Living Observatory Projects

Fall is starting. The days are becoming shorter, mornings crisp, and soundscapes quieter. The Fall semester is the best time to plan for the Spring acoustic sampling season.

This June, the results of PSHS students' hard work were planted in Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth. These cultivated AWC seedlings were planted deep in the marsh, where they can grow and flourish into incredible wildlife habitat over the next few decades.

In March 2024, my AP Biology students visited Eel River Preserve in Plymouth, MA with Living Observatory's Glorianna Davenport to explore a young AWC stand and see conservation work in action.

In October 2023, my AP Biology students took a Field trip to the Atlantic White Cedar (AWC) Swamp in Eastham, MA. It was magical for all to experience an old growth/mature AWC swamp.

In the summer of 2022, the Ballantine and Andras research groups from Mount Holyoke College collected 255 soil samples from 26 localities across Eastern Massachusetts as part of a large and ongoing cranberry restoration monitoring project funded by the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game, Division of Ecological Restoration (DER). To facilitate a comparative analysis of wetland soil development, our sampling localities were chosen to encompass four different site types: sites that were in active cranberry agriculture, sites that were retired from cranberry agriculture, former cranberry farms that have undergone ecological restoration, and natural reference peat bogs. These localities were geo-referenced and coordinated across all working groups involved in this study in order to facilitate comparative analysis across many types of data including attributes of soil biogeochemistry, as well as communities of plants, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and fish.

Throughout May and June of 2024 the Ballantine and Andras research groups from Mount Holyoke College collected and analyzed soil samples as part of an ongoing monitoring project. The project, funded by DER, aims to describe the long-term ecological development of soil physicochemical characteristics and to evaluate whether wetland functions are being successfully restored within a reasonable time frame. This year we sampled the restored sites of Garner Bog, Farley Bog, and Foothills Preserve, as these sites were all restored in 2021 and fell within our longitudinal monitoring plan of 0, 1, 3, 7, and 10 years post-restoration. Our results showed that none of the key physicochemical wetland soil indicators had changed significantly between years one and three, which is consistent with the slow initial post-restoration development of wetland soils that has been observed in numerous previous studies. Nonetheless, we did see plenty of evidence that these sites are beginning to develop as wetlands. For example, we observed lots of standing water, robust patches of sphagnum and other wetland obligate plants, and numerous places where sphagnum had begun to spread across bare patches of sand and gravel (photo below). We will continue to monitor these and other restored cranberry bogs to see if the pace of soil development accelerates in future years.

Future directions

Hooray! We have fish! So far 36 river herring have been seen at Bridge #2 and what's even more amazing, 2 fish have been seen at Bridge #1. This is the first year that we've seen herring there so that's very exciting. Right now our number of fish per week is tracking along with 2018, which was a relatively low year, but there's still 2/3 of a month to go as well. In 2018, the issue was likely the inability of river herring to get through the entrance to Beaver Dam Brook at White Horse Beach. We have talked to the town and they recently cleared the culvert and brook entrance so that's not a concern this year. That said, the structure of the beach and location of the sand on it means that passage into Beaver Dam Brook is difficult except at high tide, so fish passage is limited through part of the tidal cycle. It is a testament to the restoration of Tidmarsh that there are river herring traveling through the system at all. Keep collecting that data so we can have a valid population estimate at the end of the season. Happy May!

This could be the week that we see herring! Here's why that seems very possible:

On April 1, 2022 our counters apparently saw 21 herring (an April Fools joke?), but no herring have arrived yet this year! That's to be expected. In four out of six of the years that we've been counting, the first herring have arrived between the 10th and 16th of April. In 2018, they didn't arrive until April 27th but that was a difficult year for their migration due to multiple coastal storms that impacted the inlet at White Horse Beach. Be reassured though - we have seen herring every year at some point. Keep recording those zeros and soon there will be fish to see.