Preparing the Study Area

Thursday, 7/17, Tean Scat Track Fever with the help of Dan (whitepinesprograms.org) set up our study area. We created three transect lines of 100 by 10 meters each. One begins 200 m into the woods of the Warren property to sample presence of interior forest mammal activity. The second begins at the agriculture/ forest interface and travels 100 meters into the beginning of the woods. This is the "forest fringe" where there is an ecotone between the forest ecosystem and the more heavily managed farm ecosystem. The third transect bisects the agriculture land along a riparian strip of a dry creek bed that runs across the interior of the farm.

We hope to see what are using these corridors/habitats as the farm shares a boundary with the 1300+ Barrington Headwaters Reserve Land. Large unbroken forest land is rare in this ever developing region and the presence of large ranging critters like moose, coyotes, bear and bobcat can tell us a lot about the resource needs of these animals in such a increasingly pressured region.

The wild life we found was impressive and exciting! Of course, lots of deer, but we also found moose tracks and scat, fresh coyote scat (they're feeding heavily on blue berries right now. Thats right. I said coyotes are feeding on blue berries!), and the jack pot winner of the day were confirmed bobcat tracks. This was very exciting and Dan the Tracker was super stoked about this.


We set up a small soot trap (open ends with bait in the middle. Critters walk over black soot and leave prints on contact paper as they move toward the bait and they are then free to leave) for smaller rodents/lagomorphs and even maybe a small predator (weasel) within the 10 meter buffer of the forest/farm interface transect along with a motion trip camera to "trap" any critters that travel on this "corridor" to the farm. Man, I hope it works. Seeing a bobcat would really make the summer for me!. We then placed a large soot trap by the interior transect in the hope of capturing tracks of a meso predator (meso meaning "middle/medium") like a fischer, skunk, raccoon etc. We baited the camera traps and large soot trap with pork fat.
Mmmm, pork fat.






Now we wait. I'll catch you up on Monday as to whether we had any success.

Habitat/corroidor Use Between Forest and Farm

Here is the draft of our research proposal. It's still a work in progress both conceptually and grammatically, so you English teachers out there, don't throw a fit:

Project Proposal:

ENED 890

Question:

Can mammal presence and absence be determined in three specific transects: woodland, farmland, and the interface of these two ecosystems? Using our data, can we determine which species prefer/need one ecosystem, and which are utilizing multiple habitats?Are there patterns in corridor use, and can we distinguish corridor preference?

Objectives:

1. Learn most common mammals, and signs of mammal presence on the interface between Barrington Headwaters and the Warren Farm property.

2. Locate corridors and identify the species of mammals using them.

3. Distinguish what factors make the corridors favorable for travel (landscape topography and vegetation, prey species, cover etc).

4. Provide knowledge for predicting presence and absence of specific species per habitat.

5. Create a report of mammals present and what habitat and resources they are using.

Hypothesis:

The existence or absence of certain types of topography, cover and prey species present will affect/influence the usage of specific habitats, and by specific species.

Rational:

It is helpful to establish mammal habitat and resource needs for the conservation of forest and agricultural ecosystems for future management in an increasingly fragmented landscape.It also helps establish a general knowledge about the loss of biodiversity when an ecosystem is disturbed.

Procedure:

1. Acquaint ourselves with the areas of study.

2. Interview landowner (Mr. Warren), to learn oral history of animal presence on property interface.

3. Establish 100 m line transects ~10m buffer (1 per habitat type).

4. Identify mammal signs

5. Lay mud and soot traps for tracks.

6. Set motion-sensor camera trap

7. Plaster casts of mammal tracks for data collection

8. Identify the topography and vegetation per transect area.

9. Measure and map used corridors.

Materials:

Plaster of Paris, sand, track and scat guides, GPS, map of the Warren Farm and Barrington Headwaters, satellite information, journal, camera, camera traps, rakes and buckets, measuring tape and flags.

Project Time!

We hammered out our project ideas today. The class brainstormed ideas and then we narrowed them down from a ginormous list. My idea made the cut! I wanted to study mammal corridor use between the forest/agriculture interface. Land is becoming more fragmented. Intact forest ecosystems like the Barrington Headwaters are becoming ever more isolated as industrial and residential development eat up the fringes. The Warren farm shares a property line with the Headwaters reserve. I thought it would be interesting too see what kind of critters are using both the agriculture and forested land. Also, what patterns of use exist regarding critter presence, topography and corridor habitat (mainly vegatation ). Finally, a map could be created from arial and/or satellite photography of travel corridors between the two landscapes. I am now on a team of four who will be investigating these questions. They are: Leah ( envatunh.blogspot.com), Lizzy (lizzyswoodsyadventures.blogspot.com ) and Vicki (vickiaunaturale.blogspot.com ). Tomorrow we walk the forest agriculture interface and Wednesday we investigate it with Dan the Tracker. Should be an education!

