Final Prompt

Alas, this class is coming to an end (this is the third week in a row that I have said that, but really, I promise, there's no more after this).  In reflecting on how my place is like a system, I was thinking that there really is no way my place isn't a system.  Throughout my time spent at my place, I discovered different animals, different plants, different processes, and even different ways of experiencing all these elements of the system.  My place isn't like a system, it is the system — the Salmon Hole System.  Let's take a look at the system from how Fritjof Capra would look at it (could a system analysis based on Fritz's theories be called a Capronic Systems Analysis?  It sounds fancy; I think it will catch on):

Networks, Nested Systems, and Interdependence
I feel like this is the key to a successful system.  How is everything connecting in this giant web we call the system?  Last week when I went out, I was noticing how the heavy rainfall was leading to some serious soil erosion problems which would then lead to some felled trees and toppled boulders which would then lead to destroyed habitats which would then lead to a decrease in prey which would force some predators to hunt in a different location and so on and so forth.  The giant networked system of Salmon Hole contains an infinite number of these smaller nested systems — all of them working together (interdependence) to create a functioning ecosystem.

Diversity
In one hour alone on a chilly February day, I was able to gather samples of and identify five different tree species.  Throughout my time at Salmon Hole, I was able to identify probably close to a dozen different species of bird and mammal.  With more birds coming up every week and insects beginning to come out, the number of macroscopic species located at Salmon Hole probably numbers close to 100 — and I've only seen and heard a dozen or two.  If we take into account the microscopic species that are at Salmon Hole and the species I couldn't differentiate, this number probably jumps up close to 1,000.  Compare this to a monoculture system where the amount of total species on a Monsanto Feed Corn Farm probably numbers close to 50 — the "sterilized" soil and plants don't allow any "pest" species to thrive, the animals that would normally eat any "pests" and even the crop itself are kept at bay, and even the microorganisms that are in the soil are probably killed off by fertilizers, pesticides, and poor nutrient retention by the soils.  Now think about how long Salmon Hole has been around compared to most monoculture farms and you will see why it is important to have a functioning diverse system if you want it to live on.

Cycles, Flows, Development, and a Dynamic Balance
The nutrient cycles at my place are a bit interesting because Salmon Hole is made up mostly of solid bedrock, sand, and a few areas of soils that support a couple understory shrubs and a few medium-sized trees.  Needless to say, most of the nutrients are therefore contained in the trees and other plants so foraging animals like birds and squirrels have a great time finding little fruits and nuts on the plants but the nitrogen cycle is nearly nonexistent in the system because the poor soils don't support many nitrogen-fixing bacteria.  The flow of energy in the system is a decently strong flow.  The trees are decently diverse (for angiosperms anyway; there are very few gymnosperms) and capture a large amount of solar radiation.  This energy is then essentially turned into sugars and other nutrients for the plants own benefit which, when eaten, then benefits the foraging animals.  I feel as though the fact that Salmon Hole is right next to a main road connecting Burlington and Winooski causes the ecosystem development to not be very healthy and the dynamic balance is probably a bit too dynamic.  Contaminants flow down from the road during heavy rainfall, which worsen the already poor sandy soils in Salmon Hole, and as those contaminants and sand particles flow into the Winooski River, so go the few nutrients that the soil retained.  The Winooski is being bombarded with leached nutrients that should be retained in the soils but aren't.  This is especially problematic because this could promote Blue-Green Algae (BGA) growth in parts of the stream that don't move too quickly; this toxic BGA could then poison the salmon that are currently spawning there and reduce the overall salmon population.  Meanwhile, besides the majority of the nutrients being leached out from Salmon Hole, I feel like most of the nutrients that are in things that foragers eat (ie. berries and nuts) are eaten and then the animals leave before defecating.  It is as though Salmon Hole is completely an export economy and doesn't actually retain anything beneficial for itself — I fear for the future of my Place.

Finally, the big question of whether or not I feel as though I am a component of this place.  Initially, I was thinking perhaps not because I would go there once per week to look around and enjoy it for what it is, but even superficially just thinking about the ecology of the place as i just did in my Capronic Systems Analysis, I already feel as though I am an important part of this system.  I may not be directly and scientifically involved in nutrient cycling or whatnot, but I do feel as though the plants and animals got used to me being there and may even start to miss me as I visit the Place less frequently.  I know that I will definitely miss them.

Once more, have a great summer, everyone.
:)

As our class comes to an end, life is just beginning in the forest

It's leaf-out season!!!  Here are a couple shots of emerging buds and some little baby leaves...

