akim2783's Journal

Today I walked around the Pine Tree Preserves near the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. I went as soon as the rain had stopped, so it was very chilly and humid. The sky was pretty cloudy and gloomy compared to other days. While looking around, I found many different plants and even a squirrel! I believe I was able to find an example of each of the 4 main groups of plants as I found pine trees (Gymnosperms), moss (Bryophyta), ferns (Polypodiopsida), and flowers (Angiosperm). Looking around and seeing all of the plants made me think about how they are all photolithoautotrophs. I was also able to notice that the moss that I found was in the gametophyte phase, which means it would be haploid and produce gametes by mitosis.

Today I went on a walk around Houghton Garden. It was pretty chilly and windy, and the sky was gray and cloudy. While walking around, I saw many different types of trees, some of which had labels on them. When I first started looking for fungi, I wasn't really able to see any, but as I wandered further through the garden, I found some interesting fungi! Most of them were on trees or rocks. It was interesting to see how different they looked. I also saw lots of plants and heard some birds but wasn't able to see any. I took my time to explore and look around walking slowly, which was a nice contrast to rushing to my next class on campus. The observations I made really made me think about how if I were to measure the biodiversity of different samples in the garden, the alpha diversity would probably be different based on the part of the garden the sample was from because of the different fungi, plants, and other organisms in each sample.

I walked around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir today for about 35 minutes. The weather was very nice today. Even though the sun was out, the breeze made it feel cool. Even though I had walked around the res several times before, this was the first time I really looked around and saw the biodiversity around me. I was surprised to see so many interesting looking plants that had never caught my eye before. I was also able to see a swan, ducks, and a bird. This made me also think of ecosystem services and services to ecosystems because as much as the biodiversity around the res helps us, I think most people do their part for maintaining the area clean. I also thought that using the different measures of diversity would be useful here because even though I only walked around the res, I saw different living things in different areas around the res.