Research is:

I will try to keep this in layman's terms as best I can. Here is a description of my research:

What I am studying:
I am studying the effect that habitat patch size has on the nesting success of ground-nesting grassland birds. In addition to this I am also looking at: edge effect, patch vegetation structure, and bird communities; but I will just focus on the nesting and patch size question for this post. I am using a ratio of patch perimeter to patch area (P/A) as an objective measurement of patch size and shape. For patches that are the same shape, larger sized patches will have a smaller P:A ratio. For patches of the same size, more regularly shaped patches have smaller P:A ratios; therefore, the core area of those sites is largest.

How I am doing this:
To study the nesting success (warning this is a little dry/boring) I am using 6 different grassland patches, located throughout Summit County, OH (the county in which Akron resides). At each site I am doing two 10-day nesting sessions, where I put nests out on day 0 and check their statuses on days 5 and 10. Basically, I am measuring predation rates: have the eggs been taken or eaten? The nests are artificial nests, a ~1 inch deep and 3 in wide hole that I dig, in which I place 2 unfertilized quail eggs. Then I mark out the location of the nest with a flag located 5m to the north of the nest. Now, there are biases related to artificial nest studies, which I won't address here, but they are still widely used to study nesting success due to the difficulty of finding and monitoring natural nests (which also has some biases).

What I hope to find:
My prediction is that I will find a negative correlation between nesting success and P:A ratio. What this means is that as P:A ratio increases the nesting success will decrease. In other words, smaller sites (or more irregularly shaped sites) will have lower nesting success (due to predation) and larger sites will have higher success. As for edge effect, I expect that nests farther from the edges will survive longer than nests that are closer to edges. This is because predators tend to frequent edges.

What I have so far:
So far, it appears that my predictions about nesting success and site size are correct. My first set of data shows that as P:A ratio increase, nesting success decreases (with the exception of one site that has a remarkably high survival rate in general).

What this means:
What this means is that resource managers who are attempting to conserve/restore grassland sites for use as habitat by birds should take into account the size and shape of the patch that they are going to keep/restore. Too small a patch will have inadequate core area and will serve as a sink (a "trap" where birds think the habitat is ideal, but have low survival rates) so management strategies should seek to maximize size. However, size alone does not tell the whole store because P:A ratio also takes into account the shape of the patch. Management should focus on decreasing P:A ratio and increasing size in order to provide grassland habitat that acts as a source (an area where birds successfully reproduce) for birds, rather than a sink.


Alright, you can wake up now.

I'm baaaaack

Wow, it has been a long time since my last post. I have been ridiculously busy with my research towards the tail end of this program (2 weeks to go) and have completely neglected to update this thing. I'll talk about my research in the next post; for this post I wanted to focus on things I've done that are not research... which isn't much, unfortunately. Anyway, a list:

- Went to Cleveland Museum of Natural History and got a behind the scenes tour. This was really cool because we got to see all the bird and mammal skins, as well as some mounted reptiles, that are stuffed, mounted and used for displays. This was the last time we did a whole group "sponsored" REU event.


- Bill Zawiski of the Ohio EPA had our whole group to a stream quality monitoring activity. Wait, wait, wait. That sounds boring. What I meant to say was we got to go electro-fishing; which is exactly what is sounds like. We all jumped in the stream, wearing waterproof waders, and got a giant fishing net hooked up to a generator and basically shocked fish into "paralysis" and scooped them up in the net and tossed them in a bucket. As a note, the fish were not actually harmed or killed, the bucket was in the water with holes in it to allow water flow, it was basically just to contain the fish. Anyway, it was a pretty sweet little activity, definitely a cool skill to learn, even if it was only a basic lesson.

- Saw "Inception" last night in the movie theatre with Bayoan, Mollika and Alicia. Great movie. I definitely recommend it.

As far as noteworthy experiences go, that's about it. The rest is just the usual: hanging out, eating out at some cool local restaurants, bird watching.

That's about it.

Resilience

One lesson that I have learned through this research experience is to always be adaptable; resilience is key. I don't know how many times my research plans have changed so far and it is a little frustrating, to be completely honest. However, the important thing has been to not get overwhelmed by this.

My first week here, when I was coming up with a research idea, I sort of shot myself in the foot by changing my idea from a forest birds study to a grassland birds study; grasslands are not an abundant habitat type in Ohio. While it would have been easy to scrap my grassland plans I instead put in all the legwork necessary to get a grassland bird study going. Needless to say, this plan has had its setbacks. First, Lisa Petit (the director for  Natural Resources at Cuyahoga Valley National Park) sort of tossed my nesting success idea out of the window and told me that I wouldn't get enough data and it would be a lot of work for nothing. I later found out that Lisa did her Ph.D. research on grassland nesting birds so she's knows better than any how difficult an endeavor it is.

