Winding down (or is that ramping up?)

Catherine collecting leaves for mites

Last week was our marathon final sampling session– we vacuum sampled, collected leaves for mites, and inspected fruit for damage at all six orchards over six packed and long days. 500 miles of travel and many hours both in the orchards and then sorting insects in the lab… no wonder I slept a lot this weekend! My advisors, Ivette Perfecto and Catherine Badgley, each came out on a sampling trip, and it was fun to have both their perspectives and their help.

So now that the sampling is done, much of the real work begins. I’ll be spending most of the fall (ok, probably all fall, and perhaps part of the winter?!) continuing to identify what I’ve found in the orchards, and working with a UROP student to count and identify mites. Then I’ll be able to start figuring out what my data means: are there trends related to pest control methods overall? How about to specific pesticides? Does orchard size have a bigger impact than pesticide use (ie, can natural enemy insects just migrate into smaller orchards more easily)? Is there a significant difference between the natural enemy populations at the organic versus the “all but organic” orchards? From the initial sorting, I get the sense that orchards may have their own typical taxa, and that the changes from month to month may be meaningful.

Ivette flexing her sampling muscles

Ripening apples at Almar Orchard

It all sounds both exciting and daunting, but whatever comes out of this, I’ve loved the chance to learn about apple growing in all its ecological, economic, agricultural and personal aspects. It’s been fun to go to the farmers’ market and have Scott at the Kapnick’s stand ask me “So, what did you see last week?”, or to plan my trip to Erwin’s Orchard this fall for U-pick apples and feel that I’ll be buying from a friend.  Oh yeah, and I’m also looking forward to sipping my J.K. Scrumpy’s hard cider, grown, made and bottled at Almar Orchard! I know that I want my future career to involve working closely with farmers, and this summer has just reinforced that passion.

But first back to the microscope– the small flies await…

“The way the world is depicted changes the world”

"Steel Roots" - A recycled steel sculpture by Steve Tobin in front of the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum

Wow! July flew by and I am already in the last week of my internship in August! I have been very busy over the past month and thought I would pull out some of the top learning moments from my experience.

In the non-profit world where resources are tight but ideas are abundant, the importance of collaboration cannot be underestimated. I wrote previously of GAA’s Art and Nature Program – the program that initially drew me to this organization. GAA is now working to collaborate with other organizations in the city through their art programs under the umbrella of Chicago Wilderness’ Leave No Child Inside Initiative. I recently attended a collaboration meeting at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. It was amazing to see how many organizations are already using the arts in their programming and want to improve/expand their usage! The meeting brought in staff from Shedd Aquarium, US Fish and Wildlife, other non-profits, and even a writer who is developing a curriculum for students about their local environment. (more…)

Mussel surveys

We began surveying the Paw Paw River for freshwater mussels last Monday. We’ve completed 13 sites out of the 47 total. At only one of those 13 sites did we find live mussels. At this site, we saw lots of life: many species of fish (which loved that we were stirring up the sediments, making food easier to find), freshwater sponge (a very cool find!) a good diversity of insects and birds, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of asian clams. These bivalves are invasive and can outcompete native mussels.

As we were beginning our mussel search Pete spotted an emerging dragonfly.

You can see the exuviae (molted skin) in the water behind the animal. How amazing that they transform like that! We watched him for a few minutes as he tried to flap his wings and moved very slowly as his body hardened. Then we went on to our surveying. Sadly, when we returned, only his wings were left on the bank, next to a blue heron print in the mud
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Agroecological inspirations

CPAR mapping exercise with Open Heart Farm, VT

I spent the first two weeks of July in Burlington, VT at the International Agroecology short course. It was an exhausting but inspiring two weeks of  immersing ourselves in agroecology: using ecological principles to understand the interactions within agricultural and food systems, and explicitly including humans and human systems (economics, world markets, food access and inequalities, etc) in the analysis. The course has been going on for 11 years, and alternates between sites in the US and in Latin America. This year’s course focused on Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR), which attempts to break the model in which academics are the primary designers, drivers and utilizers of research. Instead, CPAR involves communities in every step: setting priorities, carrying out research activities, and interpreting results. In many cases, it sounds like participatory research blurs the line between research and community development work; for example, part of Ernesto Mendez’s research on coffee agroecosystems in El Salvador has turned out to involve helping the coffee farmers create marketing cooperatives that protect both farmer livelihoods and biodiversity within coffee farms. We also spent time visiting Vermont farmers to gauge their interest in participating in CPAR activities, and ate at local restaurants specializing in local/seasonal produce, where we talked with the chefs about the challenges of trying to buy local food (yes, I’m happy to say the course fee included some fabulous food!). Most amazing of all was talking with the other participants, from all over the US, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. I got to speak Spanish much of the time, which was both mortifying (boy has my vocabulary shrunk!) and exciting.

