Firstly, I chose the maples because of the fall season. Most of the leaves on the ground came from them. They represent the change in seasons from Summer to Fall. The reason for the slug is that slugs come out in wet weather, and we have had quite a lot of wet weather quite recently. The reason for the pine was to show that not every tree is affected as greatly as the maples are by the season change. I identified the grass because of how much it was affected by the flooding. The final thing was the American beech just to show how many of them are in my area.
One of the changed that has occurred in the vegetation is that now you can see from one end of the forest to the other. There has been a huge amount of leaves falling. What used to be one of the most prominent tree types were deciduous trees but now the main one that’s easiest to see are the coniferous trees. An interesting thing about this is that now you can tell that the conifers only grow from halfway up their trunk to get the most value for their sun. The deciduous trees grow up to that point which I think is why they have that growing pattern.
One interesting thing about the soils right now is that they are very wet. The soils are all runny and muddy. It is unearthing the nutrients and spreading them across the whole forest. Also, they are slowly getting tons of leaves decomposing into them, which is why I suspect the slugs came out.
One thing that the map did was reinforce the barrier between the conifers and deciduous trees. It showed how they both had their line and did not really cross it. It also showed how the river heavily the entire ecosystem a ton. It gives nutrients to all of the surrounding plants, and the flood gives a huge spread of nutrients.