I have had the good fortune to be involved in four research projects in my undergraduate career. Each of these projects was completed while I was at St. Olaf College.

Northfield Habitat Corridors

This, my most recent project (Spring 2003), represents the sum of my interests in ecology. The idea for the project was entirely my own and was completed independently. Dr. Sheri Breen provided much appreciated guidance.

Northfield Habitat Corridors sets out to link remnant and restored habitats in and around Northfield, MN, a town of 20,000 just south of Minneapolis. In recent years, Northfield has undergone a significant amount of change with the advent of big box retailers and increased residential development. My project seeks to work with the community to preserve natural areas and limit sprawl in the area.

Using ArcView (a geographic information system) and field observations, I identified what would become habitat nodes in a system of reserves and corridors. I then used ArcView to create a map of optimal connectivity.

The real importance of this project lies in the recommendations I made to the community. Rather than approach the issue as a disinterested expert, I worked with the Northfield Comprehensive Plan to gain community input as to how this project could be implemented. I feel that this project will benefit greatly from citizen input and I value the expertise members of the community bring to the table. This project is available online within this domain and on St. Olaf servers as a community resource.

Age and Size Structure Studies of Relic Balsam Fir Populations

I worked on this project in the summer and fall of 2002 under Dr. Kathleen Shea. Dr. Shea had previously studied the genetic diversity of two isolated, relic populations of balsam fir (Abies balsamea) and was curious about their size and age structures. Using standard increment boring technique, Dr. Shea, Traci Bartzt, and I collected core samples and size data from Mountain Maple Hollow, a Nature Conservancy reserve in northeast Iowa, and Big Spring Cliff, an area in Forestville State Park in southeast Minnesota.

The core plots and age data suggest that these two populations are living under stressful conditions. The source of this stress, however, is difficult to pinpoint, as it could arise from a loss of heterozygosity, warm temperatures, or a number of other factors. The results could prove to be important in the development of future conservation plans.

Size Structure Studies of Restored Hardwood Forests

I also worked on this project during the summer of 2002 under Dr. Kathleen Shea with Traci Bartzt. Started in 1990, this study continued to gather size data on a number of species of hardwoods restored on the St. Olaf Natural Lands. In addition to collecting the data, my main role in the project was the implementation and use of global positioning satellites (GPS) and geographic information systems (GIS).

Using a Trimble TSC1 Asset Surveyor, I created a custom data collection interface that allowed us to associate species, heights, diameters, and ID numbers with the appropriate tree. Once the data was collected in the field, I managed it in ArcView 3.2 (GIS software). This system's benefits are readily apparent: Tree locations are now accurate to within 1 m of their actual location. Also, a tree can be selected within ArcView and all of its associated data are immediately available.

Dr. Shea and I presented a poster on this project at the Ecological Society of America's annual meeting in August, 2003.

GIS Fire Modeling

This, the first of my research projects, was done the spring semester of my sophomore year (2001) under Dr. Charles Umbanhowar, Jr. The goal of this project was to use FARSITE 4.0, a mechanistic fire modeling program, to test the impact of fuels and topography on fire in the historic Minnesota landscape. To do so, I chose Sibley County, a county in southern Minnesota that lies squarely in the presettlement Big Woods region, as my experimental area.

A total of four different types of tests were run. Two simulations involved forest fuels and the other two tested prairie fuels. Within each fuel type, I ran one test with topography accurate to Sibley County and the other without topography. The progress of each simulated fire was plotted and the total area burned was compared among simulations.

In the past, too much evidence may have been placed on rivers and lakes as firebreaks, largely ignoring the effects of fuels and topography. The results of this project indicate that vegetation type may have had a larger influence over fire regime in the Big Woods region when compared to topography.