I'm back on track now, I think, and am ready to go with a study of grassland bird communities and artificial nest success (artificial nests baited with quail eggs) as they are related to landscape factors such as patch size, perimeter:area ratio, and surrounding landscape type.

I don't think I would be on track though without the following advice:
1. Be prepared for unexpected opportunities. Life is just as much about preparing for the unknown as it is the known, that is why it is so important to always be in a frame of mind that allows you to see an opportunity and pursue it.
2. Don't complain, work harder. As long as you are willing to put in the work to be successful, no matter how difficult the task, you will accomplish something. While you may not accomplish all that you wanted to, and I certainly know that I frequently don't, it is a good step to at least get something done toward your ultimate goal.



This week I'll be visiting grassland sites and doing a preliminary assessment of what types of birds are there, nothing terribly exciting. Posting frequency may decline because of this, but will probably pick back up once my research gets in full swing and I have more to talk about.

Research Update: Week 3

This past weekend was far from eventful. The weather was pretty crappy (overcast, chilly and rainy) and I found out that there are no Wachovia or Wells Fargo branches in the entire state of Ohio, so I can't deposit my paycheck.  I really didn't do much else other than try to regather my thoughts and mix up my research ideas until something worthwhile finally emerged. Here is what I came up with:

I'm still going to do a grassland bird study, however I will be focusing on how landscape structure affects community structure. On top of this, I will be doing a study of nesting success using artificial nests (fake nests baited with quails eggs) to try to relate that to landscape and community structure as well. We'll see how that turns out, the idea is still a little raw but I have to start doing something.

On Monday I went out to the field station to do a "practice run" of my bird counting methods (transect banding) but it was the middle of the afternoon so bird activity wasn't exactly at its peak. (The grassland habitat at the field station is called "Grandview Alley," so know that I mean the field station grassland when I talk about grandview alley). I saw 2 red-tail hawks soaring above the grassland and calling like crazy when I got there so I took probably 10 minutes to just sit in the shade (near the forest edge) and watch them do their thing; it was nice to let my thoughts wander away from research for a little bit. Nothing really unique to report on as far as the bird counts go. I saw the usual suspects: bobolinks, eastern meadowlarks, red wing blackbirds, song sparrows and tree swallows (the swallows aren't grassland birds but there are bluebird houses that they've taken up residence in so they fly around pretty much all day). Here are some pictures I took out there:

Grandview Alley

Grassland... grasses, I guess

This red-wing blackbird was so agitated he kept flying around over my head and being generally loud and obnoxious.

Tuesday, Greg and I went out to some different Summit Metro Parks sites to see if we could find the grassland habitats that the Director for Resource Management at the parks, Mike Johnson, told us about. We only found one good grassland site but there are probably more that we didn't find because we didn't really cover every square inch of the parks. Hopefully Mike J. can point me in the right direction as to the sites he told me about. I also got a book on bird census techniques (exhilarating!) and some decent ideas about my experimental design.

Today I am just reading, looking for quail eggs to buy online, and coming up with a good experimental design.

Thursday was a pretty low key day, it rained most of the day so I didn't do anything in the field. I went to the gym for the first time in a while and then came back to the dorm and read/researched for the rest of the day with Tara and Mollika (study party). Went to the grocery store and got poured on. All in all, pretty lame.

Friday:
Bayoan and I went out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park to meet with some organic farmers whose farms he was going to be doing his research on and I tagged along to chat with Lisa Petit. We spent about 4 hours there and it turns out that neither of our projects were really all that feasible. Lisa did a lot of research on ground nesting grassland birds for her Ph.D. and after talking with her it became abundantly clear that it will be too much work for too little data in the time frame that I have available. So I have to come up with some other idea that won't be useless come 8 weeks from now. Greg and I talked and I have some options, so not all is lost, but it was just a really frustrating turn of events.

No pictures or anything to share. Though on completely unrelated note: I've been practicing guitar pretty much daily and I think I'm starting to see some progress, so hopefully I can keep that up!

Friday-Today

Friday:
We woke up early to visit a restored wetland area that used to be a huge vegetable farm. The place, Panzner wetlands, was absolutely incredible. They have restored the wetlands to a Federally classified Class 3 wetlands (this is the highest grade a wetlands can receive) in only a decade or so after struggling for years to get permission to undergo the mitigation process from the government. They actually probably could have made a ton more money if they had simply sold the soil on the land, literally dug it up and sold the dirt, but they decided to do some good in the world (rather than puff up their wallet) and are now going to donate the land to the University of Akron for research and educational purposes. Its good to see that there are still some people in the world who care just as much about doing some good as they do about making some cash (which they have made quite a sum of cash from the land selling mitigation credits).

