Nottingham County Park Activity Report
for 29th May 2015

Participants: Jay Gregg, NCP (grassland maintenance) Michelle Hoover, NCP (grassland maintenance) Tracy Raymond, FSLSB volunteer (grassland maintenance) David Ross, FSLSB volunteer (grassland maintenance) Rachel Spigler, researcher (education) Randy Stark, FSLSB/TNC volunteer (grassland maintenance) Mike Waltz, FSLSB volunteer (grassland maintenance) Bill Whittaker, FSLSB volunteer (grassland maintenance)

Major Accomplishments:

  • Cleared greenbrier and removed numerous cedars on savannah at intersection of Buck Trail and Fire Break 9.
  • Established a connection between primary site and next savannah to the west along Buck Trail
  • Rachel Spigler provided a lunch-time overview of her research

Full report: The group gathered (everyone had arrived by 9am) in the parking area by the Park Office. First time attender Randy completed TNC volunteer form; all other volunteers completed our draft FSLSB/PPFF hybrid form (PPFF wants liability signature for each activity). We drove as a caravan to McPherson Lake, loaded our tools into NCP Gator, and walked up to the site (about 20 minutes). We were at work by 9:45.

Savannah Maintenance Report: The core of the site is in excellent shape. Prairie dropseed seemed to be dominant. A lovely scattering of what I think is a ragwort was the dominant bloom, with a number of sundrop. In protected edges, I saw chickweed The site starts as grassland on either side of Buck Trail, but then becomes savannah as there are a number of well established pitch pines in place. We found a scattering of greenbriar and small cedars in the core, but concentrated our efforts on pushing back a dense collection of cedars and greenbriar pushing in at the edges. It is relatively easy to see a distinction between areas where the greenbriar is encroaching on grassland and areas where the greenbriar has squeezed out any understory vegetation. To avoid exacerbating tensions between the Park and the neighbor to the S, we restricted our work to the north side of Buck.

Mike Walz devoted most of his time to taking out the larger cedars and cutting up some fallen trees). David Ross tackled the edge green briar with the brush wacker. Randy Stark and David used the large weed wrench on middling to small cedars. The rest of the crew stuck to loppers and hauling. Jay wanted us to get as much debris as possible out to the trail for his crew to haul away. The pile of cedars ended up being quite impressive.

We found and widened a connection at the north end of the savannah to the grassland/savannah immediately to the west along Buck Trail. Jay has in mind bringing in the ambusher to clear out the wall of vegetation that has come between these two areas.

We paused for lunch just before noon and then put in another hour or work thereafter.

We were driving away from the McPherson Lake parking lot by 2pm.

Rachel’s Research: Last summer, Rachel Spigler conducted research at this site on the effects of pollinators and other environmental factors on the reproduction of sabatia angularis (rosepink). We scheduled work at this site only after consulting with her. She visited the Park this day to remove flags from last year’s research and begin the process of identifying plants coming up this year. (The blooming season this year should be between early July and early August; and she plans to have a team of research assistants monitoring the site.) Over lunch she described the research.

Reporter: David Ross