The Echinacea Project Field Log

Hesperostipa spartea search protocol

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 15:01:52 -0600

Attached is the "weather-tested" search protocol. While my partner found more than a dozen out of 75 or so, I found two out of 100. Maybe I am not the right person to write a protocol about finding these plants.?!

It is very neat to think about these things being seedlings a year or two ago and now they are 20+ cm tall? plants that will produce seed.......sometime.
Hesperostipa spartea Search Protocol.docx

This is the 3rd summer in a row that I have taken part of the Echinacea project! I teach 9-12 sciences (10th grade Biology)at Great Plains Lutheran High in Watertown, SD. Conducting summer research is the best way to incorporate real science into my classroom! While I was a pollen collector and image maker the first summer and a pollen crosser last summer; this summer I am going to collect insects that may or may not be moving pollen. Following the floral neighborhood study of 2009, I will collect and categorize insects from different sites to make an inventory of insect life. I hope it will shed some light on exactly which insects can be found and relate it to the diversity of the plants at sites. It will also be a useful collection for my students in the future.

Stipa and the common garden

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 23:26:02 -0600

I've been working with the Stipa germination data we collected from the common garden over the summer for Stuart's R class and, among other things, have come up with a little plot of the common garden. Filled-in blue circles are where we found Stipa alive, empty circles had no seedlings. A neat thing would be some kind of heat map for longest leaf or number of leaves, but I'll try that later.

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Stipa tag found

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 16:10:59 -0600

Tag #1028 was just found in the ground near the SW corner of Hjelm house porch.

Draft 2010 Stipa protocols

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:12:24 -0600

2010 Stipa Draft Protocol.pdf. The Google Docs wasn't really working out... Comment with your thoughts and changes.

Stipa sticking spree!

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 11:32:36 -0600

Having stickered and scanned all of the collected Stipa seed (great job Ian, Hillary, and Lauren!) we've gone through and stuck them all into their foamy rows. 1700ish seeds later, we're ready to plant out in the common garden! Here's a few pictures:

The awns! They move!

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 20:11:18 -0600

Check it out on youtube. It's even available in full HD!

I'm actually just linking this because this blog isn't wide enough to fit the whole movie.

Time-lapse time

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 11:30:39 -0600

So I think I have my basic setup for the time-lapse photography for checking out those stipa awns. Using one of Greg's aquariums, a camera, tripod, computer and such. I'll be able to change the humidity soon enough and really start the experiment.

Some of the stipa, just as a test

And here's my setup. Off to the left of the aquarium is the 500W halogen light. The seeds and black felt are inside the aquarium. In front of that is the camera with a blind on the front to help knock down some glare from the front glass. Attached is the computer, which is what I'm using to control the time-lapse.

ArcGIS: conquered!

Sat, 26 Jun 2010 15:16:27 -0600

View image

So these are the Stipa that have been collected so far. I've labeled a couple of the places on the map.

I was having trouble projecting the data exported from GPS Pathfinder Office (trimble) and noticed that no coordinate system was defined (same issue with the DOQ maps Stuart gave me; the GeoTIFFs didn't have a spatial definition). The GPS data should be North American 1983 in the Geographic Coordinate System folder (right click on the data in ArcCatalog, hit the XY Coordinate System tab and hit the Select button). The DOQ maps ought to be using the NAD_1983_UTM_Zone_15N from the Projected Coordinate System folder. Dumping all of these files into ArcMap (and a little fiddling) gave me this nice map.

Next plan of attack is to make it work in GPS Pathfinder Office, as it's much less complicated than ArcGIS.

Measuring Stipa in the Common Garden

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:25:12 -0600

Here's a picture of a Stipa seedling in the Common Garden. I'm about to create a form for entering data on our seedlings. We are debating if we should count and measure each leaf or count leaves and measure the length of just the longest leaf. Most of our time will be spent finding the plants and/or the toothpicks that we put in to mark them. So, taking the measurements of each leaf shouldn't add that much time. Any thoughts?

Stuart and I did an initial investigation of about 30 locations where Stipa was planted. We found plants at 40-50% of the locations! Caroline, what was your estimate for germination of these seeds?

