Trees and whatnot Finn Murphy's (epic)Phenology Blog

I have had the same Phenology Site since the first semester in NR-001. I have enjoyed watching my site transition from bright summer days into the fiery foliage of fall through a snowy winter into a budding spring. As the seasons changed so did the river that runs through my site. The Winooski was at times a raging avalanche of water rushing down from the mountains and occasionally its water was so low that the cliffs looked like they were an extra ten feet tall. The ebb and flow of the river rearranged logs and driftwood along the riverbank. The river would flood the banks of the Salmon Hole and leave behind piles of silty sediment and debris. I like to observe the power of the river and think about all of the material it has moved and the change it has created over the years.

I have grown fond of the two trees that I drew in my sketch above. These two Northern White Cedar jut out from the cliff face over the river, defying gravity. I enjoy looking at the elegant curve of their trunks that formed as they worked their way out from the cracks within the rocks they grow upon. These trees stand out against the cliff face and seem like improbable residents of such a desolate rock face.

The mix of the human and natural world intertwines nature and culture at my site. The salmon hole–a fishing site in the ancestral lands of the indigenous Abenaki People– is surrounded by infrastructure and industry. The Winooski dam lies upriver of my site and the massive factory buildings are reminders of the textile mills where thousands of immigrant workers and families found their way into life in Vermont. Salmon Hole is surrounded by reminders of how humans have effected the landscape. When you drown out the noise of passenger jets passing overhead and ignore the constant sound of cars passing by, this site can take you back to a time before colonization and you can try to picture a world without so many obstructions to a natural setting.

I consider myself to be a part of this place. I have been living within the Winooski watershed my whole life. Being able to observe the river so close to its estuary into Lake Champlain makes me realize how connected our world is. The water, land, and people are tied together through one large web of reciprocity, when humans ignore their responsibility to care for the land the whole system suffers. I feel like I am part of this system. It is my job to care for the land and try to put in as much as I take out.

What up, TREE VISIT #3!!!!!!!!! 🙂

Despite the blatant excitement that my blog title conveys, this site visit was a little bit underwhelming. I was excited to see if my tree had started to bud yet, but much to my dismay, it has yet to show signs of bud break. Today was much warmer than any other day I have visited my tree. The temperatures were around 60 degrees Fahrenheit and the snow cover at my site was diminished essentially to zero. The only signs of winter left around my site were the occasional chunk of ice flowing down the river and the crunchy puddle of frozen mud every now and again. The landscape seems almost indistinguishable from what it looked like back in November. The biggest difference from then till now is the slight tinge of red that the canopy has taken on since the buds have fully formed on most trees. Especially prevalent were the swelling buds of a silver maple that I saw, its buds were so large they looked like little flowers read to burst.

The highlight of my visit was the rushing water. The water levels were especially high today, surpassing that of any other occasion I have visited Salmon Hole. The high temperatures from the last few days have created a rush of water coming down from the mountains. As the snowpack starts to recede up the mountains the cold water flows down the headwaters into rivers like the Winooski or the Lamoille and into Champlain. I liked listening to the water crashing over the lip of the damn. The pounding noise of water echoed off of the steep rock faces and out towards the final stretch of the Winooski that flows down towards the lake. Im not sure what time of year Salmon swim up river but they would have had a hard time getting anywhere today.

Things are starting to feel a lot like springtime. The air is full of the smell of the earth waking up, the smell of fresh dirt, and the warm wind is refreshing after the dark days of winter. There is still snow in the occasional spot here and there, but most of Burlington has shed its wintery coat. There was still a fair amount of snow cover at my phenology site, Salmon Hole. I attribute this to the position of the site, it is facing north and is protected by steep embankments on each side. The topography and location of my site doesn’t allow for sun to reach down through the trees and onto the light layer of snow remaining on the forest floor. The river has thawed out since last time I visited and the water is rushing fast as ever, a sure sign of tremendous snowmelt up river in the mountainous headwaters of the Winooski.

