Temperate Rainforests, Fall 2009

The program description is posted in Week 11 on the moodle site.

Week 10 Important Dates

Monday, Dec. 7:

Grant Proposal due by 5 pm. Hard copy to office of faculty advisor. Remember to save a copy of your group’s power point presentation at the following location:

http:\\orca\programs\temperaterainforests\workspace\powerpoints_symposium

Also we would like each student to write a brief paragraph describing their contributions to grant proposal and presentation. Please bring two copies of this paragraph to class on Tuesday.

Tuesday, Dec. 8:

Meet at 9 am in Lab 1, 3^rd Floor, for lab cleanup. Bring 4 copies of self-evaluation for peer review. Bring books and notes for final review in small groups. Remember to return your field gear pack to Lab Stores.

Wednesday, Dec. 9:

Final Exam in Lecture Hall 2. We will have exams to hand out at 9 am and we will pick up exams at noon. You may bring one page of notes. History / philosophy essay questions are posted under Week 10 on moodle site.

Program gathering and potluck at Nalini’s house, 12:30 to 2:30.

(We will hand out address and phone on Monday. We will also arrange carpools on Monday. We may reserve one van for the trip.)

Thursday, Dec. 10:

Portfolios due by 5 pm to office of seminar leader:

Nalini’s office is Lab 2, 2259

Kevin’s office is Seminar 2, E2102

Portfolio Checklist:

1) Underwear papers with faculty comments. (If you have revised underwear papers, include original and revised underwear papers, with revisions highlighted or marked.)

2) Midterm exam, both forest ecology and history / philosophy sections.

3) Lecture, seminar, reading, field notes.

4) Other material that documents your learning in the program.

Week 11 / Evaluation Week

Bring to the evaluation conference a) final version of your self-evaluation (required), b) faculty evaluations for both Kevin and Nalini (required), c) program evaluation for Temperate Rainforests (optional).

Conferences will be in the office of your seminar leader. We will have sign up sheets for conferences at our last seminar meeting.

Morning Session (Library Classroom)

We will meet in Library 3301 for the morning session.

9:00 – 9:10 Opening Remarks, Set-up

9:10 – 9:29 Restoration of Salmon of the Cowlitz River

9:32 – 9:47 E. Coli photolyase in frog eggs and population declines

9:50 – 10:05 Simulated CWD and small mammal abundance

10:08 – 10:23 Influence of noise disturbance on spotted owl nesting

10:23 – 10:40 BREAK

10:40 – 10:55 Forest fragmentation and seed dispersal by the Western Gray Squirrel

10:58 – 11:13 Marine Derived Nutrients and Red Alder Abundance

11:16 – 11:31 Cycling of N15 in Elwha River Western Red Cedars

11:34 – 11:57 Moss propagation and green roof technology

Afternoon Session

We will meet in Lecture Hall 1 for the afternoon session.

1:00 – 1:10 Opening Remarks, Set-up

1:10 – 1:29 Green tunnels project

1:32 – 1:51 Tracking edible mushrooms

1:54 – 2:09 Climate change and tree growth

2:09 – 2:25 BREAK

2:25 – 2:40 Geranium robertianum removal

2:43 – 2:58 English ivy and tree growth

3:01 – 3:20 Restoration and invasive species

3:20 Closing remarks

 Hope your break was restful and fun. Here is a brownie recipe courtesy of Mischa Redenbaugh to get you through the upcoming finals and projects!!

Ultimate Fudgy Brownies
Makes about 36 small brownies
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes plus cooling time

Tasters far preferred the more complex flavor of bittersweet chocolate here over semisweet chocolate. Don?t feel like chopping chocolate for melting? Use bittersweet chocolate chips.

5 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
3 tablespoons Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 1/4 cups sugar
3 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour

1. Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8-inch-square pan with foil, then coat lightly with vegetable oil spray. Melt the chocolates, butter, and cocoa in the microwave, stirring often, 1 to 3 minutes. Let the mixture cool slightly.