Needless to say, I came back to Michigan with the big picture very much in mind; perfect timing for my interviews with orchard owners about their pest control methods. I’ve been trying to incorporate some of the CPAR techniques we learned into the interview process, though I wish now I could go back and recreate my thesis to really focus on participatory research (ok, and fewer small flies). In the meantime, it’s fascinating to hear what the orchardists have to say, and how that relates to what we’ve seen out in their orchards. So far my favorite interview was one farmer who used the word “passion” repeatedly in describing his relationship with his orchard.

Finally taking data!

Hi everyone, sorry I’ve been gone for so long but the past few weeks have been slow on the research front. I’ve mentioned before that I use Acoustic Doppler Velocimetry to measure velocity in three directions in streams. A quick introduction to ADV- it uses the Doppler

Our large ADV (too large for the Maple!)

principle to measure velocity by bouncing sound waves off of particles in the water. Since the speed of sound in water is constant at a given temperature, the difference between the time when the sound leaves and returns to the probe can be converted to the speed and direction of flow. The three probes on the bottom allow the instrument to measure not only streamwise velocities (the primary flow direction which you can easily see from shore) but velocity across the stream (from bank to bank) and vertical velocity in the water column. It sends out sound waves many times a second, which is really important when you want to see small eddies and turbulence patterns in the flow.

I brought an ADV with me to UMBS (shown at right mounted on its tripod) but by the first week of July the water level in the Maple River was too low to use this instrument. So we switched to the UMBS ADV, which is smaller and more suited to shallow water, but it is also much older. On our first trip to the field we found out that the battery was so old it couldn’t hold a charge anymore. We ordered a new battery and went

From left- me, Jenn and Paul snorkeling and counting fishes.

snorkeling and used a Marsh-McBurney (which is an electromagnetic flow meter which gives primary flow direction) while we waited. But, upon getting our new ADV batteries, we found that the laptop which runs the ADV also had old batteries which could no longer hold a charge! Rather than try to track down a new battery for a 10 year old laptop, we moved the ADV program to my personal laptop, which also took a few days.

We also lost a day last week when someone pulled up about a third of the flags which mark our research sites. That setback was probably the most frustrating one to me, because people up here are usually very supportive (and almost always curious) about the research that we are doing when we explain that we are from the Biological Station. I’m sure someone thought they were doing the right thing by taking all the flags out of the river and off the bank, but it took us a whole afternoon to put them back.

Anyway, today we took our first set of data! It was very exciting to finally be collecting the information that we came for, and I was quite relieved to see everything working as it should. We haven’t seen the fish response to our habitat modification that we were hoping for, so further changes to our research plan are forthcoming. But right now it’s time for dinner, so I’m signing off. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to write another update in a few days!

My research assistant Danielle collecting some ADV data at our most upstream site.

Site investigation

We wrapped up site selection at the end of last week. As promised, here’s a photo (courtesy of my research partner Danielle) from our preliminary investigations. I’m holding a Marsh McBurney flow meter which we used to measure in-stream velocity at potential sites.

In stream flow measurement

Now we’ve selected our fifteen sites for habitat modification, but before adding the blocks to create different flow patterns we need to see what’s there in the first place. We’ll be measuring existing flow patterns with the ADV and snorkeling to see where the fish are. Here’s me doing some snorkeling looking for fishes.

Looking for some fishes in the East Maple River

My last photo for today is (I think) the most interesting. While snorkeling at one of our sites, I turned my head to the left and saw this guy almost completely hidden beneath some woody debris. If my identification skills are accurate it’s a male Nocomis biguttatus, or hornyhead chub (but if I’m wrong, someone please correct me!), since you can clearly see orange-tinted fins, a strong stripe that goes through his eye and the tubercles above his nostrils. The big gash on his side is probably why he was hiding, as well as why he stayed still long enough for me to get this picture of him; he was clearly very wounded and hardly moved at all as I approached. My guess is that a heron or some other fish-eating bird took a swipe at him but he got away. Any other theories out there?

A wounded male hornyhead chub

Well that’s all I have for today. My next post will probably be on our flow measurements with the ADV, as those should be beginning tomorrow. I hope everyone had a great Fourth of July weekend, and until next time!

Mussels, friendly neighbors, and bug sex

Field work began 2 weeks ago in the Paw Paw River, a large tributary of the St. Joseph River. At 50 sites along the Paw Paw, my field assistant, Jamie, and I are collecting habitat data such as flow, substrate composition, bug collections, and qualitative information. Later in the season, I will be doing mussel surveys - native, not zebra! - in these same 50 sites with Pete Badra from the Michigan Natural Features Inventory. Pete has done mussel surveys throughout Michigan. For now, as we collect the habitat data, we are doing a quick visual search for mussels to note presence or absence. So far we have hit 20 sites and have only found 2 live mussels and several dead shells - not all that encouraging, but I’m hoping Pete will help us find more.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the friendliness of landowners. Most of the Paw Paw River watershed is private property, so I was a little nervous about accessing the river off 50 private property sites. Before surveying each site, we approach each landowner’s house to ask permission to access the river. Most everyone has been extremely kind and generous! They seem to really care about their river and keeping it clean and healthy. Many landowners are interested in what we are doing, and excited to learn that native freshwater mussels can be indicative of a healthy system.