My Paper Birch that I have been tracking looks to be in the same phenological stage as last time. The buds are all fully formed but are dormant has they wait for the correct photoperiod to break. I’m not sure when Paper Birch breaks bud, but I feel like it’s gonna be soon, seeing how fast temperatures are starting to warm. I was able to get a pretty good look at my tree’s buds, but just to affirm that my observation was correct I checked a nearby Paper Birch and confirmed that it was also in the same stage of bud dormancy.

Unlike last time, the water was running and the shoreline was free of ice when I visited recently. The snow cover last time I visited Salmon Hole was around 80-100% in places. This time the snow cover seemed to be around 40-60%, which is much less than last time, but still more snow cover than in neighboring areas of Burlington and Winooski. I had a great time visiting, it was my first time going in the early morning so it was cool to observe my site at a different time of day than I typically do.

Thanks!

-Finn Murphy

I originally didn’t have a plan for what tree I was going to search out among the many on my site, but after spotting a paper birch down by the water I figured I would use it for identification. I’ve always like Paper Birch. When I was younger I would harvest the peeling sheets of ‘paper-like’ bark and use charcoal to try and write on it. I would crumple it up and start little fires, bursts of flames that crackled like a hungry inferno and then burnt out in an instant. I still like to cut kindling from birch, I find that it makes the first steps of building a wood fire easier and more enjoyable.

This particular Birch stood by itself among a variety of young Maples and Beach trees. I could tell that it wasn’t a yellow Birch because… welp… it wasn’t yellow. I could tell it wasn’t a River Birch because mature River Birch is much darker and ‘scaley’. Gray Birch was the last “lookalike” I had to rule out to make sure it was indeed a Paper Birch. After some research, I found that, unlike paper Birch, Gray Birch bark doesn’t peel off in sheets. After making sure that my tree wasn’t one of its lookalike species, I took some pictures for my iNaturalist post and continued to explore my site.

It was fun exploring the rest of my site. The river was frozen over for the first time so I walked around on the ice. I found some Grey Fox tracks (or maybe Red Fox) and spotted a cool Northern White Cedar on the side of a cliff.

What up guys, went tracking the other day, super fun stuff. I remember Mike saying that tracking was a therapeutic practice and I couldn’t agree more, I had such a fun time in the woods stomping around and enjoying a cool new area. I drove up to Derway Island, the northernmost tip of Burlington at a deeply entrenched meander of the Winooski river just before its outlet into Lake Champlain. The woods in this area were super cool. The land had a super flat topography and sandy soil, it reminded me of the floodplain of the Little River in the town I grew up in. A tall canopy and a sparse understory allowed me to move through the woods pretty easily and peep through trees to see what was ahead. I was expecting to be let down with my visit since there was very little snow and I am not very confident in my tracking abilities, but I was presently surprised with my adventure! When I first started walking the path along the river I kept on noticing a bunch of stumps along the riverbank. At first I figured they were just pruned by someone trying to take care of the trail and remove dead trees or something (I wasn’t sure). But upon further inspection I found that the stumps were covered in little chew marks and were surrounded by piles of wood-chips. This of course is the product of our furry friend, the American Beaver 🙂

Riding on the excitement of these new discoveries I headed down to the riverbank to try and see if I could find some beaver tracks in the soft silty soil. Unfortunately, my excited searchings were to no avail. This search for beaver tracks were not without some degree of sucess. As I paced along the edge of the river I heard a crashing through the woods probably 30 yards inland of where I was searching. Startled (and a little bit scared) I cautiously darted towards the noise to try and see what it was. Off in the distance, still visible through the sparse winter understory, I could see the white tails of a couple deer bobbing off into the distance. Needless to say, I was so excited. The adrenaline kicked in and I ‘half-ran’/’half-scampered’ through the woods in the direction of the deer. I was aware that I didn’t want to harass the deer so after my adrenaline wore off I decided that I would calm down and instead try and track the deer at a walking pace. Fortunately this new frame of mind and its accompanying mental clarity allowed me to find a game trail that led deep into the woods. Broken sticks, animal scat and the occasional track or two led me further north, following the crest of the river as it slowly arced westward in front of me. And there they were… two White Tailed deer stared back at me as I rounded the corner of a tree and spotted them standing broadside towards me. I was so excited.

