Web Journal Week of
February 4-8, 2008
FOR 480
The
day began with a brief lecture on wildlife by our T.A., Andrew Whittle. He went
over some basic information and sampling techniques for wildlife, since it is
something that our landowner is very interested in. After that, we were off to
Last week we managed to sample 21 out of 30 plots, despite the constant rain. So our goal this week was not that difficult to accomplish. One member of our group, Alan Coldiron, was feeling ill this week, so he stayed behind to work on our inventory proposal that is due this Friday. Since we only had three members this week, we remained in one group instead of splitting up into two like we had the week before.
Matt Strong measures the
DBH of a tree while Dr. Lhotka eats his lunch
The best part of the week was that we had Dr. Lhotka and Andrew Whittle accompanying us. Andrew was a big help when it came to looking for signs of wildlife. I believe that my other two group members really enjoyed having him around. They were constantly stopping him and asking questions about signs of deer and turkey, since they both enjoy hunting.
Matt Strong and Andrew
Whittle discuss deer tracks
Other than missing a team mate and having the instructor and T.A. with us, things weren’t too different from last week. We sampled our plots using a wedge prism, measuring DBH and merchantable height. It went much faster this week, since it only started to rain towards the end of our day, and we returned to Lexington early.
Adrian Hudson measures the
merchantable height of a tree
The rest of the week our team spent working on the inventory proposal that Alan started for us on Tuesday. We spent a lot of time in the computer lab, coming up with a final inventory plan. Matt especially spent a lot of time working on our maps. It was a lot of work, but we managed to get it in on time.