On a beautiful 2019 fall day, thirty-seven fourth and fifth grade students at Muddy Creek Charter School visited HJ Andrews Experimental Forest, asking questions. “How do you report colored leaves, green leaves are a color too?” the young scientist asks.
The highlight of this trip is working with researcher Mark Schulze, their scientist partner with Oregon Season Tracker and our tour guide for the visit. Mark welcomes them with a video where they get eye to eye with a rough skinned newt and learn about some of the Andrews long-term science work. They watched time-lapse phenology data from a high elevation meadow at the Forest, actually four years of video data running concurrently on the screen. As the video quickly cycles through, we could see the vast variation in phenology timing (and snow pack) from year to year. It was easy to follow the snowpack, but catching the phenology changes takes a practiced eye! Just like learning to take phenology data at their school grounds.
Next out to the field, but not before everyone was fitted with hard hats for safety in the forest! First stop, the headquarters MET weather station to view some of the multitude of instruments researchers use to measure precipitation and the pollution that washes in with the rain. We learned after the 2011 Japan Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown, they actually measured some radioactive fallout here. Overall, we learned that the Andrews forest MET station has some of the cleanest air quality in the entire MET network!
Next we are off to the Discovery Trail with clipboards and data sheets to take phenology observations on vine maple, a priority species at both the school and the Andrews. Experienced students pair up with newcomers to confer on their data. Researcher Mark helped make the connections from the written phenophase descriptions to what they were actually seeing on the trees. While collecting data students hike a trail dwarfed by 500-year-old trees and have a treasure hunt spotting a variety of colored mushrooms. We count eight different colors of mushrooms, including orange, purple and bright green!
Students later wrote reflections on the day; about meeting the “best researcher ever”, wearing hard hats, learning about spots on leaves, and a getting to see a gigantic landslide “Debris-Flow Flume” simulator. You can see it too at this website https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2007/1315/
