Our first vegetation plot!

My research group has a name! We are the Border Jumpers courtesy of Ian. That is a fitting name as we are studying vegetation on a boundary line of a farm and comparing the vegetation on either side of the boundary line. All day long we are crossing the border bewteen two properties. Today, we started our vegetation survey. I was happy that my group was willing to do the first plot together so that we could all experience each part of the data collection. We learned that it is really hard to tell a northern red oak from a black oak. We are still undecided as to what kind of oak is in our first plot. The rest of the data collection when pretty smoothly and I think we will be pros in no time at all.

The place we are at is unique and interesting. There is a moss covered wetland, a little bit swampy looking, but very green that is adjacent to our plots. The forest on the farm side of the boundary line looks like it has been logged a couple of times at least. The forest is almost a monoculture of eastern hemlock trees all around the same size. The larger trees and most of the hardwoods have been logged from this area and the small shade loving hemlocks have taken advantage of the wide open spaces and grown up and up incidentally shading out any hardwood saplings. It is on it's way to being a pure hemlock forest.
On the forest floor there are huge granite boulders all over the place, evidence of glacial movement through this area. There is also a recent skidder trail on which the logs were taken off the property. It has many herbaceous plants growing along it so it isn't too recent, but the plants are still very small so they haven't been growing there for too long either. I was amused by 3 little chipmunks that came very close to us as we were working on measuring our third plot. They were diving over and under each other like little acrobats. They were also sprinting towards us only to turn sharply just as they were about to run into us. It was fun to experience.