Green Hills: Botanical Research

This week we laid out study plots at Green Hills Preserve for plant community surveys. We are excited that former Natural Lands Trust board member Dr. Ann Rhoads will be conducting plant inventories in a series of plots in a wetland at Green Hills (she is also the recent Senior Scientist in Botany at Morris Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania and author, with Tim Block, of The Plants of Pennsylvania).

With GIS analyst Megan Boatright (above) Ann is laying out randomized quadrats along three transects according to a research protocol developed by ecologist (and also NLT board member) Dr. Roger Latham. The layout is designed to capture sites at various elevations (and therefore hydrology) in the wetland while still ensuring sites are randomly chosen. We can verify the randomness of the sites since some were located in thorny thickets of raspberry that no one would otherwise choose to enter.

The rebar will be left in place so that Ann can revisit each quadrat through the season and over multiple years to track community changes. As with other research projects we ask that visitors not disturb the study site or markers.

Posted by Daniel Barringer on March 30, 2013.