Finding the actual organism, scat and tracks was such a cool experience but after I found the deer I turned around and let them go about their day. While walking back towards my car I took a different route and found some even fresher deer tracks. I believe that these tracks were from the initial instance when I heard them running through the woods behind me. The snow wasn’t settled around the track, the pads of the tracks weren’t iced over yet, and unlike the other tracks these ones were leading in the opposite direction (which lines up with the direction they were running when I first heard them). During the rest of my tracking I found a couple of other animal signs but was not able to form a concrete identification of the animal. One track I found was a canine print. I initially thought that it could be a coyote or maybe a fox, but after looking in my tracking guide the print was far too big to be any of the canine species native to Vermont. I assume that it must have been left there by a domestic Dog that someone was walking through the area. This would make sense because there was no direct registering apparent in the tracks and the toes seem kind-of ‘splayed out’, which is typical to see in dog tracks. I also found a rotted tree with a bunch of holes in it. This caught my eye because I thought that it could be a sign of some sort of woodpecker, but I couldn’t find any other signs that it was specifically a woodpecker. It could have been the result of insects or just plain old rot, either way, I thought it was pretty neat.

Overall I had a good time using the iNaturalist app and recording my observations. When I got back to my dorm I checked out the NR2 project on iNaturalist and had a good time checking out other people’s observations and trying to help with identification. The animals that I encountered–both directly and indirectly– and the observations I made were super fulfilling and it seems like something I would like to do for fun, especially on a dreary or otherwise boring day 🙂

Thanks for reading!

-Finn Murphy

If you guessed Slim Shady, then you would be wrong… Answer: PHENOLOGY BLOG IS BACK!!!

Returning to my site was a completely different experience as this time the landscape was shrouded in a fresh layer of snow! The snow changed the nature of my site in a variety of ways. Initially, the first thing I encountered, was how much harder it was to access my site. The snow made the steep sections of the trail hard to walk down and I almost slipped. although this is no big deal to me I though about handicap accessibility and how access to a public area such a Salmon Hole is a privilege to be able to enjoy year round. The snow also changed the appearance and sounds of the land. Noises seemed muffled and light reflected off of the snow giving the dark areas of wood more liveliness.

I was pleasantly surprised with how much animal activity I was able to observe while at my site. I found plenty of tracks in the fresh snow, I am not sure what animals left said tracks, but it was super fun to follow them around. I thought one of the game trails was initially just a dog someone had let off leash during a walk, but after following it into the bushes I saw the tracks go into a culvert and under a road, leading me to think that they belonged to either a fox or coyote (tracks were in a very straight line). I also saw squirrel prints (didn’t take a picture) and what a believe to be a rabbit/hare of some sort.

Another interesting, potentially phenological, change I noticed was the number of crows flocking around the area. it has been brought up before in NR lecture, but the number of crows passing through and congregating around Burlington is startling. It was my first time seeing the flocking occur in my sight, so I wonder if it is a result of the change of season or simply by chance.

As I approached my site today I could hear an ambient rumbling. I thought that I was hearing noises from the road or the nearby airport, but as I got closer to the river I could tell I was wrong. The river was rushing and the dam upriver of my site had water cascading loudly onto the rocks below. Looking around at the landscape the major jump in water level from the last time I visited was very evident. The beach area where I’d seen goose tracks was submerged as well as a stretch of the waterside that was covered in wildflowers earlier in fall. I wonder if this flooding happens annually around this time of year or if this amount of water is unusual. This water that is causing flooding is a product of the warmer temperatures and the rain that we’ve experienced over the lsat few days. Meltwater coming down from the mountains is joining the rainfall to create a compound effect that raises the water level. The frozen ground in the headwaters of the Winooski also contributes to the excess of water. When rain falls onto frozen ground the soil cant absorb or use that water. instead, this rain flows off of the surface and picks up sediment that will eventually flow into rivers and streams. Warm temperatures, frozen ground and high rainfall all work together to form–what I imagine to be– ‘goldilocks’ conditions for high water flow and rising river levels. Every year there is usually a period around January that we call the “January Thaw”, a time when the ground starts to un-freeze and the snow pack recedes a little bit. If the conditions during that “thaw” are similar to the conditions that I experienced today, then I would imagine that the river would also raise at that time of year.