Hesperostipa spartea collection protocol

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 08:42:16 -0600

Josh, Gretel, Hillary, and Ian are also trained on the TopScan to collect the GPS data. The ideal is that the radio signal is at 100% and the designation of the location is described as Fixed - (Float will do and Auto works if you are unable to connect to a radio signal)
Josh and I plan to collect from Hegg Lake and the road adjacent on Monday. In the quest to collect from 300 parent plants, we are likely onto roadsides - where we are trying to stay at least a meter off the road and using plants about 5m apart from each other. Generally, as the black color appears and as the capsule opens around the pointy head, the seeds are ripe and will pop off as you gently pull up the stem containing the seeds.
I plan to be around Sun afternoon and Mon. to finish the collection before starting to cross some plants.

Stipa update

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 07:50:29 -0600

Stipa collection is going pretty well, aside from the Topcon being flaky and not connecting to the data network for improved accuracy (it should be good enough for refinding tags along with the metal detector). We've collected from 85 out of the desired 300 so far, with different averages of seeds collected depending on the site. Landfill and Staffenson both had rather high averages, somewhere around 9 or 10 (no math here, just guessing based on what I was entering in the data fields) while some of the scattered remnants were closer to 5 or 6.

As for today, I'll be out with someone to go search at other sites, hopefully, but the weather is looking a bit questionable today. We'll see!

Stipa planting photos

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 19:01:39 -0600

And while I'm back visiting the field blog, here are a handful of photos from the Stipa planting at the end of the summer.

Stipa is done (and so am I!)

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 09:00:27 -0600

Just a quick note to say that Stipa planting was completed by lunch on Wednesday. We were able to plant the vast majority of seeds where they were randomly assigned in the CG, 10 cm north of existing Echinacea positions on the whole meter throughout the garden. I think only two seeds were not planted at all; one was lost off the board and one was missing its awn and ID sticker. About a dozen seeds had to be assigned new locations, either because there was a hole or a rock in the way or because the plant/staple/can't find flag that we were measuring from could not be located. Not bad! To assign new random positions, I simply grabbed an ID sticker from the sheet of leftover, unused positions, removed the old sticker, stuck the new and marched around the garden planting the last of my legacy to the Echinacea project. The final task will be to replace the can't find flags that are associated with a Stipa seed with short pins. Hopefully, this will up the chances of finding seedlings next summer. To this end, we also put a toothpick 1 cm north of every seed. Best of luck to the crew put to this test!
Also, sadly, my time with Team Echinacea is coming to a close. I have accepted an offer for an AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship to work at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC starting September 1st (gasp, so soon!). I will be working in their environmental risk assessment group, spending MUCH more time at a desk and much less time running around in the field. I hope that my knowledge and skills as a scientist can do some good in the policy world. Thanks for a wonderful year, and a particularly wonderful summer. Stay in touch.

Files for Gretel to make visor forms AND a reminder for Stuart

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:59:11 -0600

Here are two spreadsheets with information to be made into visor forms.
The first is a list of Echinacea positions we will measure from, in order to plant Stipa seeds. The relevant worksheet is the first one. In the visor form, I would like to be able to see row, position, Echinacea plant status and a column for notes. Breaking this list into multiple forms would be fine.

Complete list of Stipa positions81409.xls

The second is information for the "Next generation rescue" August seedling refind. I would like block, row, position and number of seedlings in May visible and would like number toothpicks, number toothpicks with no seedling, number new seedlings, longest leaf lengths and notes as editable fields.

Nextgenresc-For Aug 09 visor form.xlsx

And finally, Stuart, could you check out some Stipa bunches in Staffenson and decide how close we could comfortably plant seeds next to the Echinacea in the garden?

where to plant Stipa

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:41:02 -0600

In response to Caroline's request for more locations to plant Stipa in the common garden, I have selected 208 new locations at random. This map shows the new locations in green. (Blue dots are the previously selected locations.) Click this thumbnail to see a full-sized image.

Here's a file listing all 208 location. It's suitable for making 208 labels for 208 seeds! stipaSeedLabels2.csv