On Saturday January 29th at approximately 15:30 I visited Griffith Woods Park located on the banks of the Elbow River in the southwest of Calgary, Alberta. The park has an area of 93 hectares however all my observations were made within a 1-kilometer distance. Griffith Woods Park has several paved and unpaved relatively flat paths that vary from 4 km to 6.5 km in lengths. All the paths have side walkout trails for easy access to the Elbow River. The park is on the outskirts of the neighborhood known as Discovery Ridge, with several houses backing onto the park. It is known to be inhabited by deer, coyotes, moose and several species of birds. Common plant species found year-round are white spruce trees and balsam poplar trees, while orchids and Alberts Wild Roses are found in the spring and summer. The park is designated as a special protection natural environment park by the City of Calgary.
On the day of my visit, it was partly cloudy with a slight breeze from the west and 6 °C, warm for the season due to a chinook. These conditions were similar the five days prior to my visit and this warm weather had melted much of the snow that was present a week ago. The depth of snow varied from 0 cm- 5 cm and the area had significant ice built up on the ground. My expected study area is 1 km in length and is found to the sides of a less travelled path where there are several access points to the Elbow River. The water speed of the river at different vantage points varied from still, slow moving, and medium moving. This is presumably due to minimal mountain run-off this time of year. When examining the river closely there was no visible aquatic wildlife within the water (understandable due to the winter season). However, a pair of ducks was spotted floating (shown below). Other wildlife seen was a lone deer close to the residential line (shown below but difficult to see in the tree line) and several swallows were seen flying overhead and heard chirping in the distance. There were several dog tracks, it is possible they were from coyotes, but I presume more likely were from domestic canines enjoying a walk with their owners. The river is surrounded by a forest environment and the vegetation seemed to follow the same pattern at all river vantage points; shrubs being closest to the river followed by coniferous trees then deciduous trees mixed with coniferous tress. Several pinecones (varying from 10 to approximately 80) were found below almost all coniferous trees. Also 10 coniferous trees had large bumps protruding from them at various heights. I am unsure what these abnormalities are and may wish to investigate them more in my final project.
I thought of many questions during my exploration, and I believe some of them may be a good starting point for my final project. These questions consisted of: 1) What are the bumps on coniferous trees? Is there abundance affected by distance from water? 2) Is a tree’s pinecone production affected by distance from the river? 3)How does the speed of the river affect plant species variation? Same question but regarding depth of the river.
Below are exerts from my field journal.