Sugar maple (Acer saccharum)

Invasive Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera joponica)

Possibly a type of willow (Salix spp.)

Tough to tell; I've never had to identify a tree between
the bud and leaf stage — it has to be either a maple, ash,
dogwood, Caprifoliaceae, or horse chestnut!

Not only is it leaf-out season but also fern spore season;
these are horsetails (Equisetum) which are seedless
vascular ferns in the pteridophyta division

Ancient land plants like this sphagnum moss
(Sphagnopsida) have dominant gametophyte
(the green part) generations, unlike most other plants
and animals, which have dominant sporophyte
generations (the brown part)

Back to trees! Staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina)

Not sure what this is, but it sure is pretty

Have a great summer, everyone.  Enjoy the green out there!

"No place is a place until it has found its poet"

What a day!  This seems like it is going to be just about the last time we really go out to our places so not only will I share with you my poem, but I would also like to show off some things I have been working on for the past semester.  But let's start with the poem.  It has no title but goes like this:

On my way to Salmon Hole
I passed two chickadees
With nothing but love
in their flight —
with my arm outstreched,
I could almost touch
Them.


The water laps on smaller banks than
what I am used to.
The trees, too, aren't used to it.


Birds
Bugs
Buds.
They're all here
At a party celebrating life —
Where are you?

Now how about some cool videos and stuff?!  Woo hoo!

This first little one is of a Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia), which seems to be an important character at the Hole because I drew one in my Event Map last week.

As for some other cool things, I have a couple time lapse videos I have been itching to post for more than two months now — I hope you like them!

This is simply a compilation of all the panoramas 

you have seen at the bottom of the blog each week

I originally meant this to show the sumac as it began to leaf out 

in the spring, but instead it's just a cool time lapse of the seasons

This last one is the one I am most excited about; it shows the path to my place

 as a time lapse over the seasons.  I took about 10 shots today though 

since it may be the last week and I really wanted to show as much 

of the path as I could — hope it's not too dizzying!

Well, if this is the end, it's been real.
If not, I'll see you next week!


...I just watched all those videos after I published this post and I appologize for the quality problems most of them are having; if you want to see them, let me know and I can show you on my computer in class on Wednesday!

Event Map

I like this week's post because — on the busiest week of my semester so far — all the description you need is already on the map!
Enjoy the map!
It's no trap,
Admiral Ackbar.

Follow me around; I start at the bottom and go up!

This Post Has No Title

I don't even know where to start — I can't even think of a title!  I just got back from Salmon Hole (yes, I discovered it is actually called that) and I hope you are ready for an adventure because that is just what I did.  Let's start off with the usual analysis:
The flora and fauna were great.  No leafing out yet, but I saw more cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum) today than I ever have in all my years birdwatching...combined!

Get that nom nom!

Need a cedar waxwing?  I've got half a dozen.

Alright, enough of the biotic analysis — let's get to how ridiculously high the river is right now!  A couple weeks ago, I went down to the river by my spot and noticed that there were huge chunks of ice 20 feet (maybe 4 or 5 vertical feet) up the river bank, as if they had stayed there as the rest of the ice melted and the water level receded.  I thought it ridiculous that the water could have been that high, but today, I saw with my own eyes that it can be even higher.

The red outlines show approximately where the water level usually is;
the line down the middle shows where there was a wintertime ice bridge
and also where I tried to cross over to Brian's spot last week

The floodwaters were simply breathtaking this week.  Here are some pictures; hopefully you will get as excited as I was:

All of these pictures (including ones yet to come!) were taken as I circled around the Salmon Hole area.  This map shows approximately just where I went:

As I came around the old factory (the Woolen Mills Fitness Center, fun fact), I dove down into some woods and came to a spot that harkened back to the Mills' golden years.  Here are a couple pictures from the Woolen Mills:

I half expected James Bond to come out of the water, strip off his SCUBA
gear, and climb casually up those hidden stairs below the Mills

Ever wonder where your Christmas trees go at the end of the season?

This was one of the coolest places I went, by far.  I have
no idea what any of these things do, but they're really
big and cool looking!

Finally, I would like to share one more thing — the muck scraper!  What is that?  Well, I don't know if that's really what it is called but there is one lone gentleman that sits atop the dam and scrapes all the sticks and dirt off of the grate where the water passes into the hydroelectric turbines at the dam.  He sure had his work cut out for him today...

Cheers to you, Scraper Man!