2. Whisk the sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt together in a large bowl until combined, about 15 seconds. Whisk in the melted chocolate mixture until smooth. Stir in the flour until no streaks remain.

3. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with just a few crumbs attached, 35 to 40 minutes.

4. Let cool completely on a wire rack to room temperature, about 2 hours, before removing the brownies from the pan (using the foil) and cutting into squares.

HOW TO GIVE A FORMAL TALK

(Advice from Nalini for the talks on Tuesday, Nov. 30)

The purpose of a formal presentation is to clearly communicate your thinking or results to your audience.  Though it may share the same content as a proposal or paper, the spoken presentation has a very different form than a written report because humans take in information in different ways.  Talks need to be clear, make a few major points, and have uncomplicated graphics.

You will have an absolutely enforced time limit, the total length depending on the number of students in your group.  Ideally your talk should leave at least 3 minutes for questions.  The general organization can follow the written version of your proposal, or you can develop a different one.

Your project title and your name will be announced by the moderator, so do not waste precious time repeating that.

The Introduction is probably the most important part of the talk and you should practice this  the most prior to the talk.  The introduction should GRAB the listener’s attention from the start.  Introduce the general topic, and immediately let the audience know your focus.

Methods should be mentioned, but you do not need to go into tiny details. If this is a field study, present your study site on a map. You may need maps of multiple scales (e.g., map of Washington, then map of the north fork of the Hoh River). You can state that you are following a particular protocol (e.g., “we will label frogs as Marc Hayes and his colleagues did his study of this same species in 1999), but don’t presume the audience will know that protocol.

You may present the projected Results and Discussion of your project in any way that makes the most sense to you. Summarize your findings rather than giving too many details, but give sufficient depth to further the listeners’ knowledge of the topic.  Integrate the sources you used as seamlessly as you can.

Figures and tables (as slides or written on large paper) should be presented as you present your facts.  Make sure they are clearly titled and each axis is labeled.  It is a good idea to explain your axes before you go over what the data are (e.g. “On the vertical axis, I show dry weight in grams per meter, on the horizontal axis, I show time in weeks; …dotted lines are for treated plots, solid lines are for control plots…”).  Do some “internal summarizing” if your results are complex.

Following the results, you should have a short piece on the implications of what you have found out and synthesized. You may want to present 2 or 3 questions for future research. Don’t just provide a laundry list – be thoughtful and specific.  Don’t just say “more work is needed to understand this fascinating interaction”.

Acknowledge those who helped you and your study, but don’t gush on and on – just a simple thanks.

Prior to your talk, think about potential questions that the audience might ask – prepare (in your head) brief answers to them.

Make sure you run through your talk several or many times out loud. Practice with the graphics you will use. Practice singly, and as a group. You will be amazed at how short your allocation of minutes can be.  As in professional symposia, time limits will be enforced. The moderator will display a sign with “2 min” and “1 min” at you.

Clearly end your talk.  After your last point, say something like “Thank you very much” to tell the audience that you are now done.  Speakers have a tendency to dribble off at the end, so the audience doesn’t know whether you have stopped or have additional points.  NEVER end with an apologetic tone.  Speakers tend to end with “Well, I guess that’s all I have to say.”  Even saying “That’s all” has a belittling effect.  In fact, you never need to adopt an apologetic tone anywhere in the talk.  In a short talk, there is no need to discuss what you had hoped to do but didn’t have time for. Keep in mind that you are the expert on this – no one knows more than you about your topic. Be confident!

You might want to check out…1) material on NSF grant proposals at the top of the moodle page, 2) updated lecture and seminar readings for weeks 8-10, 3)  Lydia Wagner’s contact information (in “Employment”), 4) Lydia’s detailed and useful suggestions, including key websites, for finding work in state government (top of the moodle page).

A key to Nalini’s part of the midterm is posted on her office door and also available as an attachment on the moodle site (Week 5: Oct 25-31).

Sara Huntington sent me a summary of the research workshop, which is a good review of topics that she covered. I have posted it as an attachment in Week 5 of the moodle site.

