Throughout the past week, our class has been working on planning and conducting independent research projects. I chose to tackle the question of how climate change will affect the vegetation on Pitt’s Spring Creek Preserve. My overarching hypothesis is “if the changing climate of the southeastern Wyoming region leads to less snowpack accumulation, then the…
Category: Wyoming Spring Creek Field Studies
Wyoming Spring Creek: A Tale of Two Wetlands
One of the reasons I decided to apply to the Spring Creek Field Studies Program was to learn more deeply about how Earth systems interact to shape the world we see in front of us. Over the first half of the course, I was fascinated by the different plant communities we saw on the preserve…
Wyoming Spring Creek – Macroinvertebrates in Different Environments
My research project involves the lives of macroinvertebrates and how the richness and abundance of them changes as various stream conditions change. I’ve had some experience in the past kick-netting streams, identifying macros, and teaching elementary school kids about stream health, so I was very excited to get to work in the water to study…
Plants, Lizards, and Ants
My independent project was focused on Short Horned Lizards and the microhabitats that they live in. These small lizards have limited home ranges that often span less than 100 meters. Short Horned Lizards on the property appear to cluster around certain areas, being notably absent across wide stretches of land. My question, then, was: are…
Wyoming Week 4: Economic Change in the Land of Tradition
Our time in Wyoming culminates in an independent research project that we design around any topic we are interested in: geology, ecology, climate science, anthropology, urban design, art, economics, and more. The project simply has to focus on the natural or human environment in Wyoming. For my project, I wanted to answer questions I had…
Wyoming Spring Creek: Climate Change and Water Conservation
If you ever ask what Wyoming’s most precious natural resource is you will predictably be answered by a chorus of responses citing its wealth of oil, coal, and natural gas stores, but in truth its most precious resource is water. One look around the semi-arid landscape and any doubt of what governs life out west…
A Grazing Survey of the Spring Creek Preserve
If it’s grassy, graze it. That’s the philosophy in Southeast Wyoming, where ranches span hundreds of thousands of acres and permits allow livestock to roam on public lands, too. Range management is an essential tool of responsible stewards – ranchers aim to maximize the agricultural productivity of the land while also protecting its biodiversity so…
Wyoming Spring Creek – Carbon Sequestration -Cretaceous to Now
When I was younger, I remember waking up early on a cold January morning, anxiously waiting to see if I would have a snow day or not. As I was not heavily reliant on coffee yet, I would sit with hot chocolate in hand by the light of our Christmas tree we had yet to…
Wyoming Spring Creek Week 4: Independent Project
My independent project is investigating how landscape affects sound. More specifically, I am researching how altitude, temperature, wind, medium, and material manipulate sound, and applying that research to the Spring Creek Preserve. During my time on the preserve, many people, including myself, noticed how unpredictable sound travelled within it. For example, cows a quarter mile…
Ecological Research in the Medicine Bow National Forest
For my independent research project in the Wyoming Spring Creek program, I chose to examine riparian and forest ecology in a montane environment. I wanted to see if proximity to a stream affects plant species diversity, depth of duff (dead plant material and leaf litter), and invertebrate activity. My hypothesis is that plant communities proximal…