Instead of having class on Mondays, student here at the Smithsonian-Mason School of Conservation are required to take part in a practicum. In essence it is an abbreviated internship. My practicum assignment is with the Ecology Office here at SCBI helping collect data for a long-term project on acorn production. Four of the forest sampling plots are in the Shenandoah National Park, so this week we headed there to collect some acorns.
Acorns are the main source of food in the winter for most mammal species in eastern deciduous forests. Therefore a low acorn crop can devastate populations. Unfortunately acorn crops are extremely variable and hard to predict. The purpose of collecting the acorns is to evaluate the annual acorn crop of the forest in this region. They’ve been collecting the same data for about thirty years now, which makes the dataset very valuable.
The sampling procedures are theoretically very simple. A standard sized rectangle of forest is fenced in. Acorn traps are placed a specific distance apart in rows through the site. The acorn traps are a simple metal basket made out of hardware cloth. As acorns fall from the trees, the trap captures them. We regularly empty the traps, and collect data on how many acorns a given area is producing.
While the procedure seems simple enough, it takes a bit of practice to get down. It requires a lot of patience to find all of the traps. They are pretty inconspicuous and the deer tend to eat the flagging tape that is meant to make them easier to find. One thing that was particularly frustrating was that the oak trees aren’t producing very much this year, so many traps were empty and my efforts felt fruitless.
Because none of us had a lot of experience we were only able to finish three of the four plots before it started to get dark. What I learned is that experience is an extremely valuable thing to have. The plan seemed simple enough, but a lack of know-how made it a pretty tough task. I also learned that the SNP has some killer blackberry milkshakes.