The rest of the day was pretty low key. Then we went out to the field station for dinner and to discuss the first chapter of our required reading, Topic: How to come up with a research question, and discuss our own ideas about how we came up with our questions and what our questions are.

Saturday:
Woke up at 4:30 am and left at 5:30am to go to Ottawa National Wildlife Reserve and Magee Marsh for a bird watching trip. Slept during most of the drive there. This was another pretty uneventful trip so here are some photos to tell the story (I'm getting pretty lazy with these posts, but I'm tired so I don't care).

Pretty cool view of the wetlands

Snapping turtle on her nest!

Bayoan, Greg, Debbie and Mollika

Gross, dead snapping turtle

Bayoan and Mollika

Bayoan, Greg (Dr. Smith aka my advisor), and Mollika

Debbie, Bayoan and Alysha

Shore of Lake Erie

So many Water Lilies!

Alysha and Bayoan

This gray catbird just sat still in the tree it was in even though we were only a couple feet away from it; it apparently couldn't have cared less about us.

Sunday:
The power was off in the dorm all day (7am-7:30pm) today so I didn't bother waking up until noon. Mollika and I went out to a cookout the RAs for the dorm did for us around 2pm and hung out and ate food until like 4. We met this guy who is a student here, and is in his 30s at least, and some lady that was with him; he was kinda weird but gave us the heads up on the computer lab and free printing in the dorm that we didn't know about before.

Monday:
Happy Memorial Day! Had the day off so just did some research/reading and hung out with Bayoan and Mollika.

Tuesday:
Met with my advisor, Greg, in the morning and discussed some preliminary work that I could do and any paperwork that I needed to didn't end up needing to fill out for my research. Tara and I went out to the field station and took a walk through the grassland in the nature preserve looking for evidence of nesting birds. I think there are definitely some bobolinks, song sparrows and red-wing blackbirds nesting out there so eventually we'll go out and find their nests so we can start monitoring them. Afterwards, Tara and I stopped by Glendale on the way home to look for skinks (for her research) and ended up finding nothing but a garter snake, which I caught to take a picture of but neither of us had our cameras. Then Bayoan and I made sandwiches for dinner and Mollika and Tara came by to hang out for a while.

Today:
Not much to really talk about today. Got lunch with Bayoan, Tara, Alysha, Dr. Mitchell and Debbie at Robertson on campus then went to the library to study for a little bit. Dinner with Tara and Alysha at some place in town that really wasn't that great; listening to the Flyers on radio now and doing a little more work.

And now I'm caught up! Posts will be more normal from here on out. And I will update on what exactly my research will be this summer.

Thursday - Mud, Monkshood, a dam and Pride Rock

By the end of tonight or tomorrow I will be caught up on updates up to the current time, I swear.

Thursday:

As a group we went out in the morning to visit a population of an endangered plant called Northern Monkshood, in a local park.

This is the endangered Monkshood.

The hike through the park was pretty awesome. To start off it was a long downhill hike/climb where we had to go down a series of rocks to drop about 50-60 feet from where we originally were. Then it was a pretty straight forward hike up to a sort of cave area that we stopped at to learn about the Monkshood.

First stop, the REU group, Dr. Mitchell and our Metro Parks guide Rob

We finished up by hiking up to the Monkshood site where Rob told us about the threats to Monkshood, the conservation and restoration efforts in the area and the challenges with keeping the population going. On the way there we hit some pretty nasty mud and got a little messy:

We then decided, before heading back, to hike farther into the park and go exploring a little more. It was a fun and beautiful hike with the river to our right and the tall rock face to our left the whole time. The coolest critter find was by far this salamander and her nest that we found underneath a rock:

AWESOME!

We headed back around noon to get some lunch, and washed up in the pool of water below this waterfall:

Then we got lunch at the Chowder House (absolutely incredible New England Clam Chowder there).

That afternoon we took a hike through Gorge Metro Park and visited the Gorge Metro Park Dam then hiked through the park and saw the sites (and animals!). Not much to be said for this trip so here are some pictures:

Me, Alysha, Bayoan, Greg, Debbie

The dam, that the EPA wants to get rid of

Pride Rock! (Lion King anybody?)

That's about it.

Tuesday & Wednesday

That last post was a bit hefty so I've decided to make this one brief...ish.

