I left Angleton at 0500 for the Trinity NWR HQ and arrived
about 0650, not far from the little town of Moss Hill. Biologist Laurie Lomas and her field
tech, Catharine (Cat) who was just out of high school. They had the UTV loaded and ready to go. We left for the monitoring unit 15 minutes
later. I followed in trace for about 15
minutes where we pulled off the side of Hwy 105 W onto an old, partially
asphalt road to a gated bridge over a creek where we rode into the unit. This was a forested unit much like any
representing most areas of east Texas near the Big Thicket. We were monitoring 40 sites where Laurie
conducted her bird counts and this vegetation monitoring will be used in the data to analyze populations of migrant and resident birds .
And the rains kept a'coming.
We were wet immediately and stayed that way for the next 3 days in
the field. If it wasn’t for Write in the Rain paper there would be
no way we could document the vegetation at every transect. Pencil or Pen, it worked nearly flawlessly in
the torrential rains. Temperatures in
the 80’s and walking kept us from hypothermia.
In short, this is how the monitoring went:
Thomas:
FRPE, section 1, section 3. FRPE
was the botanical code for Green Ash (Fraxinus
pennsylvannica), section 1 indicated a diameter of 0-5 cm, section 3
indicated 2-12 m height.
Laurie:
Smilax species, RUTR? Smilax
is green briar, RUTR is the botanical code for dewberry (Rubus trivalis).
Cat was my transcriber.
I think we peaked the Bell Curve at 75 species. Cherokee sedge was the dominant ground
species. Deciduous holly, green ash, parsley hawthorn and Post and Texas oaks
were the dominant trees.
The rains never let up for long over the next 3 days. Day 1-2 was 9+ hours and Day 3 was 6+. Everything and anything out there stung, bit,
grabbed, pulled and stuck you. We wore
Carthart trousers which offset most thorns and prickles but it was like walking
with wet canvas around your legs.
Eventually that hard canvas starting rubbing holes in your skin. Each site had 4, 46 meter transect lines with 4, 3x10 meter
blocks to identify the species within them.
It looks like I’ll do this again next week.
