A cautionary tale of firewood
Pictured above:
- Susan and Doug measuring an ash tree
- How to use a stick to avoid poison ivy while measuring an ashtree
- The Christmas fern, so named because of the little nubbins at the base of the leaves make them look like Christmas stockings
- A trilium
- Virginia creeper
Next week, other SCA interns from different parts of the park will have arrived, and together we'll commence Spring training along with the seasonal staff. I imagine that after then, my schedule will start to fill up a bit more and I'll probably have more directed tasks, but until then, most of my time is spent exploring the park, shadowing other members of Resource Education during presentations, and doing whatever else pops up.
This morning, I went along with Emily and Sarah to a meeting about a couple of impending ecological threats to the park, including the emerald ash borer (EAB), a grossy little green beetle. You can read more about the EAB on the park website, but for the purposes of this post, here's what you need to know:
- The EAB burrows in ash trees, killing them within a few years
- Their populations can spread hundreds of miles a year due to the transportation of infested firewood
- The EAB has already been found in pretty much all the states north of here, all the way up to Ontario and Quebec
- There are two types of ash tree in the park - white ash and green ash
- We aren't sure of how many ash trees we have, nor what their distribution is
Naturally, we need to figure out a way to detect the presence of EAB in the park, but first we need to find out where the ash trees are. Yesterday, I got to go out with Susan, a biotech, and Doug, a "citizen scientist" (which is a really sexy way of saying park volunteer) to map and measure ash trees.
In other words, I got to hike around for a bit while trying to learn how to identify trees. It's really difficult by the way. Apparently you're supposed to be able to differentiate between bark texture, color, trunk shape, branch type, etc, but they pretty much all just looked like trees to me. Even distinguishing the trees from the tree-like shrubs was difficult. Trees are hard!
