In the trenches

It looked pretty simple on paper.



During the latter part of May and first half of June, I was literally in trenches like the ones pictured above. As part of my research project, I decided it would be interesting to trench around and sever the roots of all pine trees that were next to my plots. Why? In short, because we don't know enough about the way plants interact belowground. So, I compare these areas to those where there are no trenches and the pine roots remain in tact.



This ditch witch was my companion (and a few of my lucky labmates') for 3 very long days. Obviously, it was doing the really hard work, but pushing and pulling that machine in and out of the woods was enough to sweatsoak a shirt in less than 20 minutes.



The trenches were just less than 1 meter deep. Thankfully, the water table here remains fairly high and virtually no roots exist below 50-60 cm.



There are many small roots.



And there are a few big ones. This longleaf pine root was over 10 cm in diameter.



After the trenches were dug, I put a double layer of heavy-duty plastic in the trenches to prevent the roots from growing back into the plots. Michelle helped me install the barriers and backfill the trenches around several plots.



I've also installed these weather stations, which record wind speed, temperature, relative humdity, and light levels. Glay-ven!



I wrote that it looked easy on paper because it really did, yet this ended up being some of the hottest, toughest work that I have done. I had hoped to complete this in the spring when it was a bit cooler, but I needed special permission from the state to do the trenching (it is considered a major soil disturbance and there are some cultural/historical artifacts in parts of this forest) and the state took their sweet time in approving the project. Oh well, it's all done now. From here on out, it's data collection, analysis, and writing.