Miami has 100s of acres of beautiful Natural Areas which lend themselves to research projects! (Quicktime movie~4 mb). On the same walk, I spotted my first garter snake of the spring! In another 1 mb quicktime movie, a pair of mallard ducks lands in Harkers Run in Bachelor Woods
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Introduction
Bachelor Reserve is a perfect example of ecological succession. From the late 1930Õs and on, portions of the Bachelor Reserve were utilized by farmers for grazing cattle and for growing crops. Since then the barriers that were chosen for crops moved and some areas of the reserve were Òlet go.Ó When a portion of land is Òlet goÓ it is no longer tilled, grazed, or utilized for agriculture in any way. A portion of land is Òlet goÓ because of a sale of land or possibly an occupational change of the owner. Essentially what results over time is what would have happened had man not interfered in the first place; a forest is born. All of the sections that we will be studying at HarkerÕs Run were primarily forest before the 1930Õs. Farmers utilized these sections of land in the past for agriculture and unknowingly caused a disturbance in the species diversity of invertebrates. By removing many of the trees that many invertebrate species rely on, farmers indirectly eradicated many if not all of the insects that relied on them. Our mission is to find out if there is a correlation between the diversity of invertebrates in the leaf litter and the amount of time the land has had to regenerate at HarkerÕs Run. We hypothesize that the amount of diversity will have a positive correlation with the amount of time the area has had to recover. We also think that we will find more invertebrate diversity within the areas that have had the most time to regenerate. We plan on providing certifiable evidence about the correlation between species diversity and forest regeneration periods.
This is interesting to us because we are learning how the size of an ecosystem impacts the species diversity found there. The Song of the Dodo by David Quammen has introduced the idea of island biogeography and shown how larger islands in general have more species and that older islands often have more diversity. The closest thing to an island chain near Oxford, Ohio that we have found to study is The Joseph M. Bachelor Reserve. We want to try and prove that the areas with the earliest succession in the reserve show the most diversity among invertebrates. Although this area is not divided by ocean we can think of the reserve as a series of islands because over the past 100 years different areas have been segmented of and used for different things Ð farming, grazing, agriculture, and let go. In addition it shows us that Miami University is concerned with protecting nature.
Background Information
Bachelor reserve and the surrounding areas have over the years gone through several years of natural succession. Succession, according to Mules, is defined as Òthe gradual change in plant and animal communities in an area following disturbance or the creation of new substrate.Ó In this case the disturbance was the conversion of temperate woodland into farmland. The natural progression from farmland to deciduous forest is called secondary succession. We are going to observe different levels of succession in three areas around Bachelor reserve through observations of insect diversity in the leaf litter. The diversity of all organisms in a community is essential to the stability of that community. At this time it is impossible to predict the abundance and types of insects we will see without having taken any samples. The insects that we will gather will all be examples of organisms that colonized the areas in Bachelor Reserve during the early stages of succession and were able to survive and reproduce. Many of the invertebrates we are going to find at Bachelor reserve will be arthropods. Arthropods are invertebrates with jointed legs such as beetles, ants, spiders, mites, and centipedes. We could possibly find any number of these organisms in our samples taken at Bachelor Reserve. ÊArthropods are beneficial to the soil and overall ecosystem of the forest because the cycle nutrients for plants, bacteria and other fungi. In terms of succession the arthropods are important because they feed on bacteria that release nutrients into the soil. When the arthropods consume the dominant bacteria it allows other soil bacteria to take itÕs place thus increasing the amount of organisms breaking down organic matter in the soil. This process helps prepare soil that was once farmland, sapped of its nutrients by the crops, to become more hospitable for plant succession and the re-establishment of the temperate woodland ecosystem. Early in our experiment we will provide background information about the organisms that we will be studying. We will utilize our samples to guide our research of invertebrates.
Bachelor Reserve
We plan to look at succession and its relationship with species diversity in a protected landscape owned by Miami University. The Joseph M. Bachelor Reserve, which is 661 acre area just east of Oxford, between state route 73 and Bonham Rd. This patch of land has a very important history. Joseph M. Bachelor was an English professor at Miami from 1972 through 1946. His home was the Bachelor Estate and accounted for 400 acres of what is now Bachelor Reserve. When he died, Professor Bachelor, left all the lands and funds associated with the estate to Miami University. In 1947, when Miami acquired the land, 50% was being farmed and 20% grazed. Over the years Miami has acquired more land and added to the reserve. The land has had many uses and therefore gone through many changes. Human disturbances, like the removal of existing plants to turn a field into a cropland or an agricultural grazing land fragment the landscape. Therefore Bachelor Reserve can be thought of as many little islands. The fact that different patches of the land has been used for different things over the past 100 years or more creates many little individual ecosystems within one. The changes have been recorded since 1938 until the present. Past research has been done in this area and a Landscape Guide, by a Miami University Undergraduate Summer ScholarÕs Project in 1995, by Lori M. Gramlich, will be a very important tool for us. She has divided the reserve into 10 scenes and 2 Ecotones. We will be using scene 1 and 4 of hers and one we have selected ourselves.