At this time of year almost all of the trees have lost their leaves. I looked around my site to try and see if I could find a beech tree that was still clinging onto its leaves, but to my surprise, the only tree that still had some ‘stragglers’ was a young red maple on the hillside. I was surprised by this because typically maple trees shed all of their leaves before winter. These leaves were dead of course, it was just odd that they were still clinging to the branches of this particular tree, especially when all of the surrounding trees were completely bare. Since the vast majority of the trees already lost their leaves the leaf litter was quite dense. However, unlike how in the fall the leaves were crunchy and light, the leaves at this time of year were much more damp and layered. I would imagine that cold damp leaves such as the ones that I found would be good conditions to spend the winter in for the wood frogs we learned about. Signs of decomposition were pretty noticeable but I wasn’t able to find the decomposers responsible for it.

I wasn’t able to find many signs of wildlife. I was pretty bummed that I couldn’t find any winter nests or signs of feeding but as I left my site I saw a mouse scurry across the trail. This mouse is probably trying to prepare for winter as they are still active in this month and have to prepare for the long months to come. Mice burrow into the snow to bear their young but still have to stay active collecting food and avoiding predators throughout winter. Maybe if I go back during the colder months of January or February I will be able to find a maze of tunnels under the snow, home to the mouse that I saw earlier today. One thing that concerned me today was the amount of noise pollution at my site. F-35’s were leaving the Burlington airport as well as a bunch of passenger airliners. I could see them rise above the tree-line and disappear into the clouds as I observed my site, the sound traveled quickly and at times I had to cover my ears because it was so excessive. Even when planes aren’t as frequent there is still noise from the nearby roads and towns that sandwich either side of the river. I wonder how all of this noise pollution effects communication between birds and what other implications such high levels of disturbance have for natural areas.

This semester I have really enjoyed my visits to my Phenology site for a couple reasons. Visiting a natural place so involved in an urban landscape is something new to me. Seeing how humans interacted with the land and observing the phenological changes that occur in such a space was super cool. I also really enjoyed being able to use my knowledge and senses to break down a landscape into different pieces and processes through observation and investigation. Overall the experience of being involved with the landscape and recording my interactions with it was super valuable and is something I want to continue to do.

The site that I selected while home for thanksgiving break follows an old logging road above a class 1 stream that feeds into the headwaters of the Lamoille river. This site is a mix of early and mid-succession forest and sits at an elevation of 1400-1450ft abs. In the figure below the measured line represents the general path of the old logging road, I examined the land along that corridor the distance of 20-25 feet from either side of the road.

Ecology Comparison:

A major factor affecting the ecology differences between my two sites is elevation. Salmon hole sits at around 200ft abs while the site that I chose in Elmore sits at 1400ft abs. This 1200ft difference in elevation affects precipitation, temperature, species density, and variety as well as the interactions between all of these things. At my site in Elmore, there is noticeably more snow on the ground than anywhere in the greater Burlington area. This is because of the lower temperatures and higher levels of precipitation that a location at 1400ft abs experiences. Another important difference between the two sites is their interactions with human activity and development. While my site at Salmon Hole is central to an urban landscape and sandwiched between development, my Elmore site sits on the edge of hundreds of acres of wilderness. This effects things like noise pollution, wildlife habitat, wildlife activity, and other “human produced’ pollutants. One of the most noticeable things I experienced while observing my Elmore site was how quite it was. I wonder how this effects things like mating calls and communication between animals or what kind of noises are occurring that my human ears aren’t picking up in that environment. The tree species at my Elmore site included a dominant amount of Yellow Birch and Eastern Hemlock as well allot Striped Maple and the occasional American beech. These tree species indicate a well drained and

Phenology Comparison:

When traveling from my home to Burlington, and vice versa, I am always surprised by the differences in appearance of season. Even just traveling 15 minutes from my house down into Lamoille valley I notice a dramatic difference in things like snow cover, temperature, foliage and spring growth. At this time of year the most obvious phenological differences I noticed had to do with the snow and ice. While the ground at my site in Elmore is frozen solid, in Burlington the grass is green and the ground is still soft. I also notice that as I took the dirt roads down from my house the dirt slowly turned to mud as I dropped elevation. The difference in elevation between my two sites makes traveling between the two seem like a journey between two different seasons. While Elmore feels deep into winter, Burlington still seems on the edge of ‘stick season’. Since there was allot of snow at Elmore I was able to easily find a bunch of animal tracks. There were deer tracks, squirrel, rabbit and a TON of coyote tracks as well as other signs of wildlife like scat and bedding areas where deer spent the night.