Project Anxiety

Thursday, 7/10
So, next week we start our projects. We had just a little bit of time to brain storm today after doing some GPS orienteering, tree core work, and wetland classifications with Steve (Eleanor's husband) and Lara. There wasn't a whole lot of time to talk about it, but it's been on my mind all week. Even so, I still do not have a good idea of what to do. I would like to go beyond my comfort zone and do something different that will stretch me a bit. Essentially this means no wildlife bio work. Bu this I mean trapping collaring and studying population numbers. It's fun and important, but I've done a bit of it before But then again maybe I could integrate something into some wildlife work with the agriculture and urban interface with the headwaters. Who knows. Anyway, I can at least be clear with what I would like NOT to do: plants/trees, wetlands/hydrology research.
I am open to:
Birds, biodiversity studies and the aforementioned wildlife agriculture interface.
I think the idea of identifying travel corridors between protected and unprotected land would be cool and see just how much use by how many critters are skulking around in peoples back yards and fields without them being the wiser. We'll see if anyone of the other students are thinking along the same lines. It should all shake out by Tuesday.

Dan the Tracker

Trees are the Earth's endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.
~ Rabindranath Tagore

Meg presented a reading facilitation today (wed 7/9) and opened with this quote. I love it and will commit it to memory. To me it means that trees are an organic expression of the intelligence/complexity of the living Earth. They extend like appendages toward the stars and heavens rooted in organic earth but reach for something beyond themselves beyond their world.

OK, enough philosophical pondering. Speaking of reality:

Wednesday, July10 was spent learning from a master tracker. We met Dan from whitepinesprograms.org at the Headwaters trail head. Dan is an AMAZING tracker. After the obligatory introductions we basically followed Dan into the woods and learned from him as he made several stops as we bushwhacked off the trail head. I have a pretty good feel for the woods and see a lot when I'm out there, but Dan is at a level where the woods speak to him a t every glance. His eye for detail is impressive. Of course we found abundant deer sign and some pretty neat porcupine sign including an active den (no porky in it when we were there) and we trailed the porky for quite a way, which was fun. But we also found flying squirrel sign, many wood frogs and perhaps the most impressive to me for the detail aspect of it was gastropod (snail) sign on a white birch. The snail or slug left a tell tale trail (say that a few times fast) on the side of a white birch. It looked like a hundred individual little oval foot prints with a few small lateral bars within them. These were the tracks from the snail "foot" that it uses to propel itself as it grazes on algae on the birch bark.
We also came across a thrush fledgling (hermit or wood) and a red eft stage of a red spotted newt. All told a successful tracking session and this was only in a couple of hours. It would blow my mind what we'd find if we spent an entire day with him. That, in fact is something i would definitely like to do. Many days would be even better. I am hoping I can work some sort of apprentice work with Dan into my MA EE program. The skill learned from him would be a great opportunity for me to bring to my students at KHS.

It's Hot!

Holy Heat Wave, Batman! Ok its hot. Real hot. Like a mile from the sun hot. What a difference 150 miles makes between the wilds of Kents Hill, Maine and Durham, NH. I'm sure its hot back home right now, but I'm also sure it's a bit direr. I'll adapt, I hope, or it'll be what I tell my bio students during my evolution unit: Adapt or Die! So heat aside, here is what we've done so far:

Monday, 6/7 we spent the morning doing introduction games and team building games. A bit like summer camp and pretty fun. The afternoon was spent on our first field outing to "College Woods" next to the main campus. I REALLY liked this because this woods was WAY different than the woods I use back at KHS. Sections of College Woods has not been harvested in over a hundred years due to different forestry experiments being run over the years. This has resulted in a wood lot of legit old growth trees, some of them massive. This woods is basically mostly overstory/canopy trees of hemlock and a few very old (well over 100 years) white pines. We dbh a white pine and it was 85cm (nearly 3 ft diameter). Pretty big for a pine these days. Anyway the wood lot is dominated by hemlock then beech then a big drop off in density to gray birch, maple and a basswodd or shagbark hickory here and there. This woods was a "gallery" forest with stately giants, loads of shade and virtually NO understory. Interesting to say the least. Pictures to come soon (hopefully).

Today, 6/8 we analyzed the data gathered Monday at College Woods. We recorded whole class stem (tree) numbers (w/ dbh over 2cm), relative density of each species and created a histogram to decide what classification this forest was. With the predominance of hemlock in the canopy and in the midstory it was decided that this forest is transitioning into a "invading/colonizing" forest where the old pines are dying off and are being replaced by hemlock and beech to a lesser extent.

Then we participated in a scavenger hunt which was designed to get us introduced to the Barrington Headwaters. We explored an old beaver dam, abandoned homesteads, and logging history. It was hot (see above) and a bit of a challenge for a bunch of super concientious grad students to follow the directions, but we all made it out alive and we got to know a small part of a forest that will be our base for the next few weeks as we dive into our research projects. More on that later!