Becoming Botanists For a Day

     "Botany,-the science of the vegetable kingdom, is one of the most attractive, most useful, and most extensive departments of human knowledge.  It is, above every other, the science of beauty" (Samuel Griswold Goodrich).  This quote accurately describes our third day at the Southwestern Research Station.  We learned the importance and relevancy of botany in not only our days doing field research, but our daily lives.  Living in New York City, we are surrounded by more buildings than trees, so they aren't major parts of our days.  We know the trees are there, but never care to observe them or recognize what they are.  Being in Arizona for three days so far has showed us the variation in plant and tree species as you go from desert to dense forests.  I think we were too mesmerized by the insanely beautiful mountains to even look at the difference in vegetation on our way here.  However, today we became botanists and our viewpoints on trees were forever changed.

     The day began with an activity set up by our teachers to write ideas and questions about the following categories: Owl Research and Fieldwork, Teamwork, and Classroom Connections.  This led to discussions on what our teamwork should be like in the field and how what we have learned in these short few days connects to either our past or present science classes.  We discussed topics like aerodynamics of the owls and how that relates to the curriculum of physics, the importance of good communication and trust in teamwork, and how often data we collect is uploaded.  It was interesting to hear the different ideas some of us had, but also how similar we thought for many things.

     After the morning activity, we learned about how UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) works and its use in the field.  When we collect cavity data for specific locations, the northing and easting are extremely important.  They can be found using the GPS devices we have been using. We moved onto identifying trees based on the samples of leaves and branches we collected, using books about plant species.  This took up a lot of our afternoon because of the difficulty we had trying to match the descriptions or pictures of trees to the samples.  Before even starting, we went over the difference between single and cluster needles and the types of leaves, like simple, compound, alternate, and opposite.  We learned the different types of trees such as oaks, conifers, and sycamores.  Overall this was a fun and challenging experience that I know I will take with me outside of the field research this week.  I think it's safe to say none of us will be able to look at trees the same way again.