Hi! My name is Ms. Courtney. Please travel with me to Maryland to study Climate Change and Fragmented Forests!
Friday, December 11, 2009
Home at last!
It's Friday evening, and I am glad to report that I made it home safely. It was a 7 1/2 hour drive to get from Maryland back home -- I took a different route than how I drove down that I thought would be safer if I ran into bad weather. Luckily, the roads were mostly clear and I drove mostly in daylight.
Many thanks to the rest of the Flyings D. B.s, our team this week! What a wonderful group of teachers to spend the week living with and learning from! It was an honor to work with you all "doing science"! I am looking forward to following this research and seeing how our work fits into the big picture. And of course, I can't wait to see if we make the cut for Dr. John Parker's movie!
Hello! Ms. Courtney here on Thursday evening. Today was our last day to be out in the field with the Scientists. We walked back out to the area where we were weeding the other day. Most of our team worked on measuring "coarse woody debris" which consisted of measuring all the woody stuff on the ground bigger than 5 cm diameter along a line stretched across the plot. In some places, that was quite a challenge, as there was piles of branches and logs laying across the line. The team members used calipers to measure the diameter of the debris today.
I went to work in a different plot with another scientist who is looking at sprouts regenerating on stumps where trees were cut down in a logging project. We had to locate, tag and measure diameter and height of each sprout on a stump. For the bigger sprouts, measuring the heights was tricky. Lcukily there was a cool piece of technology to help - a laser! It works through another math (geometry) application! By taking measuremenets of the top and bottom of the sporut with teh laser, as well as the horizontal distance to the sprout, the laser device can calculate the angle between the measuremetnts, and from that, the length of the hypotenuse of the triangle formed, which gives the height of the sprout. It turns out I was pretty good at using the laser device!
We spent the afternoon/early evening brainstorming ideas for projects to do at our schools once we get back home. I don't know yet exactly what project we will try to do, but I am hoping some of you will want to be a part of it -- you can bet it will somehow involve trees or nature! See you Monday when I am back!
Hi all! Ms. Courtney here on Wednesday night. What a great day we had today! Please tell Ms. Lunt that she really needs to read my blog today, because we did kinesthetic graphing today! Kine-what?? Well, we actually got out in the field and took measurements (data for the scientists), but it was really cool because we had to plot out the locations of the trees we were measuring. The tree locations were the coordinates on a graph, and we had to use giant meter tape measures to help us figure out the x and y coordinates of each tree we were measuring and identifying. Eventually all this data gets put into a computer program that spits out a nice scatter plot in color showing each of the trees. Different size dots represent the different sizes of the trees, and different colors represent different species. Here's what that kind of graph ends up looking like:
We had some great fun trying to get out to the work site today. We had a lot of rain here last night, and there was a little bit of water we had to get through to get to the work site ... OK, maybe more than just a little. I have some great video I wanted you to see, but after over 4 hours of trying to upload it, I gave up. (Morning update: I tried again and it worked! Go to the bottom of this post and look at the video clip!) So here's some pictures of today in the field:
As you can see, we had just a little rain last night! Good thing they had those nice rubber boots for us to wear today!
We also spent the morning in the lab where we sorted and categorized "leaf litter". In the research plots, they put out buckets to catch leaves and other debris that falls in the forest, and once a month they collect whatever is in the buckets, sort and categorize it, dry it and weigh it. This helps to determine what the composition of the forest canopy is, and determine how much carbon is being lost by the trees through the natural fall processes. All these figures go into determining the carbon budget for the forest. So we learned how to identify trees by their leaf characteristics this morning -- oak, red maple, sweet gum, tulip poplar, lots of beech, hickory and many others. It helped us when we got out in the field in the afternoon and then had to identify the trees we were measuring.
So I have been learning a lot, doing many new and interesting things, and contributing to the data-gathering process for a real scientist doing real research. The data we gathered will become part of the supporting evidence for this scientist's conclusions after which he will write and publish his findings. Other scientists and world leaders will use his research to help decide public policy in the future. I find it exciting to have been a small cog in that wheel!
Hello! Ms. Courtney here from the woods of Maryland, where it is cold and will be very rainy tonight. Hopefully it won't drop below freezing, or it will get very slippery and dangerous here!
