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Blog Post 1: Observations of my chosen area.

The area I chose for my research project is my local dog park in Victoria’s View Royal area. The city park is approximately the size of two football fields or ~2-3 acres. The dog park makes up about 2/3 of the total park. It is a flat field with few leafless, planted, deciduous trees in the center and various wild shrubbery surrounding it. On one side there is a man-made ditch to collect rainwater and on the other side, separating the dog park field and the rest of the city park, there is a slow-moving stream which is approximately 50 feet wide at its widest and 3 feet at its narrowest. The field itself is flat and contains only green grass and clover weeds but the edges are home to various large coniferous trees and various shrubbery. Around the park, there is the stream with high, steep embankments which drastically slope down into the water. The water itself is brown in colour as it picks up mud from the banks moving through the park. Around the banks are large trees and thick shrubs which hide the view of the stream.

 

 

When you leave the dog area of the park, there is a slightly hilly field containing a child’s play area and old, large trees, like the ones surrounding the off-leash field, scattered around approximately 10 feet or more from each other. Surrounding the park on the opposite side from where the dog park is there are row townhouse homes. Many young families live here and are often outside in their yards even in the winter. In the northeast part of the park, there is an island of vegetation in the open field. It contains a douglas-fir and another type of western coniferous

I visited this park today at 14:00, it was a sunny, moderate winter afternoon at approximately 10°C. This weather is warmer than a usual Victoria winter day. There were a few humans accompanied by large dogs. There were two children on the playground. The wildlife observed were small birds, a rabbit and at least two squirrels. The birds were found in one group and were small and mostly brown. There were approximately 20-30 of them flying between a bush and a group of deciduous trees in the west corner of the park. The rabbit was seen near the road at the entrance of the park it was also brown. The squirrel was seen on a large coniferous tree near the children’s playground.

Observations

In my observations, I noticed that there are no observable prey animals (squirrels and rabbits) near the off-leash dog area compared to the many squirrels which inhabit the trees surrounding the area of the park where dogs must be leashed.

The plants surrounding the off-leash area seem to be native plants whose growth is not disturbed by landscaping efforts by the city unlike within the field which is mowed grass and hand-planted young trees.

 

The ditch on the north side of the park is man-made and contains stagnant, rainwater; which, if full enough, empties into the natural stream.

My Field Notebook Drawing

 

On December nineteenth 2018 I went to the Marshlands Conservation Area in Kingston Ontario. It is located west of Queen’s University and Kingston Penitentiary stretching just shy of Lake Ontario (southern extent) northwards towards Princess Street (main street leading you to the downtown hub if you head east along it). The conservation authority is wedged between the Cataraqui Golf and Country Club to the east and the Little Cataraqui Creek to the West (for most of the property). The vegetation in this region includes woodlands, wetlands, and commercial lands (roads or private property). The Conservation Area is relatively low lying than surrounding land because it’s proximity to water. It does not have drastic changes in elevation.

https://crca.ca/wp-content/uploads/PDFs/maps/Marshlands.pdf (map of Marshlands Conservation Area)

I arrived at the site around 2 p.m. in the afternoon. The temperature was 3 degrees Celsius with broken cloud cover in the sky. The temperature was slightly warmer than average for December but there was no snow cover since there had been little precipitation of any kind in the previous week.  I walked along the Rideau Trail up until it intersected with the train tracks before heading back. On my walk I noticed that some of the butternut trees and ash trees had large fissures in the trunk and some were leaning to one side or have already fallen over.

Figure 1: Field Journal

Figure 2: Rideau Trail

Figure 3: Leaning Tree

Figure 4: Damaged Trunk

 

I’m interested in answering the following:

-What effect do emerald ash borer and butternut canker have on recreational trails?

-What are the ecological costs and benefits to removing those hazard trees and potentially reforesting the area?

-Can the risk of further infection to other trees be mitigated in any way?