A UVM blog The Phenology of a stormwater drainage pond on UVM’s Redstone Campus

Today, as the plants around the stormwater drainage pond finally begin to emerge, and life returns to the area, I decided to take a look at the pond from the opposite angle that I normally look at it.

With all of the green and the (mostly) not gross-looking water, I imagine that this is the best that the pond will look all year. By the Summertime, algae blooms and increased runoff will take over and make this beautiful body of water look like a sludge puddle no better than the Harris-Millis Pond. Additionally, since the plants are beginning to fill in, the whole pond looks fairly clean, unpolluted, and dare I say Pleasant???

While I was there, I also encountered a few species of animal which I had never encountered at the drainage pond before!

I snagged this pic of a red-winged blackbird who was causing a serious ruckus! There are a few of these little guys hanging around the pond now. Most of my time at the pond consisted of these guys chasing each other around and being super territorial. They’re very cute though, so I’ll forgive them for their rudeness.

While I was on my walk I saw the first ever reptile that I’ve seen around the pond! This little garter snake was sunbathing directly in the path. I tried to get up closer to him to take a photo but he slithered into the weeds and disappeared. Luckily, I managed to snag this quick pic.

When seeing this pond (especially during Winter or times of algae blooms) it can sometimes be forgotten just how important ponds like this are for biodiversity, and how much life they can hold. If I saw all this life without even looking really hard, who knows how many cool and vital species this pond may hold. It can be hard to look past the trash or pollution because when it comes down to it, this pond jumps in front of the bullet so that the rest of the Lake Champlain watershed can be just a little cleaner. In this sense, this pond was a structure made by mankind in order to protect nature, and just happened to have developed its own ecosystem on the way, which is a strangely beautiful intersection of humanity and nature.

Over the months that I’ve lived by and visited the Redstone Pond, I’ve watched it lose its green, freeze, thaw, freeze again, thaw again, then finally grow its green back. I’ve documented trees, drawn maps, found evidence of critters, and sat for long periods of time gazing at the mediocre gales of the pond. After all the time, I feel some sort of comfort walking by the pond to the gym, to class, or just on a walk! That and because the pond is so close to my dorm, I really consider it a part of my personal place here at UVM, and its a spot I can definitely see myself revisiting in the future.

Hey there! These past few days I had the amazing opportunity of being able to participate in the Burlington Bio Blitz (Alliteration Much?)

In this 4-day-long nature identification extravaganza, I was challenged with going out into the natural world around me and taking photos of whichever species that I came across for posting on iNaturalist.

In my adventures, I decided to travel to Shelburne Pond, a 450-acre-large pond 20 minutes South of campus. Since the park at Shelburne Pond is owned and managed by UVM, I thought it was the perfect place to see nature in action.

So with my fishing rods and a few friends, we set off to Shelburne Pond! While we were there, we saw a few interesting species!

Here’s a quick map of Shelburne Pond for context!

First, we saw this flower, which a few people on iNaturalist identified as a sharp-lobed hepatica. This plant is related to buttercups and is found throughout the temperate woodlands of North America.

This species is some sort of shorebird. The Merlin app has identified it to be a Caspian Tern, which is a shore bird that lives on 5 continents! In Vermont, this species typically is just a passer and is not known to breed here.

This is some sort of raptor. The Merlin app also helped me identify this one as an Osprey! Ospreys are known to be migratory in Vermont and love large bodies of water!

While we were changing fishing spots, we were spooked by this little Garter snake! He was equally spooked by us, so I had to quickly grab this photo before he got away! Garter snakes eat all sorts of small critters including mice, birds, eggs, and insects.

After fishing in a spot for over an hour, I noticed this water snake. This creeped us out a lot as we were sitting right next to it for so long without even seeing him! Luckily for us, he was really chill and barely cared that we were there. We did check if he was alive (by poking him with a stick) to which he responded by giving us the very photogenic pose that you can see above.

My friends say they saw this very odd species of fish… I had never seen it before so It could very well be a hoax… Please let me know what your thoughts are. (The water was cold but the top of my rod fell into the water)

Overall, I found that iNaturalist was a very nice app for naturalist-inclined people to document species in their places!

This Summer, I’m planning to use this app around my house to document all the cool species I find! I’m glad that I now have this resource and community to help me identify cool critters in nature!

With the vernal equinox, It is not time to asses the Redstone drainage pond for any signs of the upcoming Spring. Although the pond itself is frozen and the area surrounding is caked in snow, the area is bustling with life, from the plants to the animals!

