The Season of "Sprinter"

Laramie is in its classic shoulder-season: Sprinter. The time of year where spring and winter collide, and you might grill out in your flip flops one day and shovel 8 inches of snow the next. Literally. Like the weather we've experienced this week.

But Sprinter is a super necessary season for our native plants that rely on the slowly melting, heavy snow that soaks into the soil. This is good for plant growth, fire prevention, water resources for local communities, etc etc. 

So no complaining about snow! After all, the Berry Prairie plants that you can't even see aren't complaining. If they could, they'd be grinning leaf to leaf!

Written by Brenna  Marsicek, UW Biodiversity Institute

Water Wise?

We have spent a lot of time boasting about the native plants on our green roof, and how they're naturally drought-, wind-, and sun-tolerant, so are ideal for this rooftop setting.  I've also mentioned a few times that Laramie is quite arid – we typically receive around 11 inches of precipitation (including water weight in snow!) per year – only 1 inch more than what classifies a place as a desert. 

So what's with the sprinkler?

As much as we'd like to think that we're perfectly mimicking a natural prairie on our green roof, it's obvious we can't do it in every way.  We can't let pronghorn loose on the roof (though that would be sweet!) and we can't set fire to it (oh goodness, can you imagine the ruckus?).  

And we can't recreate all of the benefits that groundwater, soil depth and topography bring to plants in a natural setting. 

Native v. Natural

We need to be careful when we describe the green roof as mimicking a local prairie.  To clarify:  We use native plants.  We don't pretend this is a natural environment.

In a natural prairie, plants have incredible root systems that, depending on the plant, can grown many, many inches, even feet, into the soil to access groundwater and moisture that our 8-12 inches of green roof soil medium can't provide. 

Topography can also play an important role in a short-grass prairie, providing nooks and crannies for plants to grow in, protected from constant wind and sun and benefited by piled snow and rain run-off. 

The green roof is also surrounded by concrete and brick – increased evaporation due to heat island effect is likely a player as well.  And while we're on the topic of evaporation, look at the color of the soil on the roof compared to the native prairies.  We suspect the dark color absorbs more heat from the sun and evaporates moisture more quickly than in prairie soils.

Natural prairie soil

Green roof "soil"

Furthermore, this isn't just a green roof, it's also a showcase garden.  As such, the aesthetics do matter to some extent.  In order for the Berry Prairie to look as beautiful and healthy as possible, we want to give it an extra boost with supplemented water every so often. 

We also have an drip irrigation system set up, which allows for us to soak the roots when the soil dries out.  We can verify whether the soil is saturated, moist or dry through manually trenching or coring the soil, or through the soil probes we have set up throughout the roof.  The probes are set 4 inches below the surface and measure soil temperature and moisture every hour of every day.

Water Usage

With all this said, we try to be really careful to water only what we need to in order to ensure the health of the plants.  We have watered 4 times so far this summer using a sprinkler and the drip system.  It's a manual process, not automated, so if it rains or if it's cool, we don't need to turn on the sprinklers.


What do you think?  Is it right to water our green roof?  How much, how little, how often, and at what cost?

Written by Brenna Marsicek, Biodiversity Institute

Rocky Mountain Rollercoaster

Welcome to Springtime in the Rocky Mountains.  This is the time when spring taunts us with warm weather, then dumps a foot of snow on our budding tulips.  When we feel the nearly insatiable itch to pack up the snow boots and shovels and bust out the galoshes and spades.  It's a frustrating, tough time of year.

And we love to complain about it.

However, the snowfall we get in the spring is massively critical for our western ecosystems.  Dennis Knight, retired now from the University of Wyoming's Botany department, wrote in his book Mountains and Plains: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes about the importance of snowfall in the spring.  Though he doesn't mention it makes people crabby and morose, he does explain:

"Rain that occurs during warm periods may evaoprate quickly, sometimes even before it can infiltrate the soil.  ... In contrast, snow usually accumulates during the winter, when evaporation is minimal.  In the spring, when accumulated snow melts during a short period when the potential for evapotransiration (ET) is low.  Consequently, the water is more likely to penetrate deeply into the soil."

