Centennial Woods Phenology Blog A UVM blog

It’s finally Thanksgiving break!! For me, that means going back home to North Carolina. I live in the suburbs about 30 minutes from the city of Charlotte. Our assignment this week was to compare a spot from home to our spot in Burlington! I visited the woods across the street from my house where I used to play as a little kid.

https://goo.gl/maps/esmHPi7ajCz4ntab8

This is a link to the google map pinpoint of my location!

It was very nostalgic going back to these woods because my friends and I used to come here all the time! It has definitely changed over many years and even over the couple months I have been away in Vermont. One thing I noticed is that the kudzu problem has gotten worse. Kudzu is an invasive species that surrounds other plants in the community and blocks their ability to receive sunlight. It ends up spreading everywhere and killing a lot of plants. The area in this picture used to be clear enough to run through.

Besides the kudzu, I also noticed some ecological similarities between my two locations. I found lots of red and white oaks and red maples here in Waxhaw. It’s a lot easier to identify them here because our trees still have some leaves on them! One other thing to compare is the type of soil present here. Our soil seems to be a type of red clay, so it probably has a lot of iron present! It tends to be more red after it rains and we have not had rain in a while, but you can still see the distinct color.

It was nice to come back home and see how things have changed since I left. I had never looked at the ecology of my forest before and it made me look at my old playground through a new perspective. One thing for sure is there is definitely no snow on the ground here, it’s a nice 56 degrees!

Our assignment for this week was to sit in our spot for 15 minutes and observe. It was really peaceful just sitting in nature and thinking about the natural processes that take place here! I saw a mom and her two kids walking around picking up trash and a few people out walking their dogs. It was a nice day outside to take a walk in the woods!

This is the view from one of the edges of my spot. You can see how all the leaves are on the ground now and some are crowding the creek too. Although it is fall now and most of the leaves are down, there was also a huge storm last night so there is an excess of leaves blown all over and tons of trees fallen down too. Some of the sugar maples still have a few leaves on them, but they are yellow and will probably drop soon. Winter is rapidly approaching even though it is somehow 70 degrees today. It was interesting to see how the land has slightly changed since I was last here. Now that the leaves are down, I can see farther to the other side of Centennial Woods. There is a small clearing across the creek that I can see now, and I saw some Black Cherry trees that I had not noticed before.

We also had to draw a bird’s eye view of our phenology spot. The large clearing is part of the main pathway of the woods and it leads into my area which is mostly filled with pine and hemlock trees. Now that the leaves have fallen from the few oaks and birches, it is easier to see the sugar maples on the other side of the creek. I also drew some logs to represent the fallen down trees from the storm.

Overall, the only major change was the leaves dropping to the ground. The pine trees are still standing strong!

I’ll be back in a few weeks to check out my spot again!