The beautiful buds!

Starting with the plants, I reviewed the populations of sumacs, grapevines, and mulberry trees. On the mulberries and grapevines, there are clear signs of buds ready to emerge for the season!

Top – grape buds

Bottom – Mulberry buds

Along with this, the sumac seed clusters are showing some change, and seem to have been picked off a bit. This is a sure sign that the area has seen feathered visitors, as birds tend to eat the sumac seeds at the end of winter. When the birds have started to trickle in through migration, but other food sources have not grown in yet, they turn to food sources like the sumac seed clusters to satisfy their hunger!

Now about those feathered friends… who’s here?

In the time I spent around the pond the past few days, I heard a wide variety of birds. From the untrained ear, I could make out the calls of crows, gulls, robins, chickadees, and some sorts of sparrows and wrens. I would also see little specks flying around in the distance, but was unable to get close enough to the birds to take photos.

When it comes to sightings, the main two birds that I saw were gulls and robins. There was a substantial flock of robins that had been passing through the area, and I watched them jumping around the grass (it was honestly really cute watching them!) As for the gulls, it appears that there is a pair of them that like to hang around the pond. Why they choose to hang around a drainage pond and not the massive lake just down the way stumps me but as long as they’re happy that’s ok.

Luckily I was able to snag some quick pics of these fellas!!

Anyway, I’m so excited to see what animals emerge (specifically bugs which I’m starting to miss). I can’t wait to see what the warmer weather brings for us!

For this adventure, I was tasked with exploring another location to identify the markings of an animal. For my location, I decided to take another exploration of Centennial Woods. While I have been to the Centennial Woods Natural Area a few times for my NR-1020 class, I figured that I could find a way to make the area new to me. This time, I was able to explore some of the other trails, and see the environment with snow cover.

Slight side-tangent before I get into the tracking: While I was walking, I was so struck at just how beautiful the forest scenery was in the snow. Being from Maryland, I did not have snow cover on the ground nearly as much, and when I did, I tended to take advantage of the limited snow cover by sledding instead of exploring the woods, so seeing snow in nature is still pretty new to me.

Look how beautiful this is! how could you hate it?

Another thing about the snow that always amazes me is that it can keep a log of the population of critters that have passed by. When I first started tracking this semester, I always neglected squirrels, but tracking them has grown on me a lot. They are a very familiar animal to me, so I spent most of the time in Centennial Woods tracking a singular squirrel on his journey. Squirrels were some of the only animal tracks that I found, which I assumed was because the presence of humans and dogs scared many larger animals away.

I tracked our furry friend for around 300 ft, which was a surprisingly long distance for a squirrel. It would stop every 10-20 feet or so where it would then dig up a pile of snow. I assumed that this was the squirrel searching for spots that it buried nuts or acorns during the summer and fall.

Here’s one of the dug-up areas that I saw along the squirrel’s path. I found it so interesting that I could look at the ground and see a story of an animal’s life. This squirrel hopped over fallen trees, crossed paths, and avoided danger all to survive and get food during the winter.

While exploring the rest of the trails at Centennial Woods, I really thought it was interesting that, no matter how close I was to a trail that I knew, the space still felt brand new to me. I hope that we see more snowfall this season, as I cannot wait to see what other tracking signs I may see this season! That’s all for now!

Unlike my last post would like you to believe, I will be returning in the phenological study of the UVM Redstone stormwater drainage pond (hooray)!

Due to the extended period of cold and snowfall, there are a few key phenological changes to the pond. First of all, the pond has completely frozen over, and all foliage has been stripped completely bare. Last time we checked in, there was still a bit of green left on the grapevines and the mulberries, so there still looked to be a bit of life clinging on.

Because the woody foliage is now completely bare, it is easier for me to gauge the demographics of the stormwater pond. From a purely visual sample, it seems that mulberries make up a majority of the woody biomass. Since the sumacs are taller on average than the mulberries, and tend to cover them up, the prevalence of mulberries wasn’t apparent during the fall. While the two types of plants appear similar, you can tell them apart by the texture of their bark, and the fact that sumacs with female flowers have berries at the end of their branches.

As for the sumacs, they are still clinging onto their red berries. After doing some research, I learned that these berries can be turned into a variety of edible items. Sumacs are very important for the ecosystem due to the fact that their berries can provide an emergency food source for all sorts of wild birds and other animals (source: https://plants.usda.gov/DocumentLibrary/factsheet/pdf/fs_rhhi2.pdf).

