Redstone Forest Phenology A UVM blog

For my thanksgiving blog post I decided to go to some woods that I was very familiar with, Lost Pond nature sanctuary. The entrance to Lost Pond sanctuary is located right at the end of my street and consists of thirty acres of walking trail and a large publics works building that houses many of the town’s municipal vehicles like trash trucks and utility vehicles. As the name implies there is also a pond back in the woods called Lost Pond. It is quite small, but is a home to many animals including frogs, salamanders, turtles and ducks. In the rest of the woods there are many other animals like squirrels, deer and coyote. There is a quite large coyote population, even from my house I can hear them howl at night.

Lost Pond sanctuary is very different from Redstone Woods in many ways. For starters, Redstone Woods is under an acre while Lost Pond sanctuary is thirty acres. Lost Pond sanctuary is also far more natural and less disturbed by people than Redstone Woods is. In Lost Pond the area that is commonly disturbed by people is quite small and only consisted of the trails that run through there. Lost Pond sanctuary in general has a very low foot traffic and is mostly only used by people who live in my neighborhood. Redstone on the other hand is used by most of UVM’s campus. Along with that there is far less plants on the ground level than at Lost Pond and more grass that is commonly stepped on by people.

There are very few ecological events that affect Redstone woods given its man made and managed by the university. Because of this the biggest impact on the land is the people who use it for recreation so I decided to show that by drawing some contributions to those impact. These include a paved walking path, a hammock attached to two trees and a Frisbee.

Poem:

Redstone forest fam

A nice place to chill sometimes

I’d relax there soon

As the temperate has changed between the times I have visited this location there has been less foliage on some of the smaller ground level plants but for the most part the appearance has not changed much. The major difference that I observed was in the amount of people around. There were many less hammocks than before and the whole area seemed quieter. As for wildlife the only animals I observed were squires and one seagull.

Red stone woods is a small area of woods mostly containing Easter White Pine with at least one Red Oak near the edge. It is a common recreational area within UMV campus that is both utilized by students and the rest of Burlington population. People can often be seen there  hammocking (either doing homework or taking a nap), tossing a Frisbee or walking their dogs. The ground is mostly covered in grass but has some areas of low ground dwelling plant population, mostly ferns and small shrubs.

(insert picture here)

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