Erin Bucchin's Phenology Blog

I visited Centennial Woods during my second week at UVM. Since then, the Woods has become a place of familiarity, learning, excitement, sadness, and calm. As I walked to my place this past week I took note of the green buds and leaves and remembered what they looked like just eight months ago. I always feel at home when I’m walking through nature and the woods remind me of walks with my mom. Over the past year I have visited Centennial a number of times, so many that in a way I do feel a sense of place there, albeit a briefly felt sense. I am excited for the next three years to pass, and in doing so to promote a deeper sense of place at my site.

I would say that it is easy to notice an intertwining of nature and culture in Centennial Woods. As you walk through, you can notice succession in the regeneration of pine and hemlock groves following the agricultural land use of the 18 and 1900’s. You can also find remnants of sheepherders in barbed wire stuck to growing trees. It is important to notice that s you walk through, there is little to notice of the land’s previous tenets, the Abenaki. The lack of physical evidence of their lives in the Champlain Valley is troubling, and representative of numerous social issues and dynamics surrounding the viewing of native cultures. It is also representative of indigenous land ethics, particularly of reciprocity with the land and neglecting to leave permanent traces of their presence. Additionally, in more recent years, Centennial has become a hub of ecological research culture here at the University of Vermont. The existence of this blog, and the blogs of my peers, is evidence of this intertwining of nature and culture. And for this, I am thankful.

As far as phenological changes go in the first week of May, there is so much going on that it is hard to pinpoint any specific changes since the week prior. I will say though that the fiddleheads are unfurling, honeysuckle are continuing to bud alongside maples. I am excited for the dynamics of summer to kick into gear, pushing the buds of the trees towards the sun.

I think it’s safe to say Spring has officially sprung! With warmer temperatures, longer days, more frequent sun buds and grasses are starting to pop up all over campus. This being said, the UVM lawn is not the only place where there is new growth. As I walked down the muddy path to my footbridge in Centennial Woods I heard the songs of the Chickadee and witnessed the vibrant green of fresh moss. The promise of budding trees and shrubs held the most promise in my eyes as each new sprout reminded me of the miracle of life and rebirth in nature. I noticed Silver Maple buds as well as a large amount of Honeysuckle buds along the path. There were not many flowering trees that I saw, but I did find many Maple flowers that had fallen into the leaf litter on the forest floor. The Basswood, Buckthorne, and Boxelder were also beginning to show signs of life. Though I didn’t find them in my specific phenology site, I did end up walking further into the woods and did see frog eggs in the stagnant water, which was absolutely so exciting.

It was interesting to note that both native and invasive species were showing life at the same time, though they compete so intensely in their day to day lives

Being home for the week brought views of mountains, blue skies, avalanches, feet of snow, and warmth. Though my instinct was to run to Red Mountain, the site of my last home phenology blog, I chose to snowshoe in a new area and immerse myself in a new environment. Sunlight Ski Resort, the ski mountain in my town has an area near it for backcountry skiing and hiking so I chose to investigate that area more. Millions of years ago, glaciers moved through the Roaring Fork Valley cutting through the Rocky Mountains. These glaciers cut through granite and gneiss formed during the Precambrian Era. This in addition to the presence of molten rock and volcanoes in the area, has laid the foundation for the soils now supporting Colorado Blue Spruce, Aspen, and Douglas Fir up in the ski area. The Rocky Mountains hold such a rich geologic history that one hill could hold a completely different bedrock than its neighbor. As I walked through the forest and snow, I took note of the plethora of Service-Berry bushes in the understory surely providing food and sustenance for the Grizzly Bears who graze in that area, as well as the trails of Snowshoe Hare tracks breaking the untouched fallen snow. Because it is still early in the Spring Season, and there has been such intense snowfall in the past month, I did not see many birds. I did, however, sight a Lark Bunting perched in an Aspen: a reminder of home and its ways.

It is interesting looking at the biological makeup of Colorado in comparison to the Burlington area, and specifically Centennial Woods because some aspects are incredibly similar while others are completely different. The presence of Birch is replaced with their doppelganger, the Aspen, and Eastern White Pines are replaced with Colorado Blue Spruce. Also, because the Roaring Fork Valley is much higher in elevation the diveristy within the forests is much more limited and specialized to adapt to extreme exposure and weather, unlike the more Hardwood, woodland makeup of Centennial Woods.

