A full day of education!

Yesterday The Barrington Navigators received a lesson in coring trees from Lara. Our first tree was a red maple at Katherine's site and proved to be one of the more difficult trees. Everyone pitched in to try to get the sample out of the tree. Red maples are a hardwood and are generally difficult to core. In contrast, white pines are a soft wood and very easy to core.



Here is the coring tool we used.



Here is Lara demonstrating how to core.


Johanna is using her big strong muscles.


Elaina looks very happy to be helping out with the red maple.


Katie is in the cellar hole of the homestead coring a red maple. We are coring this tree and a white pine in the cellar hole to try to understand the history of the site, and how long ago the structure disappeared creating an open area for these trees to grow.


Katherine is coring a coppiced, red maple at her site. We took three different core samples to try to determine if the five trunks all sprouted from the same stump.


Steph is working really hard to get the sample out of the coring tool. You go girl!


After the coring lesson our group dispersed to the five sites on our walking tour. Katie and Steph set vegetation plots at the cemetery and homestead to compare tree populations. Johanna and Elaina helped Katherine set her vegetation plot to examine the diversity and age continuity of the trees.

When we returned to campus we received a lesson in web design from Barbara Locke. Thanks Barbara! We are planning on uploading pictures and data onto our new website tomorrow.

That's all for now.