Check out factors that cause changes in nature or learn about caching nature in action in the Albany Pine Bush or the Columbia Land Conservancy.
How can I cache nature in the city?
Nature is continually changing! Even in the center of the city, you can cache nature in action. Students at New York State Museum's After School Program are caching the trees in Lincoln Park, in the heart of Albany, NY.
Urban trees see a lot of action. Like their forest-dwelling counterparts, urban trees are home to squirrels, birds, insects, mosses, lichens and other wildlife. Indeed, every tree houses a whole community of biodiversity.
Unlike their forest relatives, urban trees are also under human-imposed stresses – they get damaged and pruned and their roots can become exposed to road salt or other pollutants.
Deciduous: Plants that shed their leaves annually.
Antonym: Evergreen |
Deciduous urban trees undergo the same cycles of change as forest varieties. They bud in the spring, display leaves through the summer, then their leaves change color and drop in the autumn. The urban environment is often a bit warmer, which effects the exact dates that the trees will leaf out or change color.
What kind of trees are in the city?
Indigenous: Native to a particular region or environment |
It’s sometimes hard to tell what kind of tree you’re looking at – especially in the city where many trees are non-indigenous. City plantings are chosen that beautify the city and are easy to tend, and are not always the trees that would grow in that location naturally. Students will watch the trees as their buds open and identify each tree in the photo points.
Students will cache nature in urban trees as a citizen science experiment to answer question about how seasons change in the city.
When do trees start to show their their spring leaves?
When do leaves change to their Fall colors?
If a tree has flowers, do the flowers come out before the leaves?
Students wi ll also look for variations between different kids of trees.
Which trees will show their spring leaves first?
Which hold their leaves longest into the fall?
Which trees have blossoms? Which have fruits?
What about evergreen trees? Do they change throughout the year, too?
During the spring 2007 semester, students will answer some of these and other questions. Spring students will identify the trees as they leaf and figure out which ones have spring blossoms. During the fall 2007 semester students will monitor the same trees to answer many of the rest of the questions. Fall students will find out which trees have which colors and which ones turn color the earliest.
But it things can get really interesting in 2008!
Did you ever hear people say, "Spring is really long this year," or, “Fall is really early this year”?
We base those judgments on our memories of previous years. But sometimes we remember things as if they "lasted forever" and sometimes they were "just yesterday." Indeed, time is not remembered with a high degree of certainty. Our memory of how long fall colors lasted or how early spring flowers bloomed is not reliable.
Fortunately, we can compare photos from one year to the next to set the record straight on time.
We can use the same photos to compare tree colors from year to year. We’ll take photos at the same time of day with the same camera under similar weather conditions. And we can calibrate the colors on fixed objects – we’ll use the NYSM in the background. We’ll be able to decide if fall colors are more magnificent this year than last year.