Prairie+Management+2010

=Ames High Prairie Management - 2010=

__**11/2/2010**__ Ames High Students collected seed from areas 2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E. The seed was stored in a cooler in the green shed for the winter.

The Friends of Ames High Prairie volunteer group collected seed from all of area 1. The seed was stored in a cooler in the green shed for the winter.
 * __Late October 2010__**

Brandon Price and Mike Todd met on Thursday July 15th to work on the prairie. They pulled some Queen Anne's Lace from section 1E and the path at the top of section 9 and got GPS coordinates for the New Jersey Tea plant in section 1B, and one Compass Plant in section 1A. I will post them soon.
 * __7/15/2010__**

__**7/8/2010**__ A couple of Ames High School students (Kyle Albers and TC Ringgenberg) and Mike Todd spent the morning working with The Nature Conservancy's Anna Beal intern crew. They cut out stumps in sections 3A and 3E in preparation for Story County Conservation to mow the Buckthorn in sections 3A-3E. They also girdled trees in sections 6 and 7 that border section 2. Here is one of the trained Anna Beal interns girdling a tree. The girdle is two parallel cuts through bark and the living layers of the tree; the trees transportation system is severed and the tree eventually dies. This is one way to slowly reclaim area of the preserve that was once prairie. Advantages of girdling include: less disturbance than cutting the tree down, dead trees that are standing are called snags and provide habitat for many animals, safer for people girdling vs. felling the trees, and the death of the tree may take a couple of years and this would allow the prairie to slowly grow back into the area.

Here is a tree after the cuts have been made and the cut layers of tree have been removed:

Here is TC and an Anna Beal intern removing a stump with a large chainsaw:

A couple of Ames High School students (Luke Swalla and Cole Rutherford) and Mike Todd wore long sleeves and pulled out all the Wild Parsnip they could find in sections 1A-1D of the prairie. They also cut down the Canada Thistle in section 3A.
 * __7/1/2010__**[[image:Luke_and_Cole_Parsnip.jpg width="256" height="192" align="right"]]


 * __6/14, 6/15, and 6/17/2010__**

During our prairie walk through on June 10th we noticed a large patch of Musk Thistles in section 1B (see map) - this was the same area in which the Nature Conservancy had some brush cleared last summer. I volunteered to remove all the flowers from the prairie before they went to seed and chop down the rest of the stalks. Wew! There were more thistles there than I thought.

Volunteers: Mike Todd, Andrea Todd, Kyle Albers, Tad Steinberger, Justin Masteller, T.C. Ringgenberg, Logan Strong.

Musk Thistles before we started working.

Volunteers hard at work.



The days were hot and humid and we wouldn't have survived without the water!

Picture taken after all the Musk Thistles were cleared.

__**6/10/2010**__ During an Ames High Prairie Management Committee meeting we pulled some Yellow Sweet Clover and a bunch of Wild Parsnip from sections 1A-1D.