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Botany blitz and knowledge celebration

Eighteen students officially became wetland ecologists today! Completing a semester-long, field-intensive course in 3 weeks, these students have worked and played extremely hard. I am impressed by their perseverance, dedication, and engagement; furthermore, they have been an absolutely super fun group to work with. I have sincerely enjoyed getting to know them all, and I wish them all the best of…

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Trail cameras at Pymatuning Creek Marsh and Hartstown Swamp

This year’s wetland ecology class at Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology added a few more wetland inhabitants to the trail-camera highlights video. Can you identify them all?

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Integration through delineation

The PLE wetlanders began the day by learning about wetland restoration and wetland-environment feedbacks. After a few in-class challenges about carbon storage and methane emissions from wetlands, the students then examined their macroinvertebrate collections from yesterday’s sampling at Pymatuning Creek Marsh. The diversity was extremely high, although there were a few groans about the leeches.…

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From Bogs to Bugs: Macroinvertebrates of the Marsh

By Tea Treherne and Anthony Bucci, PLE Wetlanders After the long weekend, it’s safe to say we were all eager to begin our final week of wetlanding at PLE. Before we could get started, Bob guided us all through the midterm exam. Despite a few road bumps (namely ecosystem services and the collective confusion about what an idealized hydrograph might look like), it seems like our class is set up to…

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Seeds through time

By Addie and Mina, PLE Wetlanders Despite extreme physical exertion in the bog yesterday, Bob jumped out of his night-time waders to wake us up with highly animated morning lectures on peatland paleoenvironmental archives and wetland change over time. Excitingly, he discussed his own research examining how vast datasets on modern communities of testate amoebae (protists) in peatlands can be used…

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Bob’s Bog Burritos

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Midterms and Mosquitos

By Summer and Jas, PLE Wetlanders And the dreaded day arrives… MIDTERM DAY!!!! After long nights of studying, we took our first exam of the course, which included an in-class portion as well as a visit to a few nearby sites for plant identification and wetland classification. On our way back, we drove through an intense thunderstorm and this was followed by a much-needed lunch hour. Describing…

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Hydrophytes, freshwater marshes, and sampling submerged vegetation

The PLE wetlanders had a relatively short day today, going over biotic adaptations to the wetland environment and discussing freshwater marsh ecology in the morning. In the afternoon, our awesome TA, Jason Aguirre, led us through a short activity sampling submerged aquatic vegetation. The students has the remainder of the afternoon to study for their midterm….which is tomorrow morning.

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Canoeing the Pymatuning wetlands

By Ashley and Sara, PLE wetlanders Today, the wetlanders suited up in life vests and loaded into canoes first thing in the morning and headed out to explore the Pymatuning Reservoir. We paddled straight for the canal where we observed many new wetland plants including white water lilies, curly pondweed, water lotus, and eurasian watermilfoil, as well as refreshed our memories on some of the…

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The (poison) sumac scaries

by Sophie and Isha, PLE wetlanders Data collection in the rain. On day five of wetland ecology at PLE we continued learning about nutrient cycling, focusing on how phosphorus cycling in wetlands works. We learned about the organic pool and how all of the nutrients that are cycled are available for use again through the process of mineralization. We then practiced using our summary sheets of the…

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Are we going "into" the swamp today?

by Kelly and Heather, PLE Wetlanders Touring the swamp.             As we near the end of the first week of Wetland Ecology, we began our day by discussing hydrology and biogeochemistry. If you don’t know what these things are, neither did we. To be fair we’re still working on it, but we’re getting there! The hydrology of a wetland informs its biogeochemistry, and vice versa; therefore, it is…

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More marshing

By Jenna and Rachel, PLE Wetlanders “After” Pymatuning Creek Marsh. On the third day of Wetland Ecology class, we began by learning about hydrology and how this important concept shapes wetland structure and function. Specifically, we looked at how differences in water sources, velocity, and hydroperiods influence wetlands.. Then, we discussed wetland water budgets, which consider the total…

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Intro to Marshing

By Jas and Sam, PLE Wetlanders The “Before” Picture of the PLE Wetlanders. Day two of Wetland Ecology finds our class mar(sh)ing straight into core ideas of wetland management. We first learned about the major classification systems for wetlands used in North America. From Cowardin et al. to functional classification systems, we discussed the different characteristics of wetlands (form,…

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Three-weeks of wetlanding

Today was the first day of a wetland ecology course at Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology in western Pennsylvania. Eighteen brave students entered the fascinating and fun world of wetlands, and in three intensive weeks they will emerge with a semester’s worth of wetlands knowledge. I am looking forward to getting to know this group of students. They seem super excited to learn about and experience…

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Botany-Blitz at Kingsville Swamp

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Integration through delineation

The PLE wetlanders are now in the home stretch of the course, and have been working hard on their plant collections, several assignments, and preparing for Friday’s final celebration of knowledge. We started the day with the final lecture of the course, which was focused on the role that wetlands play in the broader earth system particularly with respect to nitrogen and carbon cycling. The…

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Sampling macroinvertebrates

Student blog post by Toby Xu After a 3-day weekend, the PLE wetlanders finally got back to their wetland journey. Although the power went out this morning at the housing site, making the morning preparations challenging, we were still very excited about today’s field activities. During a break in the morning lecture, several of us caught a dragonfly that accidentally broke into our classroom –…