From left, Mitch Chandler, Cassie Wohlgemuth and Ryan Jess presented their senior thesis proposals April 1. Not pictured is Kelsey Gobroski, who gave her presentation via distance delivery from Anchorage.The spring crop of SNRAS senior thesis projects covers a variety of topics, from the forest floor to rodeo in Alaska.
Students presented their thesis proposals April 1 and will work on their projects until the end of fall semester 2011.
Cassie Wohlgemuth: Resource Management Plan for Wedgewood Wildlife Sanctuary
Wohlgemuth will examine the 75 acres of forests and wetlands adjacent to Creamer’s Field Wildlife Refuge. Previously owned by a gravel extraction company, the property is now owned by Fountainhead Development Co.
“The land has a wide variety of usable resources, including recreation, vegetation, wildlife and water,” Wohlgemuth said. “It’s really beautiful back there.”
The land already has some trails and restoration projects but there is no resource management plan, which is exactly what Wohlgemuth will tackle. “A management plan is critical for efficient, scientific, logical decisions by land managers,” she said.
Wohlgemuth compared state and federal agencies’ methods of preparing resource management plans. “Overall they are generally similar format: determine the objectives, gather scientific data, create alternatives and evaluate to see which maximize the management objectives.”
In order to choose methods that will best fit Wedgewood, she will meet with the company’s resource managers to discuss their objectives and goals. “I want to include everything that could solve the issues,” Wohlgemuth said. She will also take an inventory of resources, to possibly include vegetation and invasive plant mapping and fish and wildlife population estimates.
“If we know the baseline conditions of the resources it will help determine feasible management actions,” Wohlgemuth said.
Ryan Jess: Is Elodea canadensis Invading Chena Slough?
When American water weed (Elodea canadensis) was found in Chena Slough in August 2010 it caught the attention of many local citizens; it also attracted the attention of Ryan Jess. “To what extent is it invading the slough?” he asked. He plans to take a snapshot in time this summer, kayaking every part of the slough he can to determine where the plant is growing.
“Elodea is a fascinating plant,” he said. “It has the ability to grow in a lot of conditions. It prefers clear cold habitats between 10 to 20 degrees Celsius in the summer and silty or organic substrates. Chena Slough is the perfect environment.”
The plant can survive in ice and grows rapidly. “Is it an invasive species?” Jess asked. “It remains to be seen. Its closest native habitat is 1,000 miles away in British Columbia.”
The mystery of how Elodea got into Chena Slough could be as simple as someone dumping an aquarium’s contents into the water, as Elodea is a common aquarium plant which can be purchased online.
“It’s amazing how much biomass this plant is able to grow,” Jess said. It can affect the native vegetation, salmon spawning areas and even hinder recreational opportunities due to limiting the navigation of the water.
“It can change the whole ecosystem where it takes off,” Jess said.
In addition to trying to determine the extent of the population in the slough, Jess will map out the GPS points where he finds the plant.
“It’s just going to be one man in a kayak in a slough,” Jess said. “It will give managers a good idea how to attack this.
Mitch Chandler: Alaska Rodeo
When Mitch Chandler, a student who helps pay his way through college as a bull rider, talks about rodeo his passion shines through. “I grew up around rodeo. I love it more than any woman; it’s a lifestyle,” Chandler said. “It comes from tradition.”
Rodeo provides youth and adult interaction and opportunities for young people to stay out of trouble, Chandler said. “It brings communities together.” There are also economic benefits, he said. “It’s a multi-million dollar industry.”
In Alaska, only a few places host rodeos, including Ninilchik, Soldotna, Kodiak, Palmer and Anchorage. While Fairbanks used to include a rodeo in its Tanana Valley State Fair it hasn’t done so for several years. Chandler wants to find out if there is enough interest in rodeo to bring back the events.
He will prepare a survey to administer at the Fairbanks fair this August. He will also contact fair boards in the western states to see how profitable rodeos are and will connect with the state fair in Palmer, where the largest rodeo in Alaska occurs.
Once his work is done, Chandler would like to present it to the board of the Tanana Valley State Fair.
Kelsey Gobroski: Competition on the Forest Floor, Evaluating Moss-Lichen Interactions in Boreal Alaska’s Black Spruce Ecosystem
Black spruce trees cover 44 percent of the Interior, most growing in common bogs or north facing slopes. They are driven by fire disturbances. Gobroski said there are no published observations of lichen/moss competition on the forest floor and she would like to do exactly that.
Her hypothesis is that foliose lichens have a greater competitive advantage over acrocarpous than pleurocarpous mosses.
“The implications are laying in the moss mat,” Gobroski said.
She plans to study 10, 10 x 10-meter plots at five to 10 sites, comparing the frequency of mosses. They will be on north facing sites, mid-slope off of Murphy Dome Road and the Steese Highway.
“To understand where the ecosystems are going we need to look at moss and lichens,” she said.
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