On the Road to a PhD: Troubleshooting 101

Yesterday, I went out to the field with my friend Kari and we tried to start setting up my main experiment...with emphasis on try. I have lots of experience doing field work so I know that more often than not, your plans change a million times once you get outside and see what you actually have to work with. My experiment (or one part of it at least) is being set up at the Bracken Tract in Westport, Ontario...about an hour North of Kingston. This tract is about 400 acres and is land that was donated to Queen's Biology Station. A few summers back, we set up a large, ten year watering experiment in an old-field at this site, and because of free-ranging cows, the site was fenced in. There is a fairly large section along the side of the field, where Kari and I set up an 80m x 20m area to hold my experiment in, flagging every metre around the perimeter. Doing experiments of such large scale are always a challenge. We went out with a 100m tape, and all the flags. I had measured the field and flagged the corners earlier that week, and still, once we got to the final corner we were 2 m short, so we had to go back and correct it. It's so easy to make mistakes when the area you are covering is so large.

I had two main concerns after yesterday's outing:

1) There are too many shrubs in this area. The old field is slowly going through succession and the shrubs are encroaching in on the herbaceous plants. And unfortunately, they are all prickly ash, or mostly, which is also very painful. The land hasn't been, maybe ever, bush-hogged so this could create problems.

The site all flagged out and measured. Soon it will be lush and green
and not so dry and sad looking!

2) The cylinders/sleeves made to insert into the ground around my plots and cut off surrounding rhizomes are very problematic. We only tried a couple, but indeed, they will only go into the ground about 5-6 inches. And they need to go down 10 inches. There are just too many rocks to make that happen, so that will also require a re-think.

A cylinder - it's not going in much further than that....

I guess with field work comes problems... many of them and always. Hopefully as the spring proceeds and I spend more time out there we can troubleshoot this project as necessary.

On another note, I spent lots of time outside this weekend both north and east of Kingston. Below are a few pictures from my adventures.

A pair of Canada geese nesting a top the Beaver's lodge. I have been trying to see this elusive beaver for a few years now, and I finally spotted him this weekend. I was too far to get any photos but cool nonetheless.