I’ve been to Centennial Woods many times now, and seen the numerous kinds of trees all mixed together into one beautiful mass. Due to the large presence of a mix of Beech, and Yellow Birch within and around many Eastern Hemlocks would lead me to classify Centennial Woods’ natural community as a Hemlock-Northern Hardwood forest. There are many Hemlock growing in the understory, in addition to the tall masses looming in the overstory. This mixed with the presence of trees like Sugar Maple and small fern, account for the part of the natural community not accounted for in the Hemlock designation. I think what really clued me into this designation was the Hemlocks growing underneath their older friends. The fact that there is a generation of Hemlocks ready to sprout, helps me to understand the potential for Centennial Woods and its natural makeup.

It’s been a while since I last visited my site down in Centennial Woods, but this afternoon I gave it a visit. It snowed today after a week of brutal cold, so I was able to note some changes from the early thaw conditions of my last visit. I was able to note some buds beginning to break in preparation to Spring, but as was the case last time, most plants understand their time is still to come and are waiting out the rest of the season. With the early thaw came melting snow, ice, and the stream was beginning to trickle. Today, following a week of freeze, the stream is no longer running and sits completely frozen over underneath a light blanket of snow. Because my site lies at the bottom of two steep hills, water flow interacts greatly with the land and soil supporting my site. When the thaws begin to be more and more frequent, the water flow can enter the ground and then hold moisture to help the vegetation throughout the spring. Additionally, as Spring runoff continues, there will be more and more sediment deposited near the stream bed, as the steepness of the area leads to erosion. As a result, this could lead to a rearrangement of the substrate in months to come.

I tried to document how the world moves without much of my own movement overshadowing it in an attempt to represent the idea of biodiversity not being connected or dependent on humans and their technology. Silently listening to the sounds of the wind, watching the sunset through the pines, and seeing the ice melt with this early thaw truly reiterated to me the importance of asking for nature’s voice to be heard.

So often environmental advocacy comes from a place of privilege that as well-intentioned as it is, overpowers both the people who depend on the land and the land itself. Nature itself and the relationships people foster with nature are in their essence simple. Every human on this planet is connected to the biodiversity of the world in some innate way and I think sustaining these ideas to this end benefits all the people the Earth itself sustains each day.

https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1-U695DU-kZO8hfoz6VyMZCD1KGCjzV84&ll=44.475310903137384%2C-73.18690184878909&z=18

Things have changed: the year, the season, and my Phenology Site. I have moved my documentation and observation to a plot within Centennial Woods near and around the first footbridge. Walking almost to Rockpoint was proving difficult with the weather and the elements, and I was ready for a change of scenery. When I first walked down to my site, the skies were grey, but the temperature was seemingly moderate, and following the onset of rain showers we have been having recently, there was a large presence of ice and some grasses poking out from the melted down snow. It was reassuring to see the ground, and the bit of green when Winter has been so long and cold these past few weeks.

I was able to look at the Deciduous tree species near the bridge which have lost their leaves since I last visited Centennial Woods in the fall. Some of these include Paper Birch, Norway Maple, and Red Maple. I also was able to note some Domestic dog tracks alongside the wooden footbridge, with deer tracks alongside them. I was able to decern that the tracks were Domestic dog rather than a wolf of some kind, due to the toes in the tracks being splayed outwards rather than tied together. We discussed in class that this can be attributed to the lack of need for muscle in a Domestic dog’s front feet.

I have included some photos of my sighting and a map of my site, as well as a video for your viewing pleasure.

After watching some Burlington Geographic videos on the history of the Water Front area, I was able to ascertain a few things about the history of my site in particular. On the other side of the bike path, when you first enter the trail to my site, there is a large Cedar Bluff, which was used by the Abenaki people around 300 years ago to access fishing grounds. Some of the bluffs were easier to navigate than others, but the less steep ones were usually the most utilized. I also learned that hundreds of years ago, the shore met Lake Champlain where those bluffs rest, leaving the few hundred feet of land present today, to be built with artificial fill over the course of hundreds of years of various human historical events, one being the industrialization of timber in the 1800s, making Lake Champlain one of the largest water ports in the North East at the time.