Long time since my last update! It seems like an eternity already since I posted last about my trip into the BWCAW. Since the trip life has been awesome.
During July we spent the whole month working at two different National Wildlife Refuges, Agassiz and Rydell. At Rydell we were cutting down stands of Aspen which are invading prairie areas. Aspen (Popple) is a very unique tree for a variety of reasons. It is one of the most widespread trees in North America because it thrives in disturbed areas (ie logging areas, open fields). It has the capability of cloning itself as well. It does this through "suckering", which is when a new tree sprouts out from the root system of an already exisiting tree.
For this reason when we cut down Aspen we need to apply herbicide to the stump to prevent the suckering from occuring and making our work a waste of time.
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| A stand of Quaking Aspen and Balsam Poplar |
While applying herbicide at Rydell we were required to wear Tyvec suites to ensure we didn't get any herbicide on our skin. This seemed a little excessive but we complied.
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| My Co-Leader Eleva and Field Specialist Matt in Tyvec |
Wearing Tyvec was very hot but it added some comic relief to the day as we looked sort of like Astronaughts!
After Rydell we spent 5 days working at Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. Agassiz is located in far Northwest Minnesota. It is a very unique landscape as it is located in a transition zone between two of Minnesota's biomes (a biome is a classification of land based on climate, vegetation cover, animals, etc.). It is between the Prairie Region, to the west, and the Conifer Forest (pine trees and such) to the east. Due to this you get a mixture of these two landscapes. Agassiz is named after Glacial Lake Agassiz which used to exist here a long time ago. Since it dried up Agassiz was left with an almost completely flat landscape. Since it is so flat the drainage is incredibly poor which has the left the land largely wet, either with lakes, swamps or bogs. This can be best appreciated from a high vantage point which we were able to get by climbing the fire tower at the refuge.
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| View of the Visitor Center |
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| A few of the many wet areas in Agassiz |
Though the views from up high were great the ones from the ground are great as well.
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| A Cattail Swamp in the foreground transitioning to some stands of trees in the background |
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| A marshy lake at Agassiz |
We did a couple of different projects at Agassiz. The main project was Aspen removal. Instead of cutting and spraying we were using a very different and unique method. We were dispatching the Aspen by applying herbicide using a paint brush and "painting" it around the tree.
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| Our crew getting ready to paint some trees! |
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| Jarret working through the thick woods. |
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| What the Aspen stand looked like after we went through. |
This overall was an ok project. The mosquitos were really crazy so we were forced to either soak ourselves with bug spray or layer up and wear headnets to keep them at bay.
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| A swarm of Mosquitos! |
On the bright side though the area was beautiful which made it worth fighting the Mosquitos and trekking through the thick bush!
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| A misty morning at Agassiz |
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| Sunrise |
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| Beautiful spider web with a crazy looking Spider |
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| A couple of White Tail Deer. |
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