Daily archives "March 20, 2016"

20/3/2016

Ich hab keine Ahnung was Tag ist was seit hier sein! Die Post von gestern war den 19/3/2016. Heute waren unser erster Arbeitstag und in meine Meinung ein bisschen langweilig, aber meine Gruppe (die Madames Leveaus) sind mit Aspen und Vanessa gut. Wir arbeiten gut und schnell zusammen. Wir identifizieren Bäume und Pflanzen und was ist was und was ist wo, aber ich hab keine Ahnung sooo ich bin sehr frohe, dass ich zwei Umwelt Majors in meiner Gruppe hab lol. Morgen glaube ich ist die gleiche… Ja voll!

Team Machete Mamas

Today was our first day doing vegetation surveys at the Woodlands Trail Conservancy. Sadie, Lauren, and I teamed up to form the Machete Mamas and spent our afternoon fighting blackberry and getting to know the plants. We finished two transects today and tomorrow I think we will all be even more productive.  

First day of field work

Today was our first day of field work in the woodlands, it was slow going, but will pick up soon!  The forest is thick with trees and blackberry vines, so much green!!

3/20

Today was a great day we learned new methods and plant identification. The methods today included setting up 100 meter band transects. These consisted of Bush whacking through the brush laying out the 100 meter tape and using a 2 meter pvc pipe to delineate a 2 meter by 2 meter square band and identifying all species in the square. The first 2 bands are done as 1 by 2 meter band 1 meter down the tape by 2 meters wide. The transects numbers were written as the higher of the point (if it were point 0-1 it would be recorded as 1).

Than we looked at multiple aspects such as leaf and wood litter. Percent blackberry, ferns, native vegetation canopy and exotic vegetation canopy. We also recorded gps waypoints off of a Bad Elf gps attached to an iPod at 0, 50, and 100. We also took pictures showing the vegetation at these locations looking towards the 100 mark and out past in to vegetation. We also took plant samples for plant identification.

  

    
 Patrick and I using spicy food to keep the bugs away!

We started transact work today

So we started working on transects today, identifying plants and looking at different aspects of the vegetation. Blackberry, which is very invasive, was very abundant and made the data collection very difficult. It was covered in tiny thorns that constantly got caught on my clothes and hair so we had to use a machete to clear them. Nevertheless I got a sense of what vegetation resides in the landscape and a lot of it was invasive plants.  

New Orleans Cooking School

Yesterday the class started out at the New Orleans Cooking School where groups were assigned a different course of the meal. My team was in charge of salads, so we made Creole Salad. Here we are with the finished product!