Closeup of sumac berries

Animal Tracks

With the snowfall that is still present on the south side of the pond, I was able to observe a few different species. While I found plenty of human and dog tracks along the path that passes the pond, I also found signs of wildlife.

These tracks stood out to me because they were inside the fence, as opposed to all the other tracks which were outside. With no apparent holes in the fence, it lead me to believe that this is an animal that can climb. Also considering its size, a medium size animal, I was able to rule out skunk, fox, coyote, dog, squirrels, and rabbits. By this point, I was pretty much down to it being either a raccoon or oppossum.

When I got to the end of the trail, which terminated at the fence, I found this oddly human-looking footprint, which led me to believe that we have a little gremlin running around campus! Just kidding, of course this footprint was a sign of a raccoon, which stood up on its back legs to climb the fence.

While this was the only wildlife sign that I found on my visit, I can’t wait for more snow to fall, which will hopefully reveal so much more about the inhabitants of the stormwater pond.

Today I took my my final visit (???) to the stormwater pond on UVM’s Redstone Campus. On this walk around the pond, I noticed that almost all of the foliage that was once there is now gone. The mulberries and sumacs have both lost all of their leaves, and have reduced themselves to sticks and buds. The mulberries and sumacs are photographed below.

Besides the dried grass stems that are still standing, the only foliage left is the slowly dying plants in the understory, that you can just make out a little bit of green that signals that the plant is there. These plants are likely already on their way out, as the temperatures are only going to get colder from here on out.

Speaking of cold temperatures, the pond is almost entirely frozen over. The only possible explanation I have for this is that runoff from road salt has washed into the pond, which has then lowered its freezing point.

Signs of animal life are pretty sparse in the area of the pond, but that isn’t entirely a new thing; I saw a squirrel foraging in the underbrush, and a few birds in the trees overhead, but besides this all life is vacant. The life that is particularly vacant at this point would be invertebrate life. Likely due to the fact that many insects die or overwinter in the soil, all insects and other bugs seem to have completely vanished. This makes the pond appear very quiet, as there are no critters bouncing around in the leaves, or any chirps of crickets.

Final Thoughts

The pond has changed quite a bit since I’ve arrived, but I don’t think I would have noticed if I had not kept a watchful eye. I feel as if the changes that come with autumn are looked at on a landscape scale instead of an observation of a singular spot. When singular areas are looked at, areas like this pond are often overshadowed by the extravagant displays of color in the trees. I read a book once that says something along the lines of “a good explorer looks down when he feels like he should be looking up, because that way, he will see something he would have never seen before.” I feel like this philosophy definitely applied for this project, and it helped me to take my attention away from the beautiful fall colors and focus on an area that had its own, subtler beauty. While the pond seemed mundane at first, closer inspection and learning showed just how wonderfully nature and humans can work together. From seeing the different zones where plants thrived to learning about how much ponds like this do for the environment, I believe that taking part in this phenology project increased my understanding and appreciation for the mundane.

One last thought

As I took once last walk around the pond, I noticed how much trash that had built up in the understory. I only noticed this on this final trip, probably because the trash had previously been covered by foliage. While seeing trash infiltrating the natural landscape is upsetting, it got my brain thinking: People (including myself) walk by this pond every day without thinking about what it does for us. Collecting trash, slowing water, and filtering pollutants all help the health of our ecosystems, and therefor our healths, all all functions that this humble pond uses to protect us. I think it is poetic in a sense, that something so important to our lives is something we would never normally bat an eye at. While I probably won’t look at the pond with the same level of detail every again, I now have a brand new appreciation for it, and drainage ponds like it, that I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

Keep looking at ponds!

-Alex

On my visit back home for Thanksgiving, I stopped by a drainage pond near my house. I chose this pond because I felt as if they were similar enough to compare to each other. The first major difference I can draw between the two drainage ponds is that the one in Maryland has a significantly higher percentage of its watershed is made up of impenetrable surfaces. This means that Maryland’s little pond works very hard to remove pollutants and slow water from the nearby parking lots. Another difference is that the UVM pond drains through mostly cultivated grassland (golf course) with a much smaller riparian buffer on the stream than the Maryland one.

One obvious difference in the Phenology between the two ponds is that the pond in MD is obviously in a warmer climate.

In Maryland, the leaves were still on some of the trees, and in Vermont the pond actually froze over the day that I came back.

Here’s a quick sketch I made after visiting the pond. I took many photos but my phone was unfortunately stolen while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade in New York City.

