Welcome to Ordway Field Notes

We are excited to kick off the official blog of Macalester College's Ordway Field Station! Check in here to get updates on our research projects, see what our students are up to, and exchange random thoughts with Ordway's personnel. Welcome! 

Location: 9550 Inver Grove Trail, Inver Grove Heights, MN 55076, USA

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Fire!

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  This was the chaotic scene in Ordway's prairie two Tuesdays ago: dark smoke rising from blackened earth, wind-driven waves of orange flame, urgent sounds of straining engines and shouting voices. If you haven't witnessed a controlled prairie burn before, it can be alarming.  And if you have any love for grasslands, the scariest part might be the destruction left behind. When the flames die and the smoke clears, the prairie has been completely erased. Any evidence of life that, moments ago, stood above ground is now reduced to a thin layer of soot evenly coating the landscape.  But things aren't always what they seem. As it turns out, the fire that seems to have destroyed the prairie is, in fact, helping ensure its continuation. To see why, it helps to understand a little bit about plant growth strategies. The grasses and wildflowers that make up a tallgrass prairie are mostly perennial herbs . The  herb  part means the plants do not contain any woody tissue....
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Camera Traps at Ordway: What animals are here?

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This summer I had the opportunity to spearhead a new element of the on-going oak forest exclosures project here at Ordway: putting out camera traps! Camera traps are just trail cameras (the only trapping part is catching an animal in a photo or video taken by the camera) that are set out in a designated area to catch photo or video footage of animals in action. Here at Ordway, we are interested in deer herbivory and its impacts on various plant communities, so we put out 11 cameras to specifically catch deer.  How do these cameras work?  With both IR and motion sensors, the cameras pick up changes in heat or movement caused by animals (and occasionally plants). When this happens, it triggers the camera to take photos, videos, or both, depending on the settings selected.  Have you caught any cool photos?  My favorite part of this project was looking through the photos to see who was wandering around during the study period! Besides catching ourselves doing work on the...
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Current Research Projects

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Oak Forest Exclosures Where: In sets of paired plots spread throughout the oak dominated forest. The map below shows the locations of each plot pair, divided by relative garlic mustard abundance (HGM = high garlic mustard, LGM = low garlic mustard). Why: To test the hypothesis that white-tailed deer facilitate the invasion of garlic mustard by preferentially eating native plants and investigate the impact of white-tailed deer on the structure of the herb layer plant community at Ordway. What: Each set of paired plots contains one open 0.5m 2 plot and one fenced-in 0.5m 2 plot designed to exclude deer but not smaller herbivores (rabbits, etc.). The fenced-in plot includes a buffer region of 0.5m on each side, since deer can potentially eat parts of plants growing along the inside of the fence. Each year we collect estimated ground cover data on 23 key plant species, measure the tallest plants in each plot, and take note of deer herbivory.        RVS: R...
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