Choosing a Site for Student Work, An LTER site for CHS Options

[Tom_Crumrine]

6 September 2005

Today I walked around out at White Farm with LuAnne Pigeon looking for an LTER site for my Bio II students to use. White Farm is a farm owned by the state that is used for outdoor learning for students. It has a couple fields, an old house converted into a classroom and meeting spaces, some stands of trees and a meandering stream. We walked through the fields of tall grass and the fields of short grass and through the swampy woods and the sharp woods. We went to what in my mind seemed like the back corner of the farm and found a field that will sui our needs quite well. It is about 30 x 30 meters and has not been mowed in a couple of years. The growth is around 2.5 meters at the tallest and for now is still easy to walk through.

The plan that Donie and I talked about was to set up some plots similar to the ones that she has at Toolik. In the next few weeks we will be working to see exactly what treatments we will do to each of 6 plots. The students will be building walkways around each of the plots and recording a baseline set of data. In the spring we will apply the first treatments and then next years class will survey the work in the fall of 2006.

Right now my only concern is that things will outgrow us too fast and we will have trees to deal with in a short time. It is exciting, though, to get something under way that will be around for a few years.

More later...