Hello Families,
We had such an awesome day! I don't have time to explain the specifics of each photo (and some of them aren't in order), so I will just give a brief summary of the day. We started the day by experimenting with fire boards (these are boards that we load up with matches to create scale experiments of actual wildland fires). After finishing, I tallied it up and we burned 1,500 matches during these experiments! One aspect of this that was really interesting was that these scale experiments did a great job of demonstrating some principles of fire behavior we analyzed in class. After this we hiked up to the marsh. One interesting part of this marsh is that it is in the process of succession. About 1,000 years ago it was a lake, and over the years it gradually fills in with sediment. In the future, this marsh will turn into a meadow, and eventually a forest. Our main purpose in this ecosystem was to discover insect diversity and look at turbidity. Following the aquatic sciences we split into two groups and the students chose which group to join. One group went on a discovery hike with me to the northern tip of the peninsula (which turned out to be a 5 mile scamper around the edge of the lake, followed by bushwhacking to find the trail), and the other group chose to do nature art. After both groups returned to MOSS we had a wonderful time down at the beach. Several of our CREW jumped in the lake (I should tell you there was still snow on the beach and the lake just thawed last week). We were whooping and yelling and had such a fun time! After the beach we had a really fun campfire, roasted some marshmallows, and played board games in a yert! Today was definitely the best day yet!
