Day 10: A taste of Vegetation

With the help of Robitussin I was able to have a fairly good night’s sleep and woke up feeling a lot better than I have these past few days! Everyone was up early and made lunches, it’s becoming routine. We headed to the study site and some of us were assigned to new teams. The bare-ground group, which I’m in, was attached to the vegetation group for the day. I didn’t mind too much because we were almost done collecting data and I originally wanted to be in the vegetation group.

Perhaps the best decision I made today was to wear long field pants and a long sleeve shirt to collect data because the mosquitos were vicious! Even though I applied bug repellent and wore clothes that covered almost my entire body, my hands were covered! So far I counted 13 bites on my right hand and 7 on my left!!

Even though the mosquito bites are itchy now, they weren’t a problem while we were out collecting data because the plants we were looking at were beautiful! While we headed deeper into the valley to help collect data with the vegetation group we were given a short overview of what they had already covered and what their method of data collection is. I got my journal ready with the proper categories and next thing you know I was collecting information faster than Peter (an original veg. group).

It was very interesting to see how they collected data. To no surprise the only vegetation data collected was on trees that showed a pattern and those they hadn’t seen before. It would be physically impossible to collect data on each species in a week. We encountered some really strange looking plants like the balloon plant, which had little balloon like sacks filled with seeds and covered in thorns. We also found a lot of the plant found here at the barn, pictured below; they close when you touch them! I could spend hours playing with them.

With the common product due date coming sooner I’ve started to think more about what I want to focus on for my individual project. I’m really leaning towards contemplating a question that will involve vegetation and hydrology. Although this was my original idea, it’s a lot more solid now that I’ve been out in the field and seen how they connect.

Once Kerry and I finish cleaning up our data tables, so we can hopefully finish tomorrow, we are going to watch Jurassic Park!