Day 11 and 12 Field Work Preparation - Oil Pad Project

Preparation for any project is critical to its success!  The old adage "The faster I go the farther behind I get" has merit.  Monday was all about gathering supplies, creating field data sheets, studying maps, and finding a soil lab to analyze samples from our sites.  

Panoramic view of first field site

Jumping into a new project is kind of like leaping from a dock into a lake.  There are things you know, like seeing the surface of the water and a few feet down and then there are things you cannot foresee - such as the deeper cold water.  Anyone who has tried to walk into a cold water lakes, probably would attest that it is easy to jump in and experience the joy, shock, and sometimes uneasiness of the experience. 

Team identifying a specie of grass - festuca xxx

That describes my experience on Tuesday.  We set off in a Ford focus heading to our first site on Sand lake Road.  As you might imagine, the road to Sand lake is Sand!  Such is the case for many roads in this part of the state.  Those of you who know me best, know I like roads to be predictable, this is a bit like driving the logging roads of Northern NH and Maine - accept this time I am the driver and not the passenger who can close my eyes and tell myself everything is going to be okay.  No worries parents, the road wasn't that bad, it is always worse in my dreams about the coming day! 

When driving out here it is critical to know which direction you are traveling, and I don't mean just whether you are turning right or left - the roads are labeled for the direction in which you are traveling: N, NE, NW... etc... So while driving our leader asked us each time we arrived to an intersection (1) " What road are you coming to" , (2) What direction are you turning? N, NE...." .  This added a new dimension to driving. However, it is really important to know this, since the roads we will be traveling are not commonly used and knowing what road and where you are is important in case we ever have to call for help. 

Daubenmire Frame

Once at our site we walked in along the two track (a "road" that has grass growing up between the tire treads - cars are not supposed to drive on "two tracks").  Here the forest opened up to reveal our site.  This had been where an oil extraction rig had been set up.  For some reason they are not reforesting as initially expected.  Our challenge is to survey the plant community currently established on all our sites.  

The surrounding forest was composed primarily of quacking aspen and black cherry.  We had a perfect afternoon for field work with temperatures in the 70's under partly cloudy skies.  After some lunch we set out a quadrant 50 meters by 50 meters using our compass skills.  With the tapes all laid out in a grid we began the process of looking at the species coverage along the tapes using random number approach.  At given distances we used a daubenmire frame and estimated the cover class of the different species in the frame.  This process requires your mind to work a bit like photo shop.  Your challenge is to decide what percentage of the frame each species covers.  At first this is rather hard, but in time one can become faster at estimating.  

The main species we identified were: Sheep Sorrel, St. John Wort, knapweed, three species of grass, and species of assorted moss.  There was also dwarf cinquefoil - however, it did not fall within our randomly selected areas.  Plants are most easily identified when in flower- however when working on an ecological project one must be able to identify without the flower. This was a fun challenge for me and I am very excited the opportunity for field work has surfaced.  The challenge will be learning the grass species. 

Ready - Set - Jump!