Environmental Study Of Lechtenberg Park

[Turtle]

since the local authorities won't communicate with me, i went looking elsewhere. i have now located & written to mr soukup of Trillium parviflorum Soukup fame. seems he is an expert on trillium. :QuestionM i have already learned something new by this search, i.e. the seeds' mysterious attractiveness to ants. :( we shall see what we shall seed. :doh: :hyper: fascinating! :Alien:

 

PROFILE: Volunteer Cultivates McMicken's Not-So-Secret Herbarium

 

...As if these accomplishments aren’t enough, Soukup currently works with members of McMicken’s chemistry department to study two problems: (1) the nature of chemical compounds in Trillium seeds to which ants are attracted to learn more about the process by which they disperse seeds even to great distances and (2) the acids of the seed fats of the worldwide Jack-in-the-pulpit family in order to learn more about the origins and evolution of this very important group of plants. Already seven acids, previously unknown to science, have been found.

 

Professor Soukup’s reputation reaches far beyond UC and its herbarium. He has received worldwide attention for his extensive and ongoing study of wildflowers of the globally dispersed Jack-in-the-Pulpit family, and his research has been reported at national and international meetings and in several journals. He recently authored a chapter in The New Flora of China, and his work is cited throughout The Orchids of Venezuela.

 

In a very real sense, Victor Soukup is a man for all seasons in a place that is not so secret after all.

 

[Turtle]

i noticed from the road that the beaver have girdled some trees on the southern boundary of the park. you can see them from 1/2 a mile away. :bouquet: :shrug:

[Turtle]

three-and-a-half months since i last posted & the thread is getting a couple hundred views a month. nonetheless, that's encouraging in the face of all the discouraging words. :) anyway, g'donya readers and i have nothing to report as lechtneberg park is not on my way to anywhere and i have not made any point of getting out there. :naughty: :hyper: i have it second hand however that nothing is changed, but then any such report i take with a lot of salt. (that's a biblical reference joke. :doh: ) well, let's hope & suppose that no noose is good noose. thnx for following a turtle into an extremely old forest. . . . . .

[Turtle]

g'day dear tender readers, and dirtballs too. with the new forum changes, i have some work ahead of me setting right all the image links so that they display. this being the preeminent - ok, the only - detailed discussion & description of Lechtenberg Park in the county of Clark in the state of Washington, i take my responsibility seriously...more or less. :lol:

 

anyways, the videos aren't working yet & i will have to wait for tormod's help with that, but most of the stills are in the new Gallery & just need the post links fixed and i have all the others somewhere on disk. if a picture displays then obviously i have fixed it, and i am adding the little black-arrow-in-yellow-circle icon to the post heading of each entry i have edited. the images put up as "attachments" seem to be intact.

 

here are links to the 2 Gallery folders with Lechtenberg piscs in the mean time. B) i will have this all done at my usual whizzing pace. . . . .:mellow: . . . :o

 

http://scienceforums.com/gallery/album/727/47-lechtenberg-forest/

 

http://scienceforums.com/gallery/album/727/138-lechtenberg-forest-ii/

[Turtle]

okaly dokaly. i'm working backwards & have everything gussied up back through page #25. :lol: i had errands today so decided to do a drive-by on the park. :steering: i have annotated a google earth screen shot & have it below.

 

► the field to the south of the park -marked in red- has been hayed, i.e. mowed & bailed. it's those big round/cylindrical kinda bails. i wonder what they plan to feed it too? the lupine seeds can be toxic to cattle if eaten with a sufficient amount of leaves, & this field has a lot of lupine. :shrug:

 

► the orange line east of the park & across the road is an area where there is a sign up saying a new church is going to be built.

 

► the field adjacent to the eastern park boundary -this is where i saw signage saying development is coming- is mowed, there is no signage, but at the back i saw many small wooden stakes. i have marked the approximate area of the stakes in purple on the map. just behind the staked area & marked in blue is a ditch not visible on the map or from the road. having been there i can tell you it is manmade, narow, and deep and it disappears into the park, presumably on into lacamas creek.

 

► i hope these folk are doing this right, however the last 15 years aren't a good indicator i must say. :doh:

 

► overall, the large tree canopy aof lechtenberg park county of clark ppears intact and the understory trees & herbaceous plants as well.

 

► that's all from this beak. . . . .

