One of our major winter/spring projects is the construction of a boardwalk that will permit access across our wetland to the creek. The goal here is to have access to…

For the past decade the U.S. Forest Service has been sponsoring conferences on fire in eastern oak forests. The last conference was held in Carbondale, IL on 20-22 May 2008,…

The latest edition of Plants out of Place (the newsletter of IPAW) just arrived, reminding me of how important this organization has become in Wisconsin. (IPAW is listed as one…

I'm not sure whether it is global warming or some wild gyration of the earth (butterfly effect, perhaps?), but it does seem that our winters are getting snowier. We've had…

We generally use the term "restoration" to refer to what we are doing. Sometimes the noun is modified into "ecological restoration".Sometimes the word "reconstruction" is used instead of "restoration". The…

Today four of us used the basal bark technique with Garlon 4 in Bark Oil to treat mostly small buckthorn stems, as well as brambles, an occasional honeysuckle, and some…

It is not finished yet, but we have a good start on the boardwalk, which will go across our marsh to Pleasant Valley Creek. This project has been designed and…

I am studying the distribution of buckthorn in relation to soil calcium and pH. This started because there was an interesting distribution of buckthorn at Pleasant Valley Conservancy which was…

As readers if these posts know, sweet clover (Melilotus albus and M. officinalis) is one of our major scourges of the summer. It has a very long-lived seed bank and…

Prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis) is one of those conservative prairie species that has a quite restricted distribution in Wisconsin and elsewhere. According to Cochrane and Iltis, it is an indicator…