We got out into the field this afternoon to get our hands (and definitely our boots!) dirty. We worked with a different researcher, Dr. John Parker (no relation to Dr. Jess Parker on our mian project). This scientist's research looks more at the interactions between living creatures (specifically deer) and the forest environment, and specifically whether deer or invasive (non-native) plant species have more impact on native vegetation growth. We went into two different areas of the forest to his research plots where he taught us how to identify several different invasive plant species, and we were instructed to pull out all the plants of that type within the plot area. With all of us working, it went pretty quickly. There was a cameraman from Smithsonian here today filming this scientist and his research for a movie, and we all were included in the filming as "extras"! How cool is that? So when the movie is done, we'll have to remember to check it and see if I made the cut! The movie clip below shows one of our team members trying to pull out a Japanese barberry bush from the ground in a plot in the logged area.
What do you think has more negative influence on the ability of native plants to reestablish themselves in a young forest plot: deer or invasive species? Think about how you would set up an experiment to test that question -- how many different plots would you need?
Regents Chem, remember we will try a videoconference tomorrow. I want each of you to come up with at least one question to ask me about the work we are doing here, or about what you have learned this week. Writing it down will help tomorrow when we have limited time. See you then!
Hi everyone! This is Ms. Courtney, Live from Earthwatch in Maryland. Wow, we did so much today! I couldn't possibly tell you everything. I did get your e-mails related to global warming, and you pretty much have all figured out that without greenhouse gases, life as we know it would not be possible, but too much of an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases can really disrupt our way of living. So that is what the research here is related to. Oh, and please rethink the answer to the question about which greenhouse gas is made from a synthesis reaction of carbon and oxygen resulting in a 1:2 ratio. (Some people already got this correct.) Here is a clue: the chemical formula for methane is CH4.
One of the things we did today was climb to the top of the 120 foot tall weather tower here on campus (see the picture at left). The top of this tower is above the tree canopies (tops of the branches). It was a fantastic view from up here! As you can imagine, I was a bit out of breath after climbing all the way to the top, and a bit nervous on top since the whole tower kind of sways in the breeze, and coming down all those steps made my legs hurt! But I did it! Below is a picture of me on top of the tower.
This afternoon, we started learning how to take some of the measurements of trees that we'll be doing this week. We use a calibrated measuring tape that lets us measure the circumference of the tree, and the tape measure converts it into diameter -- it is calibrated by taking into account the mathematical relationship between diameter and circumference. See if you can remember the equation -- think back to geometry. What factor do you have to take into account?
That's all for today. Please be thinking about questions for me on Thursday so we have a productive video conference.
Hi all! Ms. Courtney here! I made it to SERC in Edgewater, Md. in just about 7 hours, exactly as Mapquest described. Early morning driving was great -- no one on the roads and clear sailing until northern Pennsylvania, where I ran into some snow and slippery roads for a bit. The biggest surprise, though, was the snow on the ground here in Maryland when we still don't have any in Rochester! Once I made it all the way here, I ran into a locked gate about 500 feet from my final destination and had to call security to get in, so I snapped a few pictures while I waited -- you can see the gate, the sign for SERC and a little bit of the woods where we will be working.
I met my teammates from all over the country. Most are teachers, some in high schools and some from lower grades. I am looking forward to working with them and the scientists this week. We got all our instructions for living here this week -- recycle everything we can, compost food scraps in the kitchen (what's composting?? Click on the word to find out!) and use the biodegradable soaps and cleaners. Everything here is done with protecting the environment in mind!
Have a good week this week! As you read my blog and do your work this week, start thinking about questions you would like to ask me during our videoconference on Thursday. You may want to jot them down so you don't forget.
In just one week, I will be heading to the SERC in Edgewater, Md. for a week of climate change research. I am getting excited to go, and am truly looking forward to spending a week in the field with leading climate change researchers.
So here are a few questions for you to answer.
How far a drive will I have from Rochester, NY to Edgewater, Md? What is SERC? What will the weather be while I am there? Will I need gloves? Rain gear? Sunglasses? Who is the principal researcher for my expedition?
I am looking forward to being in touch with you through this blog throughout the week!