 

[Tormod]

I love all your postings, Turtle. I wish we could travel together one day. :steering: :lol:

[Turtle]

I love all your postings, Turtle. I wish we could travel together one day. :crash:

 

:lol: takk; enhver tid min venn! :crash: :doh:

[Turtle]

an inch of rain in my gauge today put me in mind of the regular flooding at lechtenberg park. i recall mentioning the shallowness of lacamas creek in the park and the hard-rock bottom & i have since found a recent geologic map that marks out the extent of the formation there and the rock-type. produced in 2006, the map is primarily concerned with the nearby failed cinder cone, green mountain, which i mention because while lechtenberg is not listed on the map as a park, green mountain is. well...for the time being anyways. :doh: so, here we go thens.

 

 

 

Map Source

 

from the map key:

Ttfh - Hyaoclastic sandstone member (Pleistocene or

Pliocene)—Indurated, coarse-grained sandstone and granule

conglomerate composed largely of glassy to lithic basaltic debris;

commonly contains dispersed pebbles and cobbles; cobble

conglomeratic beds locally abundant. Crops out on northern shores

of Lacamas Lake and in bed of Lacamas Creek west of Lacamas

Campground. Equivalent to rocks called vitric sandstone by Trimble

(1963) and Tolan and Beeson (1984) and correlative with strata in

the type area of the Troutdale Formation along the Sandy River in

Oregon (Hodge, 1938). Thickness in map area unknown but

increases to southwest and may exceed 50 m. ...

 

on another note, i have fixed all the image/video links in this thread back through page #23. :artgallery: so, well...you know. . . . . . .

[freeztar]

► the field adjacent to the eastern park boundary -this is where i saw signage saying development is coming- is mowed, there is no signage, but at the back i saw many small wooden stakes. i have marked the approximate area of the stakes in purple on the map. just behind the staked area & marked in blue is a ditch not visible on the map or from the road. having been there i can tell you it is manmade, narow, and deep and it disappears into the park, presumably on into lacamas creek.

 

Hey Turtle, can you describe the stakes in the purple area? Were they in lines, or randomly placed? Were they wooden stakes? Did they have flags on top? Any plastic dresses on the bottom of the stakes?

[Turtle]

Hey Turtle, can you describe the stakes in the purple area? Were they in lines, or randomly placed? Were they wooden stakes? Did they have flags on top? Any plastic dresses on the bottom of the stakes?

 

short & bare wooden stakes from what i could tell. i couldn't see the bottoms or any alignment pattern. :( sounds like i have to go check now, huh? :hihi: did you ever hear anything back from dnr? other than that one fella at wsu extension service referring me to the county, i haven't heard a word from anyone. :shrug:

[Turtle]

this video of my lechtneberg park walk-by today is so raw that even i haven't watched it. danger is all about it though if you just read the signs. gotta run for now :dogwalk: so walk with me. . . . . :tree:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtORGVgwfl0

[Turtle]

so nows ladies & germs, let me give you something of a narration now that i have reviewed my film. mind you i have an agreement with forest spirits in which i don't believer in them & they favor me occasionally wither reasons to reconsider. :hihi: so it goes....

 

i begin my walk along goodwin road at the sw corner of the park. that's the park on the left where you can't see the forest for the trees. i see they mowed the shoulder recently, but as you can see it's one narrow way. a few minutes along i pan the camera across the road to show the church camp that bounds lacamas creek to the east for most of its remaining trip to lacamas lake. the next main stop, & this is for you friend freeztar as i recall you once called this a favorite, is to get some shots of the jewel weed growing in abundance along a short stretch. mr. lyons wrting in my Wildflowers of Washington guide says of thes complex flowers (paraphrasing) " i almost didn't include this flower because it is so scarce, but it is so beautimous that i have included it". i'll see if i can get some clear stills from the video, but i know somewhere back in this thread i photographed it inside the park & i will see to getting that restored asap.

 

paragraph: ( :D ) next pause in the walk is at the bridge over lacamas creek. the creek is the wet water moving, the bridge is the part with holes under the road, and the dark green metal tower is the flow metering station maintained by the state of washington. i wonder if those folks pay attention to any thing else in the forest? :shrug: well, i digress. moving a short bit further east along the road -i could get a good measure if i count my steps heard in the video - we stop again to see the official sign which by any one's accord is only visible from a standing position right where i stood. let's see...what did it say? something like "Green Mountain Resorts:DANGER construction zone: no trespassing: trespassers will be prosecuted". ahhhh resort! can't ya feel the love?