Today I sat near the south bank of the pond for 15 minutes. From where I sat, I couldn’t actually see the pond, since there were grasses blocking my vision. It took great effort (and a lot of trust in my boots) to get to the spot because of the sumac trees that grow by the pond. Because of this experience, I realized just how dense the vegetation around the pond is. When I looked at the understory, I was surprised that there wasn’t much short grass at all, but there was a lot of dense brush. The upper part of the fenced-in area almost resembles a bushy forest, except the tallest trees in the canopy are less than 15 feet tall.

Below is a simple drawing I made, which is a bird’s eye view of where I sat today. (My head is the circle in the middle)

Over more and more time observing the flora around the pond, I realize that the shape of sumac trees is almost comical, almost like how a child would draw the growth of a tree, with symmetrical leaflets coming off of branches that evenly branch off of the trees.

How the pond has changed in the past few weeks

Over the past few weeks, the pond has began to be eased into fall. The sumac trees have all turned a beautiful bright red, which makes them easy to see from all the way across the pond. The mulberry trees are both changing as well, but perhaps less beautifully. For the grapes, mulberries, and grasses, the fall colors seem to be slowly turning tan or brown, then having the leaves fall off.

here’s a photo of some browning leaves, although I believe this may be a young beech tree (the first I’ve seen around the pond)

The red leaves of the sumacs, in the cartoonish growth patterns I mentioned before.

Look how much the scenery of the pond has changed already! you can also see the dense brush under the bright red sumac trees.

(And an intro to stormwater runoff ponds)

Let’s dive into the basics of this stormwater pond! It is located on the Southeastern corner of UVM’s campus, wedged between the Redstone Campus and the Athletic Center. It was built to take in the stormwater runoff from across campus, and allow it to settle before draining out into Lake Champlain. Ponds like this are required for new developments in many parts of the country, due to their beneficial nature to the local ecology.

Stormwater retention ponds help freshwater ecosystems by allowing the water to settle and be filtered by plants, both of which help to remove common pollutants such as oil and gas runoff from cars, microplastics, road salt, and fertilizers. Without these ponds, pollutants enter streams at a much higher rate, which can damage the local flora and fauna, especially sensitive micro and macroinvertibrates that make up the base of the food chain.

Overview of the pond

Location

As stated before, the pond is located on the SouthEastern corner of campus, and according to data from arcGIS, it drains South through the golf course and then West, through town, and into Lake Champlain

Shape

Depending on the water level, the pond can either be one large pond (at the tallest) or the maximum of three smaller ponds (at the shallowest) but currently, in the month of October, at appears as one major pond with a smaller pond at the top.

As for shape it somewhat resembles a boot when looking at it from above.

The including all the sub ponds, the main pond covers roughly 1,350 square meters (around 14,500 square feet). The pond is entrenched into the earth, with a 20m perimeter hill around it, which is blocked off by a fence. Including all the fenced in area, the area of the pond is roughly 6,800 square meters (around 73,400 square feet, or 1.6 Acres).

Flora

The plants of the pond depend on how close to the pond they are, and the plants form a few different bands the further up the hill they are. I’ve made a basic breakdown of these bands below

I. At the edge of the pond, and the bank, plants that can survive in wet, swampy environments. Species that exist here would be water reeds like cattails. These are distinguishable from the other grasses mostly due to color

II. The next band is the grasses, which I haven’t successfully identified as of this point, but they appear to be a similar species to one of the decorative grasses that is present around campus. These grasses are very dense and the line between the two is so pronounced that I’m not entirely sure if they were planted there purposefully or if they just propogated naturally.

III. The third band is the first band of small trees. In this band, I have identified the primary species to be staghorn sumac, which are a short species of tree that can either grow in a tree-like or bush-like formation. They are categorized by their distinctive red flower bulbs that stick out from their branches, which tend to extend upwards

IV. The final “band” surrounds the fences and the sumac groves, and consists primarily of mulberry and wild grapes. The grapes grow on either side of the fence, and sprawl across the ground in some parts. The mulberries grow closer to large bushes, similar to how figs grow (which makes sense, as they’re related).

Hi, I’m Alexios Spector and this is my Phenology Project for my NR1010 class at UVM. Over the course of this blog, we’ll be diving into the phenology of my chosen spot, a stormwater drainage pond on campus. I’ll be giving updates on the ecology of this charming body of water as it interacts with the campus setting around it, and the changing seasons. I hope you all tune in!