Changes in West Woods

The west side of the Woods along Chautauqua is beginning to dry out, back to pre-inundation state. The forest floor is still mucky, soft and wet, well out from the cattail marsh but the pools of standing water are largely restricted to the cattails and the sedges surrounding them. I found a three toed box turtle in the wet sedge area near the cattails.

Elsewhere, the forest floor that was covered in standing water for 5-6 weeks is now dry, at least at the surface, and sprouting thousands of 1 cm tall dicot seedlings in the cotyledon stage.. two small rounded cotyledons or two elongate linear cotyledons (the latter almost certainly green ash .. only 2-3% as common as the smaller rounded ones).

Walking east from the zone that was flooded I think I can see a clear transition from mucky organic litter where the inundation covered all, to drier leaf litter that looks never to have been submerged. It might be interesting to run transects across the transition from wet to dry and see the variation in the soil arthropods. Might also be interesting to look at differences in soil gleying or pedology associated with inundation. Could also run transect for soil arthropods down the 25 foot tall escarpment to the area of inundation.. a few replicate transects.

Encountered a Morus mulberry and Sideroxylon (Bumelia) next to a Crataegus hawthorn(?) all a bit uncommon in the Woods.. (Maybe the result of one deposition of poop from a vertebrate omnivore?) They were together along the trail I am clearing from the East Pond eastward to the Trans OWP Trail.. nearer the west end. Same location I found a large diameter poison ivy vine (largest I've seen in the OWP).. like a bare, ash gray elephant's trunk up a tall arching walnut tree.

I've never studied a seasonally flooded forest. I imagine the fungi and other decomposers would be much more limited.. and probably more abundant.. bacteria and aquatic fungi I imagine would be important. Earthworms are going to be largely absent and many soil arthropods.

It would be interesting to see if satellite or remote sensing data could detect and delineate the changing area of the inundation.. and it would be interesting to see if tree stress during the inundation is visible in the canopy spectral picture.