"Scene 1" is a Floodplain Forest. The forest showÕs the most successional change we suspect we will find the most invertebrate diversity here, because it hasnÕt been grazed or farmed since 1938. The major disturbance in this area would be flooding and changes in the path of HarkerÕs Run (a stream bed). There is evidence that the area has been a mature forest since at least 1938 and the fact that there is a presence of sycamores and other older trees, shows that no cutting or other drastic human disturbances have taken place. The soils in this area change from sand to clay as the distance from the bank of the stream increases. The vegetation in this area can be clearly divided into a canopy, sub canopy, and herb layer. The canopy layer is mostly composed of sycamores, while the sub canopy trees are smaller and mostly Hackberry, elm, and box elder. The area receives an abundant amount of light for a forest area and therefore has a successful herb layer. This layer is made up of native species such as Miami mist, big-leaf waterleaf, maple-leaf waterleaf and a competing exotic herb garlic mustard.
"Scene 4" is a Young Floodplain Forest. It is at the base of a deciduous forest slope. Older forest completely surrounds the young forest and the young forestÕs boundaries are marked by fence lines. There is a low backwater area to provide moisture to the soils. The soil texture here is much finer than that found in Scene 1. A one-year leaf litter layer covers the forest floor from woody debris of the older trees. The dominant plants in this area are shrubs and saplings. The dominant saplings are young black and sugar maples, while the most abundant shrubs are Amur and honeysuckle. There are some older trees similar to those found in scene 1 like: Elm, sycamore, and box elders. However there is a big difference between scenes 1 and 4. The forest found in scene 4 is less than 30 years old. Even the largest sycamores are smaller then the smallest ones found at scene 1. The young forest was farmed through 1968 as part of a plan to farm the bottomlands, by 1976 the land was no longer used for farming and succession began. In 1983 the scene was classified as a young forest. There is evidence that farming did not exhaust the nutrients in the soil since a young forest has generated so quickly. We suspect this scene will have a middle amount of invertebrate diversity compared to our other two islands.
Our "own" scene is a field used for farming. It is situated about 1 mile into the reserve and found to the west between scenes 1 and 2 (as mapped out on the walking tour). The farmland was used for a soybean crop this past year and appears to have been used for corn the year before. The soybean is most likely part of a crop rotation in order to save the soil from nutrient loss and wind erosion. We will expect to find the least invertebrate diversity here because there has been no succession recently and there is little plant diversity here.
Our experiment ties into a variety of larger themes such as succession, diversity, and human impact on habitat. If we were to study further we would find that these subjects may be correlated in a way to depict how humans have affected natural ecosystems. On the positive side Miami seems to have done its part in trying to preserve the area of land designated presently as the Bachelor Reserve. Conversely, this landscape was previously impacted by humans for agricultural purposes. Is it true that this reserve is saving this land from ecosystem decay? Humans have turned a forest into farmland and farmland back into forest. Are we solving a problem or are we, as Quammen implies, making a futile attempt to reconnect the torn patches of nature's quilt?
Methods:
On three separate occasions we will obtain data form our three sites at Bachelor Reserve. At site one make a 1/2m by .26m transect. Shovel the leaf litter, within the boundaries of the transect, and place into trash bags. Repeat this process two more times at different locations within site one. Repeat the entire process for cites two and three.Ê
After gathering the bags of leaf litter return to the lab. Set up a Burlese funnel by a piece of wire screen in the bottom of a funnel (or milk jug) to support the soil. Half fill the funnel with the leaf litter obtained at a particular transect. Place the receptacle filled with ethyl alcohol under the funnel. Mount the light bulb about 4 inches over the leaf litter to drive the organisms out of the soil and into the cup. Any organisms in the leaf litter will crawl through the screen and fall into the ethyl alcohol, thus being preserved. Pour the alcohol into a dish and examine the organisms. Repeat the process for all of the leaf litter samples.Record data and any observations on the data table. After taking samples at all the sites over three different outings compare data and draw inferences.
Timeline
Within the next 2 weeks: Designate specific test sites and locate testing equipment.
Weekly meetings: Decided weekly
Biweekly meetings: Sunday afternoons, for testing.
Sources:
1. Kaufman, D. and C. Franz. 1996. Biosphere 2000. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Co., Dubuque, Iowa.
This is our source of ecological terms and also referrence.
2. Gramlich, Lori M. A Landscape Guide to the Bachelor Reserve.. 1998. Miami University.
This will serve as our guide to the Bachelor Reserve. It also has already outlined the plant life and succession timeline for us.
3. Zimmerman, Deborah M. Examination of mechanisms of early old-field succession in southwestern Ohio. 1983. Thesis (M. En.)--Miami University, Institute of Environmental Sciences.
Provides an example of previous successional experiments.
4. Luken, James O. 1990. Directing Ecological Succession. Chapman and Hall, New Dubuque, Iowa.
More on succession.
5. Geography Education Standards Project. 1994. Geography for Life, National Geography Standards 1994. National Geographic Research and Exploration, Washington, D.C.
6. Molles, Manuel C., Ecology: Concepts and Application. McGraw-Hill. 2002.
7. Quammen, David. The Song of the Dodo. Touchstone. New York. 1996.
8. Siemann, Evan and Haarstad, John. "Insect Species Diversity, Abundance, and Body-size Relationships." Nature. Apr. 1996. Vol 380: pp. 704-706.
9. Kishbaugh, Michael and Yocom, Daniel. "The Impact of Habitat Fragmentation of Arthropod Biodiversity. American Biology Teacher. June 2000. Vol 62: pp. 414-420.
10. Tugel, A.J., A.M. Lewandowski, eds. (February 2001 -- last update). Soil Biology Primer [online]. Available: www.statlab.iastate.edu/survey/SQI/soil_biology_primer.htm [access date].
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