A cold, wet spring put an early damper on our 2022 burn season but we got a great start this week with an efficient two-day trip to Minnesota. The weather looked sufficiently warm and dry to justify the trip from CBG. Our goal was to prep burn units in anticipation of better burn weather. Stuart and I thought there was an outside chance we might be able to burn P1 or the Andropogon pilot plot on Friday but conditions were far better than anticipated. Fuels were dry and steady south winds brought drier air. We focused our efforts Thursday on preparing burn units. Alex and I mowed/raked breaks at waa and mapp in the morning. Stuart joined us after lunch to scout lcw, mark the burn unit boundary at lfw, and remove a handful of pine and cedar trees within the unit. Alex and I finished the day by mowing breaks at nwlf and cutting breaks at sgc.
Pasqueflowers, prairie skies, and fresh ash at Staffanson Prairie.
The weather conditions that materialized Friday were ideal for prescribed burns: steady southeast wind, high temperatures in the mid 60s, relative humidity dipping to 30-35 percent, and good smoke dispersal. We were able to burn six experimental units and one bonus prairie garden between 11 AM and 6 PM. The Echinacea Project was not alone. TNC burned the western half of Staffanson on Friday and USFWS burned several WPAs. It was a very successful and efficient trip. Stay tuned to the flog for more detailed information about each experimental burn.
Burning Jean’s prairie garden at the end of the day. Thanks to Alex C. for the photos.
This week, the weather looked promising in Minnesota, so Stuart, Jared, and I drove up to Minnesota on Wednesday to prepare sites for burning. On Thursday morning, Jared and I mowed burn breaks at the Andropogon pilot plot and remnants waa, mapp, and nwlf. After lunch, we were loading up the vehicle with more supplies at Hjelm when we heard a loud crash in the direction of Highway 27. We wondered what it was, and when we drove down the road, we discovered that a semi-truck full of corn had tipped over just south of p8! Three people had stopped to help, but the driver was still trapped inside the cab. Fortunately, he had been wearing his seatbelt. Stuart and Jared stayed to help while I drove back to Hjelm to find a ladder. By the time I returned, they had broken the front window and helped the driver out. Soon, lots of emergency vehicles arrived, so we continued on our way to Landfill.
Corn catastrophe!
The spilled corn was no ordinary cargo – it was worth $8 a bushel! The truck had dumped several thousand bushels, so a clean-up crew was sent to salvage the wreckage with a corn vacuum. They sucked up the corn and transferred it to new semi-truck. By the end of the day, they retrieved most of the corn, but there is still a glimmer of yellow in the grass.
Corn rescue operation
The corn vacuum
On a brighter note, the pasqueflowers are blooming at Loeffler’s West. We ended the day on Thursday by mowing breaks and cutting brush at South of Golf Course. There is about an hour of work left at that site. Overall, it was an eventful day – and we hadn’t even started burning yet!
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
The lilium project is almost wrapping up as I am approaching the end of my semester long internship. I am almost finished with processing my seed data. All the scans and x-rays of lilium ovules have been done. The only steps left are to finish counting and classifying the ovules. Counting is done to quantify the total number of ovules in the each lilium pod. Classifying is using the x-ray image to determine the number of fertilized ovules in each pod. Once I have the data for the total and full counts of each lilium pod, I will be able to obtain the seed set for each individual lilium philadelphicum. Then, I will analyze the relationship between variation in seed set and proximity in nearest neighboring plants. Jared showed me the FNN package in R which, like its name, will find the nearest neighbor between x and y coordinates. The knn.dist function is a handy tool that allows you to compare distances of a point and its nth neighbors. In order to further analyze the data, my first step is to conduct data management and organize the different variables into a data frame. This process is very useful for researchers that use R for data analysis and data visualization. Next week, I will have a data frame that includes the information necessary for the analysis and visualization of the lilium data.
