A DAY IN THE LIFE: Terrestrial Ecology Team There is a trio that work for Ecologist Team Leader Michael Patrikeev: students Alex Buse and Josie Mielhausen, whose last day of work is today, and technician Tyler Miller. This Day in the Life post spans over three days to feature their individual contributions to this dynamic team! A day monitoring species at risk with Tyler: As part of an adopted protocol started in 2013, the Hill’s Thistle, a federally-listed species at risk, is being monitored in the park in late August. To do this, 5 monitoring plots have been established across the park where the thistle exists, a grid system of 2x2 metres is set up and metal tags aid in tracking the thistle’s reoccurring bottom leaves (also known as basal rosettes). This plant is theorised to only flower once in its lifetime and monitoring is designed to track the thistle’s life cycle and biological habits, specifically the number of leaves and their width as the thistle ages. Tyler has also conducted monitoring for other species at risk including the dwarf lake iris and prairie fringed orchid. A day restoring forest habitat with Josie: Josie’s restoration work has focussed on photo monitoring at three different locations – Love Property, The Wyonch Property and Johnstone’s Fields. Last year, a total of 5,405 trees were planted on the Love Property (white pine, red pine and red oak) and 8,400 at The Wyonch Property (yellow birch, red maple, sugar maple, white pine and red pine). This summer, Josie has been taking photos once a month to monitor the growth of the trees, planted with the long-term goal of restoring the sites to their original tree compositions. Identical photos are taken each month in the same locations on each site and are kept in a database for comparison as tree growth progresses. A day in beaver territory with Alex: Water management is key in Alex’s work with beaver bafflers. This summer, he has built and installed bafflers in 3 areas of the park: Big Pond, Head of Trails and the Poplars campground. This is the first year that an infrastructure has been installed to combat flooding created by beavers, so there were some questions regarding its effect, including whether the beavers would clog the bafflers, whether they would eat the materials used to build the bafflers and whether natural sedimentation would itself clog the tubing. Since their completion, Alex has continued to work on monitoring the beaver bafflers and has seen success in preventing flooding by these creatures.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 17:38:12 +0000
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