Mapping Mornings

August 14 Sunday morning I met Delong Zhao at the SW Gate 7:30 AM to map the Woods by GPS. Over the next 3 hours we crisscrossed the Woods walking every trail. Delong recorded latitude and longitude for 117 waypoints. Most of these were the blue topped cedar stakes I recently placed at 50 m intervals along the trails and 19 steel posts placed on a 200 foot grid by Carpenter mid 1950's (we missed two I know of). There are likely another 10-20 that can be found.
We encountered 4 Terrapene carolina three-toed box turtles and 3-4 white-tailed deer. The turtles have been mostly missing since the rains and mulberries of late May.
Small ticks are starting to come back; but not too badly. No mosquitoes at all. Small cloud of a dozen hackberry emperor butterflies on trees 10 m west of Island Crossing.. maybe on drought stressed trees(?)

August 16 Tuesday morning Ana and I went to find the lines of Elroy Rice's mid 1960's tree plots. The northern plot's western border is parallel and adjacent to Chautauqua according to unpublished papers of Olmstead and Jenssen, students in Rice's botany 1966 class.. and the 1970 published map of Abdul-Wahab. There are thin steel rebar posts placed in two east west running lines 100 feet apart that look like they could be the north and south boundaries..but the east end of the plot is not clear. Abdul-Wahab's map, if drawn to scale, suggests plot may be about 330 feet long. Olmstead and Jenssen both describe a one acre rectangle 147 m or 441 feet long. There was a complete census of trees in this plot conducted then. The stand has changed a great deal over the past 40-45 years. Dense young green ash regeneration is perhaps 20-30 years old. Much of that is dead standing now.. likely from run-off and flooding associated with the 2000 paving of the Lloyd Noble parking area (doubled size of lot). Grazing of 14 head of livestock was terminated in 1960. The southern plot with it's long axis running along Chautauqua has not been found yet; but the vegetation there currently (many dead toppled Juniperus under Ulmus, Celtis, Diospyros and some Quercus) matches expectation.