For the remnants, I finished data reconciliation for all the plants at Staffanson Prairie Preserve (spp) through 2021 in demap, our repository for data from the remnants. Each summer, we use the GPS to record the positions of every flowering Echinaceaangustifolia plant within the transect at Staffanson, and we also revisit plants that flowered previously to check whether they are still alive, a process called total demo. This winter, I connected records between years so we can track the life of individual plants across the years.
Last week, I completed demo.out for Staffanson in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021. Demo.out makes one record for each plant that we visited each year and records whether it was living or dead, whether it flowered, and how many heads it had. This is the dataset that we can use to do longitudinal data analysis and study the demography of Echinacea plants over time. In 2020, both sides of Staffanson burned, and it had the highest flowering rate in the past 5 years – 275 plants! Of those plants, 33 flowered for the first time. In 2021, there was just one new flowering plant.
As much as we love Echinacea angustifolia, we’ve decided it is time to move on. After 25 years of data collection, we have more than enough data to answer all of our long-term research questions. We’re still planning to analyze and publish the data we have, but we won’t be collecting any new data on Echinacea. Instead, we’re excited to announce that we are starting fresh as the Lilium Project! We’re looking forward to answering our burning questions about the reproductive biology of Lilium philadelphicum and the impacts of habitat fragmentation on this gorgeous prairie species.
Here is a recap of the Orchid Show if you missed it this year! The annual orchid show at the Chicago Botanic Garden displays a wide collection of orchids. This event celebrates the beginning of spring with the unique and vibrant colors that orchids have to offer. After hearing great reviews from friends that visited the exhibition, I knew I couldn’t miss the opportunity to be mesmerized by orchids myself. Roaming through rooms filled with orchids was a magical experience. Your environment is transformed into a tropical paradise of thousands of blooming orchids. Some of them hang from the ceiling and others grow from patches of moss positioned on a man made tree. Every turn of the corner and you will see a unique combination of colors. The variation amongst different species is incredible. One of my favorites reminded me of a sunset, she had the perfect gradient of yellow, peach and pink. I was surprised to find an orchid that happen to match my hair color, which is an aqua mint green. The beauty of orchids will truly take your breath away. The orchids had my undivided attention and I enjoyed spending time to appreciate their beauty. Sometimes we all need an afternoon to look at nothing but pretty flowers 😉 If you missed the orchid show this time, be sure to come back next year for a mesmerizing experience!
A note to future Team Echinacea members: Are you still wearing masks all the time? Are you still 3 years behind on cleaning Echinacea heads or have you caught up a little bit?
Anyway, in the summer of 2020 there were 18 heads of Echinacea pallida that were harvested. 11 of these heads were a part of Anna Meehan’s hybrid compatibility experiment. All of the pallida heads are NOT going through the ACE process; they are in the lab all together nice and neat. These 18 pallida heads will not be a part of hh2020. EXCEPT the hybrid plant head (AP-772) who will stay apart of hh.2020 since we need achene count eventually but for now it will stay here until it is dissected.
The heads are in a box labeled “Anna Meehan’s Hybrid Compatibility experiment & E. pallida heads 2020″ in the glass cabinets right as you enter the ecology lab.
The hybrid compatibility experiment would be a perfect project for a student in the lab for a few weeks. They could asses the compatibility of the hybrid with not only the E. angustifolia but also the E. pallida. The experiment is designed with backcrosses (hybrid to parent) and forward crosses (parent to hybrid don’t know if this is the right word I just made it up). The student would be able to access seed set on the hybrid, E. angustifolia, & E. pallida heads. The sample size is fairly small but this would conclude a good pilot study for further studies of the hybrid compatibilities. We also need achene count of the hybrid plant (AP-227)!
On Friday, volunteers Marty and Mike finished cleaning the last batch of heads from the 2018 common garden experiment. Huzzah! The volunteers had been working on the 2018 heads back before the pandemic started, and after a long break, 2018 is finally done. Many thanks to all the volunteers who made this possible, especially the 2021-2022 crew: Allen, Char, Elif, Laura, Luk, Marty, Mike, and Suzanne! Now, we have a lot of rechecking to do.
