Life on Mount Washington

August 17, 2016

This little guy was begging us for food. Juvenile grey jays, like this one, may never develop the ability to find food for themselves if they get handouts from humans. When winter rolls around, he may starve.

Mount Washington is home to an alpine resort, ski village, mountain biking club, hiking trails, and many other tourist attractions. So, needless to say, the challenges faced by wildlife and vegetation are usually rooted in human causes.

Vegetation has a particularly challenging prospect. The face of the mountain may be criss-crossed by ski trails, chair lifts, and hiking paths, but crowds of people still feel the urge to tromp out of bounds. The authorities do their best to keep the folks on the trails but the imagination of many people dictates that they pursue the better view through the underbrush.

Colorful lichens grow on the rocks by the trail. They are often the first organisms to colonize mountainous habitats so, when an area is disturbed (such as a trail), they may cling on when other forms of vegetation have been vanquished.

Animals also have to cope with human influences and some are all to eager to take advantage of our sentiments. Possibly the most famous example of animal-human interactions is that involving food. On Mount Washington, the grey jay is the primary offender. This small bird is so accustomed to human handouts it will even land on outstretched limbs, provided there is a snack in the palm. Like deviating from the trail, a close encounter with a mountain bird is nearly impossible to resist. Of course, the birds don't really benefit from being fed. For starters, junk food isn't healthy for anyone. Second, when the juvenile birds become addicted to the human trash, they won't know what to do with themselves when winter rolls around. In other words, feeding the birds, eliminates their ability to fend for themselves. They never learn. As a result, populations of grey jays have actually declined because youngsters aren't surviving the winter.

A western meadow fritillary warms itself on the grey stones lining the paths on Mount Washington. The insects on the mountain generally avoid people, but we did encounter a nest of small wasps that swarmed anyone who stood too long on the boardwalk overlooking the Forbidden Plateau. Fortunately, they were too small to cause people any discomfort.

On the other hand, people learn to love the things they can touch. A bird landing on a child's hand is a very positive interaction with nature for a kid. It teaches him to love nature and that may be more important than that particular bird's ability to survive. Every kid that grows up loving wildlife is a victory for nature.

A grey jay junky casts a hopeful glance in my direction.

Places: Shatto Ditch, Indiana

June 24^th, 2014 – Shatto Ditch

You may have seen some of these photos in an earlier post about a specific trip I made back in June. Although you can't see the water in this early July photograph, the grass of the Two Stage Ditch is hard at work.

Above, the Shatto Ditch rushes through

buffer strip between two corn fields.

Bellow, the Two Stage system is more

obvious, with a defined dip into the

artificial flood plain.

A red pickup truck pulled off the farm road onto the grass on the buffer strip of a cornfield. The doors swing open and three stream ecologists deposit themselves into the tall grass and make their way to the back of the truck. It’s old hat now; I’ve made this trip several times and everyone drops into his or her perspective roles. Once we’ve got our hip waders on, our trio pulls out a bucket, pH meter, conductivity meter, SOND software meter, and a few other pieces of equipment.

Our purpose today is to monitor nutrient levels in the Shatto Ditch system of Indiana. The Shatto Ditch is special; it flows directly off the farmer’s fields and into the Tippecanoe River. The Tippecanoe, consequently, finishes its run at the Great Lakes—an important area for the fishing industry in both the United States and Canada. Whenever a farmer enriches his field with manure or fertilizers, the excess nutrients finds its way into the tile drains of the field. It is a system designed to keep the natural waters of the floodplain in the ditches. It works remarkably well and, where once was marshland, now grows agricultural bliss. Unfortunately, all that excess nutrients drains right into the Shatto Ditch and, subsequently, into the Tippecanoe River. Once the nutrients arrive at the Great Lakes, it accumulates at the mouth of the river. Spurred on by the bonanza, algae bloom excessively. Soon, alga grows on alga and the heterotrophs cannot keep up with the astounding rate of dead algae deposition. The amount of decay makes it impossible for fish and other ecologically important species to live. It creates a dead zone.

Fortunately, ecologists at the University of Notre Dame are looking for solutions. One possible solution that we are testing today is the Two Stage Ditch System. To attempt to remove the excess nutrients, like nitrogen and phosphorous, from Shatto Ditch, we have constructed an artificial floodplain about 10 meters wide. It is well planted with grasses and other plants that are naturally competitive for nutrients. The hope is that these Two Stage Ditches will make a difference and limit the amount of nutrients before it reaches the Tippecanoe.

Another possibility is cover crop planting. Some farmers have complied to planting their fields with competitive grasses to help absorb some of the excess nutrients. Right now, it seems like the best solution is a combination of methods.

Here, the Shatto Ditch is measured for discharge, the rate at which water is flowing at a given depth. It is usually measured every 5 or 10 cm and the width of the ditch or stream is also recorded. In this case, a culvert offers a good gradient for this procedure. In front of the tape measure, an ecologist uses a Flo-Mate to make the readings.

Brittany Hanrahan (background) and
Martha Dee (foreground) are the two
Shatto experts at Notre Dame. It has
been a lot of fun working with them.

