Oh my gooddness, boys and girls. I have already learned so much today and it's only lunch time.

Here is the correct answer to the Kick Off question on Monday. Thank you 1st period emailing me your answers. This group must have the Christmas spirit. They used red and green fonts on their email.

1.) What do airports use to deice the wings of the plane?
A liquid or spray that is 90% glycol and 8% water
2.) Why is it necessary to get rid of the ice on the plane wing?
Even with a small amount, when ice gets on the plane's wings it can change the shape of it and because of that, the air no longer glides smoothly on the top and bottom of the wings . Which reduces the lift. Without the lift it is hard to keep the plane aloft.
3.) What is a fragmented forest?
A large forest seperated by another peice of land.
4.)What causes fragmented forests?
Some farm feilds, roads,etc.
Kaiya Trask, Jessie Wheeler, Chase Sullivan, Isaiah Sumner

Here is the dorm that we are staying in. It has 4 rooms with 3 bathrooms across the hall. It is not like sleepng in a tent outside, however, it's not plush either. There is a living/eating area and a kitchen area. They keep the temperature a lot cooler than I keep my house -kinda like the sixth grade hall! Here is a picture of the living area.

Some of you who wanted to know more about Lindsey McMillan. She has been married for 2 years. She and her husband raise chickens for the eggs! She has taught 7th grade for 7 years. We had to cook dinner tonight and she's fun to work with.

This is a picture of the sunrise this morning on the Chesapeake Bay. No, I was not up in time to see the sunrise! The team is definately sharing their work.

The first thing this morning, we had a talk by Dr. Bert Drake who is a plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. He is an expert on global warming. His talk was about whether or not we can control the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere. There is so much that I don't know about the topic and I thought I was an informed citizen. I felt really overwhelmed by all the information.

Then we had an introduction to the project for which we are going to be collecting data. The SERC (acronym for Smithsonian Env. . . Center) used to be a dairy farm. A man named Robert Forest (How funny is that?) bought the land in 1916 and had pastures where he kept dairy cows. He sold the milk to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, which is nearby. In 1962, he died and donated the land to The Smithsonian Museum. It was a 362 acre plot. At first, the Smithsonian was going to sell the land, but then decided to use it as a research center. There are areas on the property that are mature forests (100 - 120 years old) that were not cleared for the pasture lands due to the topography of the land. Remember, topography means how high or low the land is. Some areas of pasture land have become immature forests (50 - 60 years old). There are different species of trees in each forest. One of the first trees to grow when a pasture is no longer being used is the tree that gives off "porcupine eggs". (If you are not in one of my classes, you need to read sweet gum tree here.) In the immature forest, the predominent species is the tulip popular. We found some of these on the nature trail last week.

Tomorrow we are going to be identifying trees, mesuring their dbh and locating them in a 10 meter by 10 meter square. There are 3 ways to identify trees during the winter when there are no leaves. Here's the kick off question for Tuesday.

What are three ways to identify trees in the winter? Email me what your group thinks you can use.

SERC has gradually bought land around the farm and today the Center is 3000 acres. There are alot of different scientific studies going on here. We are participating in a cooperative study among 3 research groups. They each have different purposes, but are related to one another. I'll tell you more about it tomorrow.