Today we headed down to Murphy's Bottom with Dr. Porter. We started out the day looking for salamanders in the creek. We had to turn over lots of rocks to look for them. We ended up finding 4 different species of salamanders out of a total of 9 species that have been found there. Dr. Porter said the previous night's rain may have made our searching difficult. Salamanders are an indicator of good water quality because they can only live in non-polluted areas of water. We also saw numerous fossils that were millions of years old. Some of the fossils were made from water washing over the rock and the item remaining instead of going away, which left the fossil. We also saw toads (American toad), crawfish, slugs, millipedes, and centipedes. We also learned a lot about plants, especially what poison ivy looks like. We learned about native plants. We learned that invasive species can come into an area and completely take over the land because they do not have any natural predators. This can make it nearly impossible for the native plants to survive. Dr. Porter explained how they are trying to restore native plants and are trying to eliminate some of the invasive species using various techniques such as herbicides. Sometimes, invasive species can be helpful. For example, one of the plants has berries in the fall that attract wildlife, such as black bears, to the area. There were also plants with interesting scents. The spice bush smelled like lemon and another one smelled nutty, kind of like peanut butter or Cheerios.
After lunch, we headed down to a lake that is only separated from the Allegheny River by a small band of trees. This lake should be connected to the Allegheny River within the next two years. This lake was made after gravel was removed to be used in products such as concrete. The place we stood would have been 35 feet underground before all this sediment was removed. We headed into the extremely muddy lake. Because it would be a huge, nearly impossible project to count all the plants found in the lake, we used quadrants to count the plants and get a representative sample of the plants found in the lake. We took two different samples from different locations. First, we roped off the area where we were going to count. Then, we picked all the plants in this area. Then we sorted the plants and put them in bags. We also took the core sample to get a sample of the mud. Under the water lilies, more nyas was growing because it requires less sunlight. The spread of plants illustrates a struggle for life that occurs within the 20-acre in diameter lake. The phosphate and nitrate cycles play an important role in the lake. We will work with these samples tomorrow in the lab.
The goal of connecting the lake to the river is to introduce new species into the lake. For example, the paddlefish was extirpated from Pennsylvania and could possibly be reintroduced. This would be an example of restoring a native species.
We all got extremely muddy today. We sunk in the mud. Some people got stuck in mud up to their hips. There were holes all over!
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