Evergreen faculty members will be meeting on Wednesday, Oct. 4, 1-3 pm, to talk about important cultural, political, and scientific issues that are the starting point for new Evergreen programs. We would like to hear from a few upper-division students about the programs they would like to see at Evergreen in the future. If you are curious about how interdisciplinary programs get developed and/or would like to have a say in the future programs that are offered at Evergreen, please talk to Kevin or send him an e-mail. Thanks!

*Essay Questions for the History/Philosophy of science midterm: This is a link to the handout received in class, Monday October 26th.

I talked with one student who expressed some confusion about the Clements and Gleason readings. The Clements article (1936) is a good summary of his ideas at the height of their popularity, but he first articulated many of these ideas almost 30 years earlier. The Gleason article (1926) is largely a critical response to Clements’ ideas as they are articulated in these earlier articles.The selections from Perry in Forest Ecosystems, chapters 6 (“Change in Time”) and 8 (“Patterns and Mechanisms of Succession”), offer an excellent framework for the Clements and Gleason readings.

Also, a word of advice: Don’t let the flood of new terms in Clements (especially in the recommended section) bog you down. I will highlight a few key points from the recommended section in lecture. Feel free to skip or skim quickly through this section just to get a sense of Clements’ style–don’t worry about trying to understand each of the terms (proclimax, subclimax, etc.) that Clements introduces in this section.

Great Field Trip! Thank you to everyone for contributions large and small! If you have pictures that you would be willing to share with the group, please send them as a jpg attachment to Kevin at francisk@evergreen.edu.

Here’s what you need to know about the midterm (Wednesday) and plant identification (Tuesday) exams next week. (We answered a few questions from individual students during the field trip and wanted to make sure everyone had the same information.)

MIDTERM: For the midterm, you should review your notes on lectures, readings, labs, and field trips. For the history / philosophy section, make sure to review the discussion questions for each week’s lecture reading. The lecture / seminar material for week 5 on plant associations (Clements/Gleason) and scientific revolutions will be on the midterm. (I would recommend reading them in the order that they appear as attachments in the Moodle site.) Kevin will hand out a final list of potential essay questions on Monday that should look familiar if you have read the material and considered the discussion questions; there will be time during the lab period on Tuesday to work with other students to develop answers to these essay questions. Remember that you can have one page of notes for the midterm.

PLANT IDENTIFICATION: Final list of species for plant identification exam (Tuesday, Oct. 27). We “pruned” the list of required species down to 25. You should be able to identify the following species based on a sample (e.g. branch and leaves) and produce the scientific name from memory. The plant identification exam will be on Tuesday, Oct. 27. The page numbers next to the plants are from Pojar and Mackinnon (revised edition).

TREES (10)

Tsuga heterophylla (western hemlock, p. 30)

Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir, p. 32)

Taxus brevifolia (Pacific yew, p. 40)

Thuja plicata (western redcedar, p. 42)

Alnus rubra (red alder, p. 44)

Acer macrophyllum (bigleaf maple, p. 45)

Arbutus menziesii (arbutus or Pacific madrone, p. 49)

Populus trichocarpa (black cottonwood, p. 46)

Abies grandis (grand fir, p. 34)

Picea sitchensis (Sitka spruce, p. 37)

SHRUBS (7)

Gaultheria shallon (salal, p. 53)

Vaccinium parvifolium (red huckleberry, p. 57)

Corylus cornata (beaked hazelnut, p. 92)

Acer circinatum (vine maple, p. 93)

Mahonia nervosa (dull Oregon grape, p. 95)

Polystichum munitum (sword fern, p. 421)

Oplopanax horridus (Devil’s club, p. 82)

MOSSES (8)

Rhytidiadelphus triquetrus (p. 472)

Metaneckera menziesii (p. 464)

Hylocomium splendens (p. 474)

Selaginella oregano (p. 435)

Leucolepis menziesii (p. 465)

Dicranum (species are difficult to distinguish, be able to recognize genus) (p. 480)

Eurhynchium / Kindbergia oregana (p. 470)

Isothecium stolonifarum (p. 468)