Prairie ecosystems, with plants characterized by deep root systems, rely on slow, drawn-out (and somewhat annoying) melt water from snow - not just from rain - for maximum water uptake.  

Drought is massively prevalent throughout the country, and very noticeable in the mountain west where forest fires result.  So we can either complain about drought, or complain about snow in spring, but not both.

I think there's a quote about cake that would fit here.

Anyway, summer is just around the corner, and we'll all be ready for it!

Written by Brenna Marsicek, Biodiversity Institute

Berry Prairie Weather

In the beginning of January 2012, we installed a weather station on the northeast corner of the Berry Prairie.  We wanted to be able to measure precipitation, wind speed, temperature, humidity, etc. so we could track this information for years to come.

Holy Data!

The data is very detailed - the weather station takes 26 types of measurements every half hour of every single day!  Those measurements include wind speed, direction and highs, temperature outside, inside, highs and lows, humidity, dew point, wind chill, heat index, precipitation, degree days, and the list goes on.  The image below is a snapshot of the spreadsheet containing all of the data.  What you see is only 83 of 28,190 rows - and that's only for 10 months!  

We're able to put this data into graphic form.  The graph below shows temperature (red line) and precipitation (blue columns) for every half hour of every day of each month since January.
  

Why keep weather data?

Good question.  baseline data in case someone 100 years from now wants to know what the climate in Laramie, Wyoming was like in our present times.  And it's handy for research projects done all across campus and beyond.  In fact, we're using this data for a research project studying the microclimate on the green roof compared with other sites in the area.  More on that soon!

We're happy to share our weather data - contact berryctr@uwyo.edu if you want more information!

Written by Brenna Wanous Marsicek

Winter Wonderful

Snow!  Glorious snow!  

Like most (all?) of the country, Wyoming suffered from severe drought this year, starting with very little snow this spring and even less rain this summer.  For those of you who don't live in Wyoming, we absolutely need spring snow - our ecosystems are adapted to rely on it.  

Below Average 
 
The weather station on the Berry Prairie registered 6.29 inches of precipitation for the year prior to this snowfall.  That's 4.29 inches below our annual precipitation average this time of year... and in a place that gets only 11.5 inches of precip a year, that's a big deal! 

But if we can't get spring snow, we will take fall snow!  As you see below, the prairie is almost buried.  We have about 6 inches, which will melt over the next week and allow the parched ground to soak up the moisture slowly.

Keep your fingers crossed that this winter we can make up some precipitation ground.  

Written by Brenna Wanous Marsicek

 

Prairie Dogs and Biodiversity

Today a group of 6th grade students from Wheatland Middle School (Wheatland is in southeastern Wyoming) came to the Berry Center to learn about prairie dogs.  Not just prairie dogs, but the way that prairie dogs benefit and alter their environments, what they eat and what eats them, how prairies rely on such disturbances, and the changes in prairie and prairie dog ranges over time.

Phew!  There are a lot of topics there.  But the students were broken into five groups and shuffled through five 30 minute sessions that focused on:

1. UW Museum of Vertebrates, showing students preserved prairie animals (not limited to prairie dogs) and the importance of preserving historical specimens.

2. Stable Isotope Facility, showing students how scientists can extract stories and information from tissues in animals.  For example, did you know that you can determine which species of prairie dog you have depending on the level of Nitrogen in the body?  Turns out, the white-tailed prairie dog hibernates and can't expel nitrogen-rich urine during the winter so stores it up in its body, where as the black-tailed prairie dog is active all year round?

3. Wyoming Natural Diversity Database, where students learned about keystone species, prairie dog ranges (historical and current), how prairie dogs change their environments, and more.

4. Rocky Mountain Herbarium, showing students prairie plants that were collected from the Wheatland area and preserved for research.  Some of the specimens are over 100 years old!