 

finally at the destination, a spot along the public road easment from which to get some record of those little wooden stakes i mentioned. well, there they are. looks like one might have a red top, but i was having some trouble getting the auto focus to stay on the far side & not the rose-hips in the ditch. and then, right before the video ends, what should happen to fly low & exactly over those stakes but a spirited great blue heron. you remember them from the park right? the ones that nest there high in the doug firs? i wonder how they will get along with those resort folk?

 

well, that's a wrap i guess. thanks for coming along. . . . . :tree:

[Turtle]

so i grabbed a still shot of the flow station on lacamas creek in lechtenberg park, county of clark from my video. have a look.

 

 

now, why do you suppose it is so tall? could it be they built it slightly taller than the highest expected water level? do ya think!!?? :doh:

 

i mentioned the station as being run by the state, but i found it listed as run by the county. :shrug: no matter; flooding is flooding. i have to find the entries that i posted in this thread on the flooding i witnessed in the course of this study, but here is some real data from the station for 2007 in the mean tide...erhm...mean time.

 

county directory page: Flow Monitoring

 

goodwin road station 2007: 2007 Water Year Mean Daily Discharge

 

Edit: the flooding i reported was in December 2007, post #205; here's that flow graph: 2008 Water Year Mean Daily Discharge

[Turtle]

grabbed another notable still from the vid. is it just me, or is that a waterline mark across the top of the sign? :omg: well, we're into a la niña pattern now they say & for my locale that usually means a wetter than average winter. would eye love a photograph of this sign under water or what!! :omg: stay tuned. . . . . . . . . .

 

[Turtle]

i have grabbed a clip for the last specific mentions i gave for the video. this is a great blue heron overflying one of the stakes. these birds have wingspans up to 2 meters (6.5 feet). :omg: the line where the grass stops & shrubbage starts marks the line of the deep narrow ditch into lechtenberg park that i earlier mentioned & marked on a map. :)

 

[Turtle]

i mentioned the himalayan blackberry lining much of the eatern park boundary, but never photographed it. i have grabbed a couple stills from the video and added my red arrows to indicate what is the blackberry. having been walking their, i can say that it has penetrated the forest 40 feet or more from the field edge. :naughty:

i was going to point out that this is a state class C noxious weed & owners are responsible to control it under county codes, but then i found that clark county has repealed all weed control statutes and the weed control board as well on july 27, 2010 :doh: attachment #3 is a screen shot of the county page declaring the repeals; these things have a way of disappearing it seems. ;) (click on the "+ Title 7 WEED CONTROL CODE" line in the green box at the left side of screen at link)

http://www.codepublishing.com/wa/clarkcounty.html

 

here's something on the noxious plant from a county north of me. >>

 

http://www.co.cowlitz.wa.us/noxiousweeds/download%20documents/County%20documents/blackberry_Thurs.pdf

The Himalayan blackberry is the largest and possibly most invasive, non-native variety of blackberries in the Pacific Northwest.

...

Impacts:

Himalayan blackberry grows very rapidly and can cover and replace native habitat that is important for plant and animal diversity. Once established, it will out-compete native vegetation and cover more ground with each season. The fast growing thorny canes make removal difficult and often painful. The canes of Himalayan blackberry can grow ten feet tall and over twenty feet long in a single year. ...

 

so it goes. . . :tree: :tree: :tree:

[Turtle]

... the next main stop, & this is for you friend freeztar as i recall you once called this a favorite, is to get some shots of the jewel weed growing in abundance along a short stretch. mr. lyons wrting in my Wildflowers of Washington guide says of thes complex flowers (paraphrasing) " i almost didn't include this flower because it is so scarce, but it is so beautimous that i have included it". i'll see if i can get some clear stills from the video, but i know somewhere back in this thread i photographed it inside the park & i will see to getting that restored asap.

...

. . . . :tree:

 

on further review, i find now that this weed is introduced! :omg: :naughty: :wilted:

 

burke herbarium - Impatiens capensis

jewelweed - Impatiens capensis (aka spotted touch-me-not, spotted jewelweed)

september 2007

lechtenberg park

clark county washington - introduced