Honorable Harvest:

This site is an area where I have grown up walking through and playing in. There are little forts built out of logs and branches darted across the hills and between trees, as I walked through the woods to my site I could spot remnants of old fairy houses that my sister and I built with my mom. Although I have spent a ton of time in these woods I have never ‘harvested’ anything from these particular woods. Instead of leaving something in the woods to display my appreciation for them I instead chose to verbally announce my thanks. In the silence of the snow cover woods I yelled “THANK YOU!” before I left. I have often thanked my parents for bringing me into the woods as a kid but thanking the actual forest for providing such an amazing place for me to grow up and learn in was something long overdue.

Today when I visited my phenology spot I sat and observed, I wrote a whole bunch of questions. The more I observed about my site, the more things I realized I didn’t have answers for. As I sat I closed my eyes and listened to the river bubble past, opening them I looked upriver and noticed a startlingly hard to miss dam that blocks the river. how I did not notice this the first time, I don’t know. When was the dam built? Was it part of the Structural Defense Paradigm following the floods of 1927? How does it affect the flow and discharge volume of the Winooski at its outlet? Does the dam force the river to deposit sediment, if so does that help control phosphorus and nutrient levels in either the lake or the following river downstream? I noticed some plants in the water and wondered if invasive species could ‘work their way up’ the river through the outlet of the Winooski. Can the invasive species that are taking over lake Champlain survive in river conditions, or are they a specific issue in lakes exclusively?

Some of the phenological changes that I observed and probably the most obvious ones had to do with the foliage (or lack thereof). In the time between my visits, temperatures have dropped, the amount of sunlight that our landscape is decreasing and the fruits and nuts from trees have been plucked off by animals preparing for the winter. As sunlight diminishes leaves stop to photosynthesize, chlorophyll dissipates and the other colors of the leaves are revealed. These unproductive leaves drop off and it is safe to say that we are solidly in stick season at this point. Some of the remaining leaves that I was able to identify still clung to the occasional American beach and even a few speckled (or gray) Alder saplings with most leaves still green and intact. Another sign of phenological change were the Canada Goose prints that I saw imprinted within the mud in the shallower parts of the river. These prints are a sign of the annual migration of Canada Geese that happens every spring and fall. In the Fall Canada Geese pass through Vermont in the months of September and October on their way to their warmer non-breeding sites. With a large area of calm water and plenty of bushes with berries my phenological site is the perfect landing spot for these Geese as they migrate.

Some ‘then‘ and ‘nows‘ for y’all

My (epic) Map!

My site: Salmon Hole – Winooski, VT

I saw this site a few weeks ago. I was biking from Burlington to Winooski along the bike path and off to my left I saw a dirt path gong down the slope towards the river. I figured it would be a good spot to set up a hammock so I dipped off of the bike path and down through the woods. A jumble of paths dart throughout the largely deciduous trees that cover the steep slope. Following these paths down to the river I was startled by the rugged stone beach and the dramatic cliffs I found.

I noticed while leaving Salmon Hole park that it is sandwiched quite closely in-between busy roads and developed lands. This makes Salmon Hole park- as well as my phenological study site- an area where interactions between humans and the environment takes place. Non-permeable surfaces and even a nearby water treatment plant seemed like concerning factors that could effect water quality in the surrounding area. This site will be an ideal area to study phenological processes because it is a protected area amongst urban development that will change throughout the seasons and host a variety of wildlife. I am curious if the river will fully freeze over, when that may happen, and how that will effect the systems surrounding it. It would be amazing to walk up and down the frozen river and look closer at the cliffs for patterns or processes.

MOST COMMON WOODY SPECIES:
-Northern Red Oak

-Box Elder

-Barberry

-Buckthorn

-Red Maple