Matthew’s senior project: Welcome to the Woodlands!

Welcome to Matthew's senior project blog!

I've been suckered in by the woods at Proctor. I have to thank Laura Ostrowsky for getting me into forest ecology. It's not what I expected to do senior year of high school, but I'm glad I've been involved.

Right, the woods. You might not know that Proctor manages 2500 acres of woodlands, and that about 3.7 of those acres are part of a research initiative. The fledgling Proctor Research Forest was born this year, as a grid of 150 in number, 5-meter in radius geolocated plots.

Between research crew and Forest Ecology Research desigN (FERN), I've spent a lot of time with this grid, to the point I remember certain remarkable trees in our dataset. Site G03 contains the first Beech Bark Disease resistant Beech that I noticed, and I still blame it for my love/hate relationship with beech trees. I lost my trowel digging for the stake at the center of I02 in the snow, and only found it again a month ago. I still remember making terrible puns about taking data on B3 "before" B5. Well, all I'm trying to say is that I'm excited to get going on this senior project.

Today was a day of filling in Plot holes (terrible pun intended). While the people on research crew are methodical, we weren't perfect. there was a very short list of missing data from the existing grid. So, I did what anyone with poor planning and a pre-planned list does-- I checked them off one by one. I went to, in order, E04, F05, A07, C08, H08, and I05, taking one large loop. After lunch, I took site notes on C14, which is in the mud of Mud Pond. I then closed the day out by meeting Laura and Isabel at G10, to take data on it and H10. After that, we fled the forest chased out by swarms of blackflies.

I worked 6 hours and 37 minuets today, of the at least 75 hours for a full project. I'll see y'all tomorrow and ask any questions!