This past autumn, Penny Rodrick-Williams, an instructor in University of Delaware's department of entomology and wildlife ecology, took a group of undergraduates to Iron Hill Park four times a week for three weeks to monitor the mammals, birds and trees at this 335-acre tract near Newark. But it wasn't just an academic exercise.
The data the students collected will help the Delaware Academy of Science, which operates and maintains the Iron Hill Museum and a portion of the land, and New Castle County, which owns most of the land, to determine the best ways to preserve and protect this open space.
Bob Stark is a board member of the Delaware Academy of Science and a retired UD math professor who was instrumental in forging the UD-Iron Hill collaboration.
He says the research results also will be useful for creating field guides to the park and educational programs for the 9,000 K-12 students who visit the Iron Hill Museum each school year.
"One year's data, in itself, may not be all that illuminating," notes Rodrick-Williams. "But I'll be returning each fall with my Wildlife Conservation and Ecology class."
Over time, Rodrick-Williams said, the information gathered should give a pretty complete inventory of this land, which is one of the largest old-growth forests in the county.
She explains that most of the other forested areas in New Castle County, such as White Clay Creek State Park, are younger and have been more recently disturbed, either by human activities such as logging, or by natural activity, such as fire.
"An old-growth forest looks a lot different than a younger forest," says Rodrick-Williams. "It doesn't have as many invasive species of plants; invasives establish more quickly in disturbed, younger forest. In addition, the types and amounts of mammals and birds differ. For example, an old-growth forest doesn't tend to have as many deer."
Several units at UD, including the Center for Teaching Effectiveness, gave Rodrick-Williams money to purchase binoculars, GPS devices, remote-sensing cameras (for photographing nocturnal mammals) and all the other tools needed by a team of budding field biologists. The department of entomology and wildlife ecology also pitched in funds, says department chair Doug Tallamy, because of the environmental significance of Iron Hill Park.
"Penny's work at Iron Hill has kick-started the effort to document the unique features of one of the last mature woodlots in northern Delaware," says Tallamy. "The great age of these trees, the minimal fragmentation of this forest, and the lack of invasive plant species makes Iron Hill a suitable habitat for many species of birds that are of special conservation concern. This area needs our highest level of protection."
But just how effective can undergraduates -- most of whom are freshmen and sophomores -- be at conducting field research? You'd be surprised, says Rodrick-Williams.
"By the second day, our research team was like a well-oiled machine," she says "The students were measuring tree diameters, using GPS to map out their vegetation sampling plots, and differentiating between bird calls -- and all this despite starting their day in the field at 6:30 a.m."
The team's point count -- which is a type of bird count in which observations are made for a set time period at set intervals along a defined route -- brought a few surprises, such as sightings of the black-throated blue warbler and the Blackburnian warbler.
Their vegetation sampling showed that tulip poplar is the dominant tree in the section of hardwood forest under study -- and that northern red oak, big toothed aspen, red maple and white oak also are common.
Despite the presence of high-tech remote-sensing cameras, the mammal portion of the project was less than electrifying, acknowledges Rodrick-Williams. "We captured images of squirrels and deer and identified prints from house cats and dogs.
"But it was good for the students to see that research isn't a quick and easy process. And we may get very different results when we conduct the mammal study again next fall."The News Journal