So Begins Mud Season

I've heard that Vermont has very few seasons, and in my own observations and experience living in Vermont wilderness, I can say that this is very true.  Winter takes up half the year and then the other approximately six months are divided into two simple seasons: the mud season (which is starting now and will go through about late May to early June — conveniently enough, this is just about when the early AT hikers start getting up to VT...it's great how hikers and the Leave No Trace Center actually know how to live well in their places) and the rain season (which comes after the mud season, including when it rains for literally the entirety of October as it has for the past two years).
Today I thought I would visit Brian's spot (since it is right next to mine) along with Centennial Woods as a whole because I couldn't really figure out where Fed's, Dan's, and Harrison's spots were exactly.  Brian's spot was a bit difficult to get to, needless to say.  I remember when I ran into him in the winter, we were discussing how it would be interesting to see if he could get to his spot once the floodwaters started during the post-winter melt.  Today, I found the answer:

A couple weeks ago, this was an ice bridge

Anyone work for Asolo?  This would make a great advertisement ;)

If I had had boots that were maybe an inch higher, rain boots, or waiters, I would have made it across; however, today, I wasn't really feeling my inner Bear Grylls (although those are his pants in that picture, too).  As cool a spot as you have, Brian, I will leave the river navigation to you.  Perhaps when the water level begins to drop, I will once again be able to check out your place.

Seeing without sight

Inconveniently enough, the day I decide to go out to make observations with all my senses sans my eyes also happens to be the day I get my first cold of the semester.  Dagnabbit!  In the way of auditory observations, my place does not have much variation.  The salmon run dam and rushing water are actually very loud and prevent me from hearing any human activity besides the occasional dump truck or other big truck.  Besides the river running along, crows and gulls tend to make up the rest of the noise — the geese, cormorants, and ducks that I saw today weren't too talkative...to me at least.

Cormorants chatting away on their lunch break.

The tastes and smells I experienced were even less diverse.  I brought my lunch with me (artichoke and feta sandwich — yummy!) but besides that, I tasted nothing in the air and honestly didn't want to go licking the foul rocks where so many fowl reside.  As for smells, I couldn't help noticing that I couldn't actually notice anything.  I decided that this winter-summer transition is one of the only times where Burlington actually smells like Burlington.  It isn't the crisp freshness you smell in the winter, not the quite the springy tree-smell of spring, certainly not the BBQ-saturated air of summertime, and not the decaying yet brisk scent of fall — these days are simply Burlington days.  In the way of things I felt, I could only feel cold.  Today it was just under 30º and quite windy by the open river.  The air was cold, the rocks were cold, the water was cold, and the trees were cold.  My hands were so cold that I couldn't really get a good feel for whatever it was I was trying to touch — except this one really cool piece of driftwood.  I saw it from the edge of the river and it looked like it had been tossed around by a good amount of water because it was as smooth as a gourd.

Gourd/tree?  No; just a tree.

Finally, one last photo that I really like because it shows, on a very small level, the raging river and a couple pieces of remaining ice as we slowly transition into spring.

...well, maybe not

Dearest Vermont,
Last week I talked about how spring was clearly in the air and it was great to be able to feel the change in seasons.  Now that it is actually spring, you decided to dump a bunch of snow and a good amount of cold on us.  My inner-skier thanks you.  My inner ecologist, however, is somewhat confused.
I would appreciate if you made up your mind.
Lovingly,
Jay

Although it is great to go wander around the woods in some fresh snow and then come home to drink some hot cocoa, listen to some old Avett Brothers and Old Crow, and write about nature, I honestly would rather have done this during the weather we had over the weekend.  However, complaints aside, this was a great day for experiencing nature in all her craziness.  With respect to the animals I saw, I was disappointed by the fact that I could not see any tracks — the great thing about fresh snow is that you can usually see great tracks; the terrible thing about fresh snow on top of icy snow is that the fresh snow can simply fill in the tracks.  So, on that note, I used mostly my ears (I thought I heard a field sparrow [Spizella pusilla] but the chirp was too slow so I am not sure just what it was) and my hunter's eyes — looking out for any movement in the woods and on the water.  I did find a bird I had not previously been able to identify: the common merganser, Mergus merganser.  I had seen this funky duck a couple times before but had never been able to identify it.  Also, in the same spot as the mergansers, I saw a little flock of what I thought were cormorants, but in the heavy snow I was not able to see them clearly and looking back at the pictures, they might actually be some sort of goose (now wouldn't that be a big mix-up?!).  See for yourself:

A few geese?  A few cormorants?  Who knows, but there are a couple
mergansers on the right side for sure!

Almost breeding season, birdies!

