Vegetation Monitoring, bugs and More !

These have been a busy last few weeks! Over this time I have found myself helping out with a kid's summer camp at the Coastal Marine lab doing fish printing, collecting crabs for a fellow Doyle Intern's project, beach monitoring and going on a Great Bay Cruise. Even with all these other events going on, I found time to go out and collect all the necessary vegetation data in the Seabrook Dunes for my project. In addition to monitoring the plant community, my boss Alyson proposed an interesting idea which was to sample the insect population as well. Neither of us are entomologists so this was very new to us both. I researched a number of methods of sampling insect populations and decided upon the pitfall trap method. I won't bore you with the fine details but essentially I chose areas within my plots to bury SOLO cups which would capture any unlucky insect who walked close enough to fall in. I found a wide variety of spiders, flies and other insects that I had no idea lived in the dunes! Overall this summer has been very interesting and informative and I look forward to putting together my final dune monitoring report.