My mentor, cutting down a dead tree for me
I want to know how different soil types affect pinyon pine growth during drought and if there’s a difference in growth between trees that die in the drought and those that have survived so far. So I needed some cookies.
tree cookies
We had no idea that there would be two feet of snow on the ground at the site, which made working much much harder. As much as I usually hate fieldwork, you would think that I would have had a terrible time. Actually, I had a great time. Of course, that might have had a little to do with the drugs I had to take to deal with the change in elevation.
I took a course this summer that required quite a bit of fieldwork. Toward the end of the class, we split into small groups and planned our own projects. My group wanted to ask about forest succession. We went on an exploratory jaunt through the Michigan State University’s Experimental Forest the first day of the project. It was not very successful.
First of all there were MOSQUITOES. I put that in all caps because I have never seen such a high density of such hungry insects. I would have eaten DEET to keep them away. Jenny was stung by a bee and was quietly disgruntled about having been “bitten on her bum” for the rest of the afternoon. Joanna made the mistake of sitting down and was treated to a large number of very irritated bug bites in awkward places. I ended up bleeding from a briar with my face in poison ivy.
Overall it was kind of terrible, but we bonded over the experience and were better prepared the next time we went out.
Chatter