5. The Berry Prairie, where students learned about the prairie biodiversity (plants, herbivores, carnivores), rain shadows and why we have short-, mixed- and tall-grass prairies, above versus below ground biomass (75% of a prairie plant is underground!), and how to use a dichotomous key to identify grass species.

Jennifer Richards, a Master's student in UW Ecosystem Science and Management, explains a dichotomous key.

It was a LOT of fun, the kids were really engaged in the lessons, and I think they left with the prairie ecosystem a little closer to their hearts.  As they should.  Because prairies are fabulous.

Students imprinted grasses that they identified on photo-reactive paper, mounted an herbarium label, and took a
shadow of the prairie home with them.

Written by Brenna Wanous Marsicek

Berry Prairie Springs Back!

The Berry Prairie’s first winter turned out to be relatively mild—at least so far. The snow melted off last month, and the “soil” has dried significantly since then. And, with temperatures soaring into the 60’s, and lots of sunshine, the ground has gotten warm enough to stimulate growth. The Prairie still looks mostly brown (and red) from above, but at ground level, there’s a lot to get excited about! 

Fewseed Draba (Draba oliogosperma) is greening up!

Locoweed (Oxytropis nana) is sending up new sprouts

Hooker's Sandwort (Eremogone hookeri) is replacing its brown leaves with green ones!

No doubt we need precipitation—even snow would be welcome—but it sure feels like spring has arrived. Stayed tuned as more species return, and the pasque flowers come into bloom!

Pasque flower (Pulsatilla patens) is always one of the earliest bloomers!

Written by Dorothy Tuthill, Berry Center Associate Director

Seasonal Senescence

"Winter!  Thou art e'er the grand finale,

Bringing death to all the fickle folly,

Of thy fair, but transient sisters.

List their requiem, the wind-wailed whispers.

All browned now and withered lie the leaves,

Gone are the circling swallows from the eaves;

The cheery summer scenes and sounds are past,

Winter reigneth supreme and rides the blast."

-"Winter" from Prairie Poems and Others by F.D. Dibble

Laramie's scene now involves snow and chilly breezes, and the Berry Prairie shows that well.  Now under an inch of snow, the plants are hunkering down for winter.  Following their cues, the Berry Prairie blog writers will take their senescence now too, until the new leaves pop up in spring.

Winter Projects

A couple of prairie-related projects we'll be working on this winter:

1. Weather: You'll see in the photo below that we have installed a weather station on the green roof, which monitors temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speeds, precipitation, dew point, and more.  

That information is routed to a receiver inside the building, which retains all of that data and allows the user (ahem, the people in the Berry Center) to download the information to a computer where we can analyze and share the trends and current conditions.  

2.  Propagation: Karen Panter (you remember her, right?  She's a UW faculty member who propagated a number of the commercially unavailable plants that we installed in the prairie) will be raising a number of seedlings again this winter.  She's focusing on those that didn't grow well last winter/spring, and those that weren't quite ready to be installed this summer. 

The green roof is still open for interested folks to visit, though it's not quite as interesting with most of the plants covered up with snow.  

Have a great winter, see you in the spring!

Written by Brenna Wanous, Berry Center

Snow Falling on Sedums

October 7 marked Laramie's first day of winter.  Not according to the calendar of course, but according to the weather.  And while it was a surprise to wake up on Saturday morning to three inches of snow, I'm sure the plants in the Berry Prairie were even more confused.  (Or maybe not... do they know more than we do?  Could they sense the snow?  Watch the next episode of the Twilight Zone to find out...)

The Berry Prairie was covered with snow on Monday morning.

But in any case, the snow on the Berry Prairie exemplifies one of the questions we have about how this green roof will over winter.  See the photograph above.  There is at least an inch of snow covering those plants, which is 1) maybe good for the plants (insulation for the winter, water supply, erosion protection, etc.), and 2) strange, considering most of the snow elsewhere had melted by Monday morning.