A conductivity meter is used to monitor

both the temperature and the

conductivity of the tile drain jutting

from the bank.

We took samples at about two-dozen sites, from both tile drains and the ditch itself. By comparing samples taken in the typical Shatto Ditch with those taken at a Two Stage and tile drains from fields implementing the cover crop system with those that do not, the differences will be considered to determine the effectiveness of the innovative plan.

Brittany and I at Shatto.

Turtles are my weakness. They

distract me from my work and I am

helpless to resist.

Sometimes fluctuations in water level, such as flooding after a storm, or other chemical changes caused by fertilizing or watering activities of farmers can give the impression that there are unnatural changes in stream nutrient levels. To watch for this, a variety of other conditions in the stream are also monitored. The pH is usually fairly high as an indicator of high nutrients. Conductivity (the ability of the stream to carry an electrical current) is also fairly high but rises when storms wash debris into the stream. 

The amount and rate of water flowing (discharge) is monitored at tile drains by measuring volume with time. In Shatto Ditch, the width is measured and flow and depth are measured at 5 to 10-centimeter increments with a Flo-Mate, a battery-operated meter, to determine discharge. Temperature is also taken which rises when water flows off sunbaked fields. In addition to all these manually taken samples, SONDs, software-operated water meters are replaced bi-weekly. They collect data 24-7 and can be taken back to the lab measuring any fluctuations in pH, temperature, conductivity, and nearly any other water quality that could be a significant indicator of changes.

I was very impressed by the orange sides of this common garter snake caught at Shatto. There must be a few of them out there because I also saw a red-winged blackbird fly off with one of these snakes. There isn't a lot of wildlife out at Shatto but I've seen leopard frogs, bullfrogs, green frogs, and gray treefrogs among amphibians. Birds include cranes, herons, red-tailed hawks, red-winged blackbirds, song sparrows, mallards, crows, and other songbirds.

All these measurements and samples will be analyzed back in the lab for significant correlations. When the day is done, we strip off our waders, sweaty and wet from leaks in the boots, and climb into the truck. Once everyone is in, we drive for the nearest Steak N’ Shake. It’s a Tank Lab tradition: ice cream for the way home. 

Species: Common Map Turtle

Graptemys geographica

I am amazed at the diversity of turtle species in Indiana. In just three weeks, I've seen over seven species from softshell turtles, snappers, and musk turtles to painted turtles, sliders, and map turtles. In particular, a small common map turtle (now called the northern map turtle more regularly) caught my eye.

I've seen map turtles before. In fact, I own a pet Mississippi map turtle. And I've seen them in the wild before as well. When I was in Kentucky canoeing about four or five years ago I spotted a few of them basking on the logs of a river near Mammoth Cave National Park. I didn't have my camera with me for that trip but I did last Wednesday when I was out taking soil, water, and gas samples from the Tippecanoe River.

Map turtles tend to be more carnivorous than other species of emydids ("pond" turtles). The females in particular have very robust and powerful jaws for crushing mollusks and crustaceans. The family they belong to, the more typical looking turtles, the Emydidae, are commonly called "pond turtles." But this name is misleading in the case of map turtles. Maps are riverine species. The seem to require the fresh, flowing water supplied by their river habitat and actually get on very poorly if this system can't be imitated in captivity.

I can't look at any baby turtle without cooing all over it. Aren't they just the cutest little things you've ever seen? The picture was taken on June 11th, 2014.

Stream Ecology Field Work

As an intern at University of Notre Dame, I am privileged to opportunities I only dreamed were possible. Last Wednesday on the 28th, I lived out one of these dreams as a field ecologist, monitoring the water quality of streams and ditches throughout the farmland west of South Bend, Indiana. Enjoy the pictures.

The area around our was itself composed primarily of cornfields (and one particularly notable chicken house with giant fans on its external blowing chicken poop and flies all over our faces). Some of the streams running through these agricultural fields have been restructured. In the photo on the left, you are looking at the shelves that have been dug out and planted with grass. This mimics a more natural stream bank and the grasses help absorb some of the excess nutrients and pollutants that run off the field's tile drains.
On the right is a picture of the ecologists I was working with. Closest, a conductivity meter is used to determine the conductivity and temperature of the water exiting the tile drains. Conductivity of the water is an indicator of the water's purity. Bellow, a Flowmate is used to record the discharge of the stream. By recording the depth and velocity of the water every 5 or 10 cm, the discharge of the stream as a whole is calculated.

Yes, as far as I can tell, all ecologists are wonderful people. Not to mention they apparently like to wear matching uniforms. I'm looking forward to the next field trip when I'm invited along.
Below is the evidence that I still become distracted when wildlife presents itself. This was a baby snapping turtle that I instantly fell in love with. There were a couple different species of frog, including leopard frogs, living in the streams that provided mild distractions. More intriguing were the small swimming mammals which I believe to be moles. Besides the baby snapping turtle a box turtle was found near a forest edge at the farthest reaches of one of our streams. Beautiful animal.