparently there is some question about what I have been doing lately. Daniel was partly right–data entry has been on my list. Remember checking the recruitment zones earlier this summer? And being rewarded with all those six packs? Well, there were some ambiguities in the data. I compiled a list 2009 zones to check.xls of all the things we need to check in the recruitment zones. Some of these (checking burn status) can be taken care of with a visit to the plot; other ambiguities may be cleared up by taking some tissue samples and sending them to Chicago for microsatellite analysis.

Burns of recruitment plots

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.

Field work, May 2008

Here’s an update on the main research activities this spring. The cool spring with a late snow (~15 inches -38 cm- at the end of April) delayed burning weather somewhat and we think seedling recruitment may be later than in the past few years.

Recruitment/Establishment Experiment

On May 9 I mowed burn breaks so the DNR burn crew could burn the plots. They burned the middle unit at Hegg Lake WMA on May 28. Two plots were in this unit. Here’s a photo of one plot just after the burn. Nice work! There are 3 plots to be burned at Hegg Lake WMA, two at Kensington Duck Refuge, and one a Eng Lake WMA. At the duck refuge I saw 2 Sandhill cranes and a Red-necked grebe (among the regular, awesome array of water birds).

Common Garden

Dwight, Jean, and I burned the common garden on May 22, starting just after noon. The weather was within prescription, but the wind was a bit strong and the fire jumped the gravel road and started some corn stubble. The fire worked its way to some reed canary grass and we managed to put it out there. If it had gone a little longer it would have torched the cattails and burned the whole slough west of the common garden. Whew!

The running fire was great in the 99S garden, but there were quite a few unburned spots in the main garden. We burn the CG every other year and we mow paths annually, so we don’t have quite enough fuel for really complete burns. Maybe in 2010 we should augment the fuel load with some prairie hay.

A big tree just east of the CG caught on fire. It was hollow, but quite strong. It finally broke and fell over around 7 pm. To put it out we scraped all the embers and coal from the trunk with an axe and shovel. We couldn’t reach a spot of punky wood 8 – 9 feet (2.5 m) off the ground. So I climbed up the trunk and used a 5 lb. pick mattock to scrape out the embers and punky wood. Then Dwight lifted the smith Indian backpack sprayer over his head and I sprayed and sprayed and sprayed. We put it out by around 10 pm. Exciting! We need to cut up the part of the tree that fell on the CG.

An adult bald eagle flew over the CG just as we started to burn and then again around 8 pm — great!

On 24 May, Gretel and I broadcast seed over the CG. We seeded Galium boreale, Bouteloua curtipendula, and Schizacharium scoparium. Gretel, Per, and I seeded the ditch with many species of seed, including Stipa spartea and Spartina pectinata. We forgot to seed the 99S garden.

Seedling Search

On 27 & 28 May Ruth, Amy, Julie, and I searched for Echinacea seedlings in five remnant prairies. We searched about 75 circles with 41 or 50 cm radius and found 17 seedlings. Several had only cotyledons and the tallest first leaf was 24 mm. We got rained out yesterday (29 May). It was also cold and windy.

Hjelm house

Last weekend Pete, Dwight, Gretel, and Stuart cleaned out all the sheetrock and insulation (yuck) in the house. That was a job. We got the house all ready to have the floors sanded. We have a lot left to do to get the house ready for the main field season. The highest priorities are bathroom and computer network.

Categories

Experiments

Seedlings found doing Recruitment

pollen viability and identifying distinct plants in the recruitment expt (I)

Things to check in recruitment zones

Burns of recruitment plots

Field work, May 2008

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