Happy Earth Week everyone! This is a time of year where we need to stop and take a moment to appreciate the beauty and life giving processes that Earth provides us. Take this appreciation one step further and make a change in your life to protect the beauty and abundance that our Earth provides us. Earth Week is a great time to reevaluate our life choices and make a change.
Spring is here and in full force in Vermont. This seasonal change is apparent at my phenology as the landscape is responding to the warming temperatures. The deciduous trees on my phenology site are budding and shrubs are pushing out fresh, green growth. The American beech, yellow/white birch trees are opening their buds. The rest of the trees on my site are coniferous so there is little visible change to these. In the understory, wood ferns, partridgeberry, yellow trout lily, honeysuckle, and barberry are all showing new growth. An observation I had was that the majority of the ferns grew closer to the river. This may be because of the increased moisture there.
I also noticed that the stream running through my phenology site is much higher. I suspect this is from the large amounts of snow melting from the mountains and rushing down the rivers towards Lake Champlain. With this increased flow, the river is running much faster. Another thing that became apparent to me is the effect of the river on the topography of the landscape. The river cuts through a valley and as it meanders, has deposited sediment in some places and eroded it in others. there are some spots with substantial erosion much higher than the river is at right now. This means that the river must have been at that level in the past and has slowly cut deeper and deeper into the valley.