Tuesday:
Woke up early to drive out to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. We met with Lisa Petit who gave us a driving/walking tour of the park and told us about the invasive species management work they're doing, showed us the former site of the Coliseum where the Cavaliers played (now a grassland that I may be doing research at). She also told us about the sustainable agriculture practices taking place inside the park, which are really cool to me but probably doesn't matter to anyone else. We had lunch at a local restaurant, Fisher's, in Peninsula, OH. Then had the afternoon free so Tara, Alysha and I went grocery shopping and hung out. Forgot my camera this day, so no pictures.

Wednesday:
Fairly low key day, spent the morning doing research in the Library and had lunch with the group and my mentor at the Student Union. Got a campus tour, checked out the gym on campus (can't wait to go, probably tomorrow) and then met with Greg (mentor) afterwards. We discussed my options for research this summer and finally settled on an idea. Originally I was going to do a study of forest bird diversity as it depends on the surrounding landscape matrix (basically, what type of landscape surrounds a forest fragment) and fragment size. However I decided to do a study of the effect of grassland-forest edges on grassland nesting bird nesting success; I was inspired by the restored grassland that we saw Tuesday in CVNP.
That afternoon Tara, Alysha, Bayoan, and I went to Glendsdale park and Glensdale cemetery looking for 5 lined skinks for Tara's research project. After about 2 hours of on and off looking I finally spotted one just as we were about to leave. We looked a little longer and called it a day and went back to campus for dinner. Everything was closed on campus, and Tara lost her ZipCard (student ID; also, notice the trend), so we got Dominos and went back to the dorm to call it a day and hang out.


The quality of these posts will eventually pick up, but since I'm writing about this well after the fact I feel it necessary to sort of summarize to get everything in succinctly. More to come....

Welcome to Akron!!! (Sunday and Monday)

I've been at University of Akron for over a week now. For those that don't know, I accepted a research internship here for the summer and I will be here until August 1. With that being said, I thought I would use this blog to catalog my experience here; this is mostly for myself but I suppose my family and maybe some of my friends would be interested in it too. That was a bit tangential, back to what I was saying. I've been here since last Sunday. This is going to be an EXTENSIVE update.

Last Sunday I finished moving out of my apartment at JMU and hit the road, Akron or bust, at 6am. The drive was pretty uneventful to say the least but it wore me out so when I got to Akron I was relieved that I could just take a break and relax for a bit.... so I thought. I arrived at U of Akron at 1pm, an hour later than I had expected to (thank you Pennsylvania, for the endless construction on your turnpike!). When I got checked in, I was able to drop off some of my stuff in my room before the REU group started pining for lunch (myself included). We went to Subway (all but one of us) and got a chance to meet and bond. Our group consists of 6 people, 2 men and 4 women: Me, Bayoan, Tara, Alysha, Mollika, & Alexandria. Overall I think that we're a great group; we clicked pretty immediately and have gotten along well ever since. That night we had a cookout out the field station and got to continue getting to know each other as well as meet some of the mentors for the program; my mentor is Dr. Greg Smith, by my choice and his. I think by the end of that night the REU group, the students, really clicked and were comfortable with each other which was awesome. Returned to the dorm (apartment style, ftw) for some shut eye that evening; I don't know what it is but the first night sleeping in a new place is always so eerie for me, but I got through it.

Bright and early on Monday:

Debbie (our grad student/grad assistant person) brought us bagels from Einstein Bros. (nice!) and we trekked off to campus to get our student IDs (Zip cards), parking passes, lunch, etc; it was a pretty uneventful outing aside from Tara losing her driver's license (you'll soon see that this is going to be a common trend...). In the late afternoon, however, we went out to the field station/Bath Nature Preserve for another cookout (free food is always a good time) and an "orienteering event" (If you don't know what orienteering is don't feel bad, neither did I. Here you go.) Anyway, it turned into a more informal nature hike and we were really more concerned, as a group, with finding cool critters than finding the orienteering flag, marker things. We ended up finding a spotted salamander, painted turtle (that peed all over the place and on Alysha), a frog, and a garter snake (I caught this one) and also saw a couple different kinds of birds.

This is a good shot of the group, taken by Mollika so she's not pictured. I'm wearing the cowboy hat.

Here I am looking for the snake that I eventually caught (thanks to Tara spotting it)

Overall, it was a great time and these group outings have really done a lot to bring us together as a group and help us bond, which has been great because we've had a ton of fun.


Thats all for Sunday and Monday, I would go into more detail but this post is already sort of unmanageable. Keep an eye out for Tuesday-this past weekend.