Catch Up

Long story short, this blog is about a semester behind where we are currently in our Phenological studies, so we are suppose to catch you up on what has been going on.

The first thing to establish would probably be the timeline. We began our studies in September of 2011 and we are now in February, 2012, so the environmental patterns that we have recorded cover from early fall to late winter. We have observed the park change as the seasons adjust from summer to winter, and the changes have been fascinating.

My area overlooking the creek has indicated not only a significant difference in the physical forms of the area, but also in the observational differences in the weather, sun, and plant habits as well.  We all know that as a general rule during the transition of summer to autumn we begin to get cold winds, and the temperature begins to fall. We also know that as Autumn draws nearer to Winter the leaves change color and fall from their trees, also accompanied by a drastic change in the temperatures of our days and nights.

During the end of the summer I observed much diversity in plant, animal, and bug life in my area. I also took note on the diversity of sounds that could be heard. Often I found that the main noise in the park during the summer and early fall months were human made, children on the park, lawn mowers, dogs, etc. To accompany this I noted that the diversity of the plants in the creek and also in the grass was very large. As fall progressed there was a digression of human activity in the park, and much of the plants that I was observing were dropping their seeds and withering up, or disappearing completely. The banks of the creek gradually dwindled down to the control of 3 basic plants, clover, grass, and another obnoxious larger type of plant resembling clover.

Leaves in the fall are gorgeous. As a class we were asked to include a percentage of leaf change into our observations and I think that it assisted in coming to the realization that trees take a long time to fully loose their leaves, and that some of the pine trees do not loose their leaves at all. The end of October and early November was where I observed the greatest amount of leaf change, and shortly after that was the beginning of our snow fall.

By the time of the first frost in November almost all of the leaves in the creek were turning to a topaz and rust color and the speed and depth of the creek itself had slowed and was lower. The human activity at the park had dropped due to colder temperatures and I began to note more of the noises natural to the park. The honking of the Geese and birds that were flying south was most prevalent.

On the first snow fall day that we had to observe I noted that there were two different types of frost on the grass blades, and also upon further observation I realized that there are different types of snow as well. Frost, called hoar frost is what I was observing, and it is formed when there is little concentration of water, and I connected this to how the snow that we sometimes see in winter that looks like small balls is also formed in similar situations of low water concentration.

This pretty much is where we left off, it has been a while since we were last out, but we have a day of Phenology planned for tomorrow. :)