Life on the Outer Coast

Monday, July 2
Another sunny day, at least through the afternoon. Some intense, rain this evening, but there is blue on the horizon.
Went along with various Forest Service folks and Tom and Kathy Ager to core one of the road acessible muskegs. Apparently, one purpose of the trip was to fill in a gap in the USGS Sitka data from approximately 8 to 11,000 years ago. The Jarvis St. muskeg was selected because it had more shrubs and sedges than open sphagnum areas. If I remember correctly, the more sphagnum, the soupier the core.
First he checked the muskeg with a approximately 3m probe for depth to bedrock or ash. Most of the spots he checked weren't quite deep enough, one sounded like he hit something mineral, but the other might have been wood. He did find a spot where the probe went in to the handle, so we retrieved the rest of the coring tools from the truck.
The first step was to dig a hole (about 12" in diameter) with a soil shovel to 50 cm. Next he used a sampling tool with a chamber that takes a half meter length of soil at a time. He pushed the tool down to the 50 cm mark on the pole, turned it 180 degrees to open the chamber and cut a sample, then pulled the tool out. Each core is a half circle with a diameter of about 4 inches. Between each sample, we washed the sampling end of the tool to prevent layer contamination. The cores were laid out on a tarp in order so they could be easily packed up in the proper order. He sampled down to 3 meters before hitting something hard. Next he attached the augur to cut through whatever was impeding progress. It was alot of roots, apparently after I left for class, they did hit what was probably an ash layer just below the roots. When I brought the class out to the site, Tom was carefully cutting the core into 5cm sections and packing each 5cm in sterile and labeled sample bags. Back in the lab each 5cm sample is sieved and chemically treated to remove all plant parts except the pollen. I believe that he said it takes a week for his technician to do 15 samples. If the lower layer is ash, the 3m core represented appromately 10,000 to 12,000 years of peat accumulation.
Other tasks were to make a complete list of the present muskeg flora. I spent alot of time figuring out which species of Carex were present until I asked the critical question about differentiating the pollen. Apparently to Cyperaceae is all that can be done. That said, I had already found Carex stylosa, C. pauciflora, C. pluriflora, and C. livida in the area of the core. I neglected to collect the Agrostis that was blooming, I vaguely remember that it was always the same species, but I can't for the life of me remember which one.
Also blooming were Vaccinium oxycoccus, Eleocharis palustris, Nuphar polysepalum, and Vaccinium uliginosum. The cloud berries are getting closer and the crowberries look relatively ripe. I shouldn't be surprised that they are ripe since it seems like a long time since I was collecting the flowers on Kruzof.

This morning saw the young hermit thrush again along the boardwalk. First I saw a parent with a large insect (cranefly?) perched on a branch just out of my reach, then the juvenile who had been safely hidden in a trailside bush, lost its nerve and flew out in just in front of me.

Identified the rust on Moneses as Chrysomyxa monesis. Apparently it uses Sitka spruce cones as an aecial host and Moneses uniflora as a telial host. I don't remember seeing any sign of rust between the cone scales on spruce, but once again I may have been oblivious.

Saw 6 marbled murrelets on the way to town at 8:30am and 13 on the way home at 6:30pm.