On April 20th, 2018, our group monitored our four box elder tree's growth. It was a chilly, but sunny day (60°F), with a humidity of 20%, and soil was moderately dry. Leaf growth occurred with all four box elder trees (75-94% on all four box elder trees). Box elder 1,2, and 3 had 5-24% of the tree covered in leaves, and box elder 4 had 50-74% of the tree covered in leaves due to how young and small the tree is. No flowers were seen on any of the four trees. (Post by Z. Krajcirovic)
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On Friday April 13th, 2018, I went to the Radford Bike Path to monitor the four boxelder maple trees. It was sunny at 73 degrees and there was a moderately strong breeze. The soil around the boxelder maples was soft, but dry. Boxelder-1 and Boxelder-2 have similar number of breaking leaf buds and leaves with increasing leaf sizes. Boxelder-3 and Boxelder-4 also have very similar number of breaking leaf buds and leaves with increasing leaf sizes. However, since Boxelder-3 and Boxelder-4 are so much taller than Boxelder-1 and Boxelder-2 they have a greater quantity of breaking leaf buds and leaves with increasing leaf sizes. (Post by G. Steeves) On Sunday April 8th, 2018, I went down to the Radford Bike Path to monitor the four boxelder maple trees. It had snowed a light blanket of a snow a few days prior, was chilly (48°F), and there was a 44% humidity. The soil surrounding all four boxelders was fairly moist due to the melted snow. (Post by M. Beckner)
On March 23, 2018, our group has seen a dramatic change with Boxelder-1 and Boxelder-3 in the upper canopy of 1,001 to 10,000 flower buds and less than 5% were open flowers, Figure 1 & 3. Boxelder-2 and Boxelder-4 has some flower bud growth over the past 5 days, but it also had some dying branches as well, Figure 2. There was still no breaking leaf buds or leaves in general because the temperature is still too cold. The temperature was 48 degrees Fahrenheit between 9:51 AM to 10:09 AM in the morning, and the humidity was 93% when the four Boxelders were being observed. The soil was extremely moist due to a snow storm four days ago that accumulated 5-6 inches of snow. There was about less than 5% of the ground cover with snow, and the sky was partly cloudy. Because of the snow storm, Boxelder-1 had lost some of its branches and fell on the ground next to the tree trunk. Many of the surrounding trees, not included in the experiment, suffered the same experience as Boxelder-1. (Post by D. Pitts)
On March 23rd, members of our group inspected all four of our box elder trees for signs of growth. Monitoring happened starting at 11am, when the temperature was 39°F and the humidity was 47%. Two days prior it had snowed, but all of the snow had melted when monitoring was done. The snow had come after warm temperatures (50-60°F) a few days before. All of our box elder trees have leaf buds that have started breaking, but boxelder-2 and boxelder-3 currently have the most amount of breaking leaf buds. When looking up at the top of boxelder-2, it is apparent that there is more significant grown (leaves and flowers are developing) but it is hard to accurately monitor this growth. (Post by Z. Krajcirovic)
On March 14, 2018, members of our group went down to monitor the four boxelder trees. The weather was cloudy with strong winds, and the temperature was cold (31°F). The boxelder trees noticed a considerable drop in leaf buds compared to the previous weeks. It had just snowed a few inches on the 11th-12th, and the ground was still covered in snow and was very wet. The cold weather and snow explains the drop in the amount of leaf buds on the boxelders. (Post by G. Steeves)
On March 1st, 2018, our team went down to the Radford Bike Path to monitor our four boxelder trees. The weather was cloudy, as it had just rained, the temperature was relatively warm (56°F), and all the soil around our boxelder trees was very wet. Due to similar warmer temperatures throughout the week, we saw a several breaking leaf buds on boxelder-3 and boxelder-4 (11-100, 3-10 respectively). (Post by Z. Krajcirovic)
On February 22nd, 2018, we observed the original three Boxelder Maple and added a fourth Boxelder Maple labeled boxelder-4, noted below. The weather conditions were 79° Fahrenheit, 47% humidity, clear skies, and dry to medium soil moisture in some areas along the R.U. Bike Path. It has been mid to upper 70s, which has led to two of the Boxelder's soil base becoming dry in the past four days. Because of this, our group has not reported any signs of breaking leaves buds or open flowers for any Boxelder simply due to the abnormal hotter temperatures in February. In the past, Februaries would on average be 30’s to 40’s and sometimes as low as 20’s, but with our group best guess, climate change could be affecting these abnormal hotter temperatures this February of 2018. (Post by D. Pitts) On February 17th, 2018, Devin monitored the team’s three boxelder (Acer negundo) trees on the Radford Bike Path site. It was slightly chilly (47°F), with clouds and a light sprinkle, which followed a rainy, warm week. There was no change in our three boxelder tree buds, except growth in the trees' branches. (Post by Z. Krajcirovic) On February 8th, 2018 we hiked down to a bike pathway with forested edge habitat that runs next to the New River in Radford, Virginia. It was a cool, breezy day (42°F) with and our team chose 3 different individual Boxelder maple trees to study weekly. All three of the trees are in shaded, moist areas. We attached a metal identification tag labeled with a unique name (e.g. Boxelder-1) and used pink flagging for easy finding each week. Across all three tress, we found that they had no breaking leaf buds, leaves, open flowers, or fruits. We found that all had flower buds; however, the number of flower buds varied among trees with boxelder-1 having the most. (Post by M. Beckner) |
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April 2018
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