Haines Branch herpetofauna survey

Tu Le Author

04/06/2021 Added

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Baseline establishment for the herpetofauna survey along Haines Branch

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[00:00:01.472]Hi, my name is Tu.
[00:00:02.960]Last year, with the help of Professor Dennis Ferraro,
[00:00:05.685]we tried to establish the herpetofauna community
[00:00:10.360]along Haines Branch that go along
[00:00:13.160]with the Prairie Corridor Project.
[00:00:16.760]Some background, the Prairie Corridor Project
[00:00:19.670]is one of the City of Lincoln projects
[00:00:22.270]that try to create more outdoor space for the public,
[00:00:25.520]at the same time, restore prairie and a system of trails
[00:00:29.080]that go all the way from Pioneer Park
[00:00:32.700]to Spring Creek Prairie in Denton.
[00:00:36.450]And it gives us also a lot of research opportunity
[00:00:39.830]to observe the correlation
[00:00:41.260]between prairie health and diversity.
[00:00:43.870]As of right now, there are like bird surveys,
[00:00:47.500]plant diversity survey, pollinator survey
[00:00:51.220]and even nematode surveys down in the soil.
[00:00:56.310]And one of my other projects
[00:00:57.670]also worked on the water quality
[00:00:59.840]of Haines Branch that go along with the Prairie corridor.
[00:01:09.570]The purpose of this study
[00:01:11.130]is to try to establish the baseline
[00:01:12.940]of herpetofauna community along Haines Branch.
[00:01:15.550]So, as I mentioned above,
[00:01:16.890]there's a lot of different surveys
[00:01:18.670]going on along with all the Prairie
[00:01:21.308]in the parade corridor project,
[00:01:23.490]but there's no data yet
[00:01:26.160]for the amphibians and reptiles along Haines Branch.
[00:01:30.340]So I also want to set up monitor sites
[00:01:33.530]for future surveys and at the same time
[00:01:36.810]check the efficiency between different cover boards
[00:01:39.060]under various weather conditions.
[00:01:42.600]And on the screen, this is Denton Prairie.
[00:01:47.740]This is part of where Spring Creek runs along.
[00:01:53.650]It goes through a part of repairing woodland.
[00:01:57.500]And this is Two Creeks Prairie.
[00:02:02.340]My method is we tried to place
[00:02:05.360]set up a metal board,
[00:02:06.460]wooden board, and a tree frog refugia at each site.
[00:02:09.990]And I have five locations, along the corridor
[00:02:12.890]and at least three sites.
[00:02:14.540]So three replicates per location.
[00:02:17.810]We have Bobcat Prairie,
[00:02:18.960]Denton Prairie, Two Creeks Prairie, Spring Creek Denton,
[00:02:22.120]and Stiefel Johnson trailhead.
[00:02:25.210]For each location, I
[00:02:27.320]For each site, I will record coordinates.
[00:02:30.400]So it's easier to find, cause sometime
[00:02:32.700]during the summer especially
[00:02:35.610]the grass can be tall
[00:02:36.970]and it's really hard to find
[00:02:39.080]these cover boards underneath.
[00:02:43.260]And then we started surveying
[00:02:44.440]after setting up three weeks
[00:02:45.740]so that the local animals
[00:02:49.170]get used to the boards and the tree frog refugia.
[00:02:53.160]So they, they not afraid of going there, hiding.
[00:02:57.590]And record weather condition is very,
[00:03:01.330]record weather condition,
[00:03:02.640]time of day is very crucial, as for future.
[00:03:07.590]Anyone can want to try to replicate the experiment
[00:03:10.960]or with the research, or try to follow the
[00:03:15.470]the research to collect more data.
[00:03:20.050]So we need like wind speed,
[00:03:22.770]like cloud cover,
[00:03:25.310]how much sunlight go through.
[00:03:27.900]We have relative humidity,
[00:03:31.490]temperature, and yeah, time and date.
[00:03:35.440]And if we found any individual
[00:03:38.210]under the cover board,
[00:03:39.260]or in the tube, the tree frog refugia,
[00:03:42.380]we need to report the microclimate condition as well.
[00:03:46.670]So the temperature underneath the cover board
[00:03:51.689]or the temperature,
[00:03:52.522]the temperature above, like off the board as well.
[00:04:00.630]And data. The first time I collected data
[00:04:03.550]it was on September 19, 2020.
[00:04:06.680]And the last time was March 27, 2021.
[00:04:10.840]Unfortunately I didn't find any amphibians or reptiles,
[00:04:15.900]under the cover boards, or in the tree frog tubes.
[00:04:19.620]But I found a lot of shrews, but they're so fast
[00:04:21.920]so there's no picture of them.
[00:04:23.330]A lot of ants, live and dead insects.
[00:04:26.730]So on this corner, these are all the insects
[00:04:30.750]in one tree frog refugia.
[00:04:34.210]I had just this,
[00:04:35.590]so many of them in there,
[00:04:37.070]they pile up in there and they take over
[00:04:38.870]all the water and they're all dead.
[00:04:41.710]And last week, the last data recording
[00:04:46.600]I found this common garden snake, he's
[00:04:49.536]it's nowhere near the cover board.
[00:04:53.210]I was just going looking for
[00:04:55.950]spring vegetation and I spooked him.
[00:05:00.170]Yeah. And then does this one of the
[00:05:02.190]conditions that we have a lot
[00:05:04.469]in prairie corridor,
[00:05:05.302]is sometimes it's too windy
[00:05:07.270]and the grass is not tall enough.
[00:05:09.160]So the metal board got blown away,
[00:05:13.500]and they overlapped
[00:05:14.630]which is harder to collect data.
[00:05:22.330]And due to the lack of resources of last year,
[00:05:25.420]with the pandemic and everything,
[00:05:27.280]Our cover board was not consistent
[00:05:30.140]in thickness and original material.
[00:05:33.080]So because of that, it's hard to
[00:05:36.140]come up with conclusive results
[00:05:39.400]and testing the efficiency
[00:05:40.560]between wooden and metal cover boards.
[00:05:44.290]And at the same time as the prairie corridor improves,
[00:05:46.960]we also expect the herpetofauna community
[00:05:49.150]to be more robust, diverse,
[00:05:51.010]and the population is gonna be increased as well.
[00:05:54.060]This study just tried to serve as a baseline establishment.
[00:06:01.570]And I want to say thank you
[00:06:02.700]to professor Dennis Ferraro for all his encouraging words,
[00:06:05.660]knowledge, and tireless hours
[00:06:07.090]looking for material for me.
[00:06:09.030]And my family also tried to find
[00:06:12.590]more potential material when they're driving around
[00:06:15.470]and help me drive when
[00:06:17.830]I cannot drive out in the field anymore.
[00:06:21.750]And to all the singing birds, insects,
[00:06:23.830]living or dead things on a prairie,
[00:06:26.910]because they help us
[00:06:27.950]appreciate more what we have right now.
[00:06:31.680]And thank you very much for listening.

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Haines Branch herpetofauna survey

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