Stumps and a 500 year old tree

Today was an exciting day because we really started to do our research in the field. But first we had Sam's reading facilitation, all about stumps. (Which was very fitting because as we will start to look at signs of human interaction with our site, stumps will provide lots of clues for us).  

We started with a great worksheet where we matched descriptions with drawing of various types of stumps.  Even though they were very basic sketches, I actually found it very useful to practice counting the rings.  After, we went outside to do an interpretive/dramatic theater lesson to practice the parts of a tree (bark, phloem, cambium, xylem, heartwood and roots). Well, we started too, but then it quickly became apparent that there was a need for a refresher about the parts of the tree. I thought Sam handled it very well since we pretty much stopped her whole facilitation to have a discussion and lesson on the parts of the tree.  Good for her to be so flexible and to just go with it. It was also a good reminder (similar to the carbon lesson) that it is very important to check with your students regarding background knowledge and to make sure to fill in the gaps when necessary.  

After some fine tuning of our procedure, we headed out to the field.  We broke into two groups once we got to the site (about 300x easier to find today!).  Sam and Kim worked to set up the wildlife cameras and bait them using cat food.

Meanwhile Betsy and I did Diameter at Breast Height measurements in our 150m2 plot (very similar to the activity we did on the first day of the program).  We will be analyzing this data next week but some things to note:

• There is a TON of high bush blueberry (an early successional species), probably about 60% of our plot is filled with it
• There are a lot of stumps mostly covered over by moss and some with new trees growing out of them indicating that the area as heavily logged

Not the best picture but a good example of stump sprouting

Moss covered stump

• We located another black gum tree in our plot though it is not nearly as large

The second black gum tree in our plot

• And perhaps the most exciting, after measuring the DBH of the big black gum and comparing it to data from an experiment conducted on black gums in New England, our tree might be 500 years old!!! 


• One of our big questions is why would that tree have been spared when the rest of the area was so heavily logged and based on some of the research we did we found that black gums don't make very good lumber so that is a big possibility as to why it wasn't cut down with the rest of the area. 

Can't wait until Monday when we go collect the cameras and see if we captured any wildlife in our plot! Hoping for some great pictures of the porcupine.