November 23, 2022
Blog Post #3
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✩ Phenology Spot In Warrenton, VA ✩
╰┈➤ Today, me and my friends walked to the woods behind our school where we spent a lot of our teenage hooligan years. We walked to the lake to observe the phenology and I was surprised that it was incredibly different! Firstly, the non-coniferous trees still had leaves; no stick season in Virginia! The shrubbery, while dead and dry, was still clinging. There was a different composition of trees, the dominant species was Northern Red Oak, and there were few maples, whereas in Vermont you can’t go two steps without seeing a maple. There were also a few ducks, I think Ring-Necked ducks, which I haven’t seen before; usually it was Mallards or the pair of swans that were the focus of my friend’s photography project last year. Additionally, the lake was frozen 3 inches deep, which usually doesn’t happen. However, by the time we were leaving, the ice had begun to melt. I assume that when the temperatures dip at night and the sun isn’t out, the lake begins to freeze, but then it unfreezes every morning. When I come back for Winter break, I plan to see how much more it’s frozen!
╰┈➤My friend, who did a project on the lake for a class in high school, commented that the lake was extremely impaired due to proximity to the school and the town, which reminded me of my phenology spot in Vermont. She also said that the lake is on track to become a bog, which is a natural process but is not helped by the previous factors.
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