Stumps and Scat

You may be wondering why I have included the sketch on the right. Believe it or not, this may be my best attempt at nature drawing over the last week and a half. No, it's not pretty, but I do think it's a fairly accurate depiction of how a hemlock stump would rot over a period of 40 years. Some people (I won't name names) have mocked my effort. I, however, remain steadfastly committed to its brilliance.

The stump drawing was a product of our afternoon reading facilitation. Alicia took us back out into College Woods in order for us to put some of the principles we've learned from Reading the Forested Landscape into practice. Last night we read a chapter on how to interpret stump decay. Alicia asked us to examine a coppiced tree, extrapolate the size of the tree which previously occupied that space, and find a stump and draw some conclusions about what species of tree had left the stump and how long the stump had been there. It was nice to use some of the tools we have been learning about. I found that what sounded easy in the text was much harder to do in person. It was, however, cool to find a white pine stump that had been rotting for over 50 years and exhibited the coniferous knots that Wessels described in his book.

Most of our morning consisted of further developing and then selecting the topics of our research projects which will fill our remaining time in this class. Alicia and I will be working together. Our project will be to investigate the diet of the large mammals at Barrington Headwaters. We will collect and analyze scat to determine what they are consuming and hope to perform x-ray analysis using the scanning electron microscope to determine if there are any contaminants from the adjacent Superfund site in their scat or hair. We're not expecting to find much, if any, contamination but we feel that the investigation is worthwhile. Plus we get to tell people we'll be playing with animal poop for the next two weeks. I'm kind of excited about it. At the very least, I will become more knowledgeable about animal scat, tracks, and signs and about what certain animals eat, all of which will be applicable in my current line of work. Now we've just got to get started...