The roof over the Vertebrate Collection extends precisely to that line of snow-no snow boundary.
Monday, October 10

As you see in the photo above, the snow that is above the Vertebrate Collection, including the Berry Prairie and the patio directly south of it, hadn't melted even though snow on the rest of the true ground had. 

Is that a good or bad thing?  How will it influence plant survival over the winter?  Will there be other effects from the roof, light heating from below that causes the plants to not freeze over the winter?

What are your guesses?  Any thoughts on how snow piling and this roof-top environment will fare?

By now, much of the snow is turned to usable precipitation for the plants.  But that was just the first of many snowfalls this winter.  Stay tuned!

Most of the snow has melted by Tuesday morning.

Written by Brenna Wanous, Berry Center

Seasons are a-Changin'

Apologies for the short hiatus!  The blog-master (ahem, that's me) was on vacation.  But we're back - and we have a seasonal treat for you!

Here in Laramie, at 7200' above sea level and at the 41* latitude, autumn has begun.  Nights are cold and days are getting shorter.  Plants are in their last few weeks of the growing season, and the Berry Prairie is starting to show it!

In the photo below, you can see some of the prairie is are starting to turn yellow, orange and bronze.  

Even as the weather changes, some plants are just starting to bloom!  This grass (Little Bluestem, Schizachyrium scoparium) in the northeastern corner of the green roof has a very autumnal coloring, but is in its early stages of flowering. 

 

Check out the sugarbowl clematis (Clematis scotti), its first flower appearance in the Berry Prairie:

If you haven't stopped by the Berry Prairie yet this summer, make sure you visit soon!  We just put up a brochure rack that will help you identify what's out there and also get to know the goals of and rational for the green roof.

Brochures on the wildflowers, grasses, insects, green roof and more are just inside the green roof gate!

Written by Brenna Wanous, Berry Center

Green Roof Foundations

Penstemon virens blooming on a boulder
in front of the Berry Center.

In Wyoming, survival of the fittest is obvious.  Those which flourish are the rugged and the tough, the adaptable and the persistent.  Plants are no exception to the rule.  To test a variety of factors that impact a plant species’ or community’s success, the Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center at the University of Wyoming is installing Laramie’s first large-scale green roof.  Right now, the roof is more brown than green.  But come the end of June, it will have native plants stationed and ready for action.

The Mission

Install, monitor and evaluate native Wyoming plant species in a human-created environment above the Vertebrate Collections at the Berry Center.  To our knowledge, a green roof at this latitude, elevation and variety (all native!) has not been installed before.

The Environment

Laramie is located in southeastern Wyoming at 7200’ above sea level.  The city and surrounding area receive an average of 11” of precipitation per year – the same as Tuscon, Arizona, and would be classified as desert, was it not for the cold winters.  The area experiences an average of 300 days of sunshine per year, and the strength of the sun is amplified but Laramie’s high elevation.  Wind is an important player here, as wind speeds are commonly around 20 mph and can get as high as 60 mph on a blustery day.

The Questions

• Can we mimic natural processes by planting native Wyoming flowers, grasses, shrubs and cacti to create a mini rooftop prairie? If not, what adjustments must be made?   
• Does a green roof at 7200’ above sea level operate the same way as one at much lower elevation?   
• What traits distinguish those plant species that survive or thrive on the green roof from those that don’t?   
• Can we draw pollinators, spiders, beetles, and other matrix-level species to the green roof, and how can we foster their presence? 

The Big Picture

Biodiversity is wildly important to the maintenance of a healthy environment in a variety of ways (if you’re not sure why or which ways, do a quick on-line search).  Experimenting with ways to conserve, protect and reestablish biological diversity in an urban environment is as important to future generations as is the protection of natural environments.  The Berry Biodiversity Conservation Center is home to multiple scientific labs for the study of diversity, from genes to ecosystems – and a green roof is one more way to enhance our understanding of community processes.

Stay tuned.  Installation is scheduled for the week of June 27.

Planting of the Berry Center green roof is schedule to
begin June 27, 2011.

Written by Brenna Wanous, Berry Center