As we do quick bug collections at each site, we are noticing that the damselfly family, calopterygidae, is very abundant and widespread in this watershed. I’ve found the larvae at almost every site thus far. I also have noticed the adults in these sites and have enjoyed watching their mating behaviors. After taking an aquatic entomology class last semester I have learned to truly appreciate bugs! The adult males are a striking iridescent green color. When they mate with the females they grab them with claspers and the two create a heart shape with their bodies. The female then flies down to the water and deposits her eggs while the male watches over her and chases away any other males that approach.

One more week of habitat data collections then on to mussels!

Male Adult Calopterygidae

Male Adult Calopterygidae

Giant Floater?

Selecting research sites

Hello everyone! I returned from Guatemala nearly two weeks ago and have since started research and classes at the University of Michigan Biological Station (hereafter UMBS, the Bio Station or the Bug Camp). Everything is going well, even if tomorrow is supposed to be cold and rainy like today, which makes fieldwork a lot less fun than usual. Right now we are in the process of site selection. My teammate Danielle and I have been in the Maple River three times now marking possible sites where we are planning to modify local flow conditions using concrete blocks and then measure these flow changes and see what sort of response we get from the local fish populations. Site selection takes time and we’re trying to expand the ranges of velocities, depths and substrates that we’re studying, so tomorrow we’ll be finding the last few potential sites and then making the final decision on Thursday with Paul Webb, the supervising professor. Then we’ll be actually doing the habitat modifications and beginning to take data.

On the class front, I’m very much enjoying the chance to learn more about fishes. After just a week I’m better with a dichotomous key than I ever expected to be (although there is much room for improvement) and I’m surprised at how many species I’ve already learned by sight. I’ve always admired biologists of all stripes for their ability to identify plants and animals, and it’s fun to begin to acquire this skill myself. This Friday we’ll be going snorkeling in the Maple to study fish populations and community structure, and I’m very much looking forward to that. However, that means tomorrow Danielle and I have to remark the research sites because the flags we’re currently using might get caught in a seine!

Sorry there aren’t any photos associated with this post; I have some but the UMBS computers do not have any Flash plug-ins, and those are most popular for downloading photos. I’ll remember to make the next post from my personal computer. In the meantime, I hope everyone has a great Fourth of July weekend and I’ll post again as soon as I can!

Insect ID woes

I hate small flies. No really, I do.

GAA Adventures

We are concluding a hot week here in the Chicago! While it has been tempting to ditch the morning train for a dive in Lake Michigan, I have been diligently swimming in a week of research at the Global Alliance for Artists office. This has primarily consisted of exploring three different topics:

1. Artists with Social/Environmental Causes – What an intriguing project! GAA is currently working on building its artist coalition (basically a membership of artists dedicated to solving social and environmental issues). I am researching artists that fit the GAA mission and who would be interested in joining. Through this process, I have come across some really interesting artists. For example, dancer/choreographer Jennifer Monson has initiated a dance project called “Bird Brain” that promotes awareness of preserving habitat for migratory species. The dance “investigates migratory patterns and habits of birds and other animals, as well as their biophysical and metaphorical relationships to humans as fellow travelers in the world.” Musicians are playing their part too - check out Eric Hutchinson’s song “Modern Age” for a strong statement on climate change. There are also an incredible number of artists ranging from filmmakers to fashion designers working on human rights issues. It’s been really exciting to explore these people and interesting to observe how humanitarian and environmental problems often overlap.



Andrea (Art and Nature Program Director) and Dina (Executive Director) at the board meeting



Zoe - the office dog



My watercolor sketch of the Chicago skyline on a foggy day




2. Grants – As I mentioned in my last entry, I have also been researching and completing grant applications for GAA. I have actually been able to find a substantial number of opportunities especially for the Art and Nature program. This has also been really valuable for me since I intend to work in the non-profit sector after SNRE. I am getting a good feel for various grant databases and the types of applications they are seeking. Hopefully some of these opportunities come through!
3. Environment Programs – The Art and Nature program is what initially attracted me to GAA, but they are also interested in working on additional environmental projects in the future. Because the other GAA staff have art and business backgrounds, I feel especially adept in helping them increase their environmental resources. Since their program is currently based in Chicago, I am researching urban environmental issues in the Chicago area and the type of work other organizations utilize to solve them. There are many, MANY environmental organizations in Chicago! This is great because it provides a range of potential partners for GAA to engage in future art and environment projects.Between these three topics, I have kept very busy this week! I was also able to attend the GAA board meeting last night. Because GAA is a younger non-profit, it was especially interesting to observe their process for approaching future growth and operational maintenance. While it certainly seems challenging to cultivate a young organization in midst of an economic recession, I am continually impressed by the enthusiasm and innovation of the GAA board members and staff. I feel very fortunate to have this summer opportunity – there is always something new to learn!