Additionally, I saw some great evidence for some, well, less intelligent animals.  I don't like to think of any animals as smarter than any others — there is no way I could build a beaver dam; however, this particular beaver definitely did not think this project through thoroughly:

Evidence of an over-ambitious beaver; this tree had a
DBH of about 66 inches

One more little thing to think about...because I sure did.  As I was eating my sandwich and wandering around the rocks, I noticed a little seed pod.  Of what?  I am not sure, perhaps a walnut (check it out below).  It got me thinking about ecosystems and first successional ecosystems in particular.  As this seed passed me by, it brushed along the coastline and then just carried on down the mighty Winooski.  How many times had this happened?  Probably millions in the life of the river and rocks!  It got me thinking about islands and how they first got populated — how many seed pods simply went right by the coastline of Hawaii before one finally got stuck there and started to take root?  I can't even fathom how many!
In the amount of time it takes to start an ecosystem, in the amount of time it takes to shape a landscape, in the amount of time it takes to evolve a certain characteristic, the 3 hours I have spent wandering and blogging are nothing more than a blink.

Spring is almost here!

Over my Spring Break, I joined my roommate at his home in Ithaca, NY.  If you didn't know, this also happens to be where Walt is from and throughout the week I began to imagine how difficult it must have been for Walt to leave Ithaca for Burlington.  Within the first couple days I was there, we went to Taughannock Falls (pronounced Tuh•ga'•nuck; see following picture) and I instantly thought of Rock Point and how overwhelmed Walt must have been as a young man growing up with such diverse geology as the Ithaca Gorges.

Taughannock Falls is the tallest waterfall east of the Mississippi; it is 33 feet higher than Niagara.

After our geologic adventure to this famous gorge, we ventured over to the Cornell Plantations to explore a variety of tree species and hike around doing some tree ID.  Finally, and most relevantly, we went to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology to take a look at some birds.  Sadly, I didn't bring my camera but we did see a variety of bird species including mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), Canada geese (Branta canadensis), crows (Corvus brachyrhynchos), black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapillus), and a couple cedar waxwings (Bombycilla cedrorum).  Additionally, there were a variety of stuffed (anyone know a verb form of "taxidermy"?) hummingbirds on display that had some exquisite feather colorings.

As for my place, today I went out and didn't see much in the way of birds except some more C. brachyrhynchos and many many gulls (Larus canus I believe; there are so many gulls, it is hard to find the right one).

A flock of L. canus

On my way back I also saw a very rare bird, one I like to call Helicopterus medevacus, or the MedEvac helicopter.  This got me thinking and I realized that I have no idea what inspired the invention of the helicopter; there is really nothing in nature that spins like that and actually flies — many seed pods can act like parachutes to catch the wind, but nothing really uses a propulsion system like a helicopter's rotor blades.  Food for thought.

Cheers!

A Day in the Life of John Shane, A.K.A. Tree ID!

Being a forester, there is really nothing I like more than tree ID.  Over the summer, before I even had any semblance of tree knowledge, I would often sit down in my off time (I was living in the woods) and look around, trying to identify the trees around me.  I got pretty good at identifying 15 or 16 trees, an accomplishment I was very proud of until I found out I needed to know 160 for John Shane's dendrology class (which I still haven't taken, but I am very excited to).  However, for now, I just need to know those 15 or 16 and can usually ask one of my friends that has taken dendro to identify the trees for me — which is how I identified the majority of the trees for this assignment!

If it wasn't for my friend, I would have only been able to identify the staghorn sumac (Rhus typhina) and the ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica); thanks to her help, I was also able to identify balsam poplar (Populus balsamifera), american elm (Ulmus americana), and quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides).

These trees were not actually at my place.  If you look at my post from last week, there is one little shrub by the rock that I call the center of my place, but besides that, there is really no flora.  I had to go back maybe another 5 meters to find the sumac and an additional 5-10 meters to find the rest of the trees.  Doing some quick research on these trees shows just why they love my Place.  Most of them love moist soils and don't really seem to care what the sunshine is like, but for the most part aren't so shade-tolerant (which perhaps explains one reason for occupying a sunny rivebank). One thing that did surprise me is that F. pennsylvanica prefers deep soils.  I thought most of my Place was substantially bare rock (hence I had to go away from the center of my place to find trees!) but if F. pennsylvanica prefers deep soils, perhaps I will get too see some interesting soils after mud season.  Also, just a fun aside: P. balsamifera is the northernmost American hardwood (http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/volume_2/populus/balsamifera.htm) and is extremely prevalent in my Place.

Happy tree identifying, everyone!