Hi John,
This is Julia - I'm taking the professional development course, and we are supposed to post a question for you as an assignment. I usually have no trouble coming up with LOTS of questions, but I'll spare you and only give you two! I work with high school science homeschooled students through a distance learning program. I'm going to come up with a lesson plan around your project there, offer it very soon (like tomorrow) as an option, and hopefully we'll get one or 2 of them tuning into your webinar next week. Here are my questions:
1 - My experience, living in northern NY, where we often have snowpack until late April (not this year!), is that when there is a heavy winter snowpack, even with normal spring temperatures, it takes longer for it to all melt and growth to start. I know you spend a lot of time shoveling to make the experimental plots more equal to the control plots, and that makes sense. But if in fact a climate change causes more snow, as I thought I read somewhere was one prediction, you may have more warmth under the ground in winter combined with a later start to spring growth. What do you think of this hypothesis? Do you have any test plots where you are leaving that extra snow behind the snow fence to melt on its own? I think it would be an interesting comparison. I realize it opens up another whole project, but if it is part of warming, then it seems to be worth studying!
2 - For the control plots, why do you need an FC at all? Can't you just sample the outside air? Am I missing something obvious?
3 (sorry- thought of another!) - I would love to hear more about your "decomposition chamber" project, and how it works. Having students all over the country/world, this would be a fascinating collaborative project.
Thanks a lot! Julia