DEER REVISITING

Chris Noble and Mary Ann Martello will visit toward the end of June 2018 for a walk in the woods at ESGR to remember the days when they were part of a team monitoring the movements and behavior of the ESGR deer herd.  Here is a picture of them, back then.  Stay tuned to News at the ESGR for news of their visit.

From Mary: A friend had been living on the Reserve collecting deer research and needed to find someone to continue the work.  My husband and I were living in Chicago, and need to find a place where we could think about what we wanted our next step to be.  We moved from having 100,000 people as neighbors, to having 2 turtle people living next door.  
The deer had radio collars and we had to use a listening device to triangulate their locations.  We had to learn to slow down and listen carefully, which easily transferred over to our own lives.  We took the time to notice all the beauty the Reserve had to offer – the deer playing in the fields, cross county skiing by the light of the moon – appreciating what was right in front of us.
The time on the Reserve allowed us to hit a pause button, and rethink what really mattered.  Our path has been anything but a straight line, but as with a good walk in the woods, something exciting is usually waiting around the next bend.

MYCOLOGY!

This fall (2017), the EEB468 Biology of Fungi class will be visiting the ESGR for two days of mushroom foraying. As one of the assignments, students are asked to collect, identify, and preserve 15 or more fungal specimens. Having an untouched forest to hunt is an amazing resource for UM students and faculty, and the proximity to campus is a major plus. The weekend field trip is a great bonding experience for the students, and it gives them time to really disconnect with the hectic pace on central campus and sit in front of a scope, field guides and a pile of mushrooms and lose themselves in the amazing biodiversity that we have in Michigan.

–Associate Professor Timothy James

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– SOIL SAMPLING –

On September 23, 2017 the ESGR will host the first visit of U of M’s EARTH 442 – Earth Surface Processes and Soils, led by Nathan Sheldon of the Earth And Environmental Sciences Department. The course will do microsampling of various forest and bog habitats for the purpose of determining the correspondence between standing vegetation and C, N, and C-isotopic compositions. The course will also highlight methods for sampling soils in a non-destructive way, sampling conductivity, and various commonly collected soil characteristics. The ESGR will be provided with data from their analysis on georeferenced soil sites.   Win Win!