Käyttäjän lmurtagh päiväkirja

For this week's iNaturalist nature walk, I walked around the Pine Tree Reserve right next to the Rec center. It was a cool, windy fall day with some rain clouds hanging around. While walking around, I did not notice a lot of biodiversity in the plants, but it was definitely harder to find flowering plants this time around. I think it has to due with the season change and the colder weather in that flowering plants are beginning to close up. There was a lot of moss, nonvascular plant, on the ground as this area is also pretty moist once you walk off the man-made path that goes through it. An example of a Bryophyta that I found was the pincushion moss which seemed to be the most abundant in this area which makes sense because as we learned in class, nonvascular plants need a moist habitat to grow. Where I found most examples of Polypodiopsida, seedless vascular plants, was along the path and they were mostly in groups with one another. The angiosperms and gymnosperms that I found were sprinkled throughout the area, but as I said before, there seemed to be a lot less angiosperms (flowering plants) with flowers on display. Lastly, there seemed to be a lot more squirrels out than the last time I walked around the reserve.

For this week's iNaturalist walk, I walked along the Chestnut Hill Reservoir looking for fungi. In total, the walk took me about 40 minutes. It was pretty overcast and cloudy with the temp being around 57 degrees with a slight breeze. Since I was specifically looking for fungi this time, it was definitely a more focused walk. I found it really difficult to find different types of fungi because whenever I thought I came across some, it usually ended up being moss. I did end up finding some interesting plants and flowers along the reservoir near the water including pokeweeds, grape family, and asters and allies. The fungi that I was eventually able to locate was always near a tree or rock. The fungi that I found were False Turkey-Tail, Crowded Parchment, Mossy Maze Polypore, and Thomson's Rosette Lichen. To me, these fungi all looked fairly similar when I was taking pictures of them. However, when I came to submit them to iNaturalist, they all came up as different types of fungi. Thus, this brought me be back to our discussion earlier in class when we talked about deciphering different species. We discussed how it can be difficult to differentiate species just off of visual appearances. In some cases, it may take more analysis of the species to identify the differences. Overall, this walk proved to be interesting and somewhat difficult to specifically find fungi!

For my first nature walk, I decided to go to the Pine Tree Reserve that is located right next to the Rec center and overlooks the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. Even though the space isn't big, there is a lot of biodiversity within it. As I wandered through the path, I found different types of small flowers, trees, plants, squirrels, birds, and even lichen on the rocks. I walked the loop several times, noticing different species as I went, as they were scattered throughout the reserve. It was a nice, cool fall afternoon with the sun shining and a light breeze. Within the reserve, it is fairly easy to tell the difference between the landscaped parts and what is natural to the area (the landscaped plants line the walkway and the wild plants/species cover most of the ground). I will say, I was a little hesitant to have to go on a natural walk for 30 minutes since I've been so stressed with schoolwork lately. However, after the walk I did feel more relaxed as I not only got to observe and interact with nature, but did it with one of my friends. This brought me back to the idea of ecosystem services and the aesthetic/cultural benefits humans get through biodiversity. Typically, when I think of ecosystem services I think of the regulating or provisioning services like food sources, building materials, pollination, clean water, etc. However, this walk reminded me that biodiversity reminds humans of the natural beauty that surrounds them and the peace/inspiration that it can bring us.