Madison Nadler

Set-up and tear down introductory labs and assist with various other activities within the biology deparment.

Manage the library when head librarians are not present, assist ciruclation workers, help the public as needed.

Check in and check out books, assist the public, perform shift duties, assist head librarians and student managers as needed.

I worked with the U.S. Forest Service over the summer of 2018 and completed my own research project. My project was to look at the differences in wildlife use of snags (standing dead trees) between different techniques of snag creation. I looked at the presence of cavities in each snag and compared them between the two techniques. The results of this project will be presented at the Midwest Fish and Wildlife Conference in Cleveland, OH in January 2019 as well as at Celebration of Learning at Wittenberg University in April 2019.

Snags have great ecological value because they may have cavities, which provide critical habitat for many animals. In the Huron-Manistee National Forest, snags are created in red pine timber plantations to simulate the number of snags typically found in naturally growing forests. This study compares the value of snags created by topping in 2011 to snags created during a prescribed burn in 2010. GIS/GPS was used to locate and mark snag clumps. Height, DBH, decay class (1-5), and cavity presence was recorded for each clump and compared between and across snag creation type. The burned snags were planted in 1936 or 1938 and the topped snags were planted in 1936 or 1965 but the average DBH of each was similar (burned x̄ = 10.8in; topped x̄ = 10.5in). The presence of cavities below 20ft was compared between burned and topped snags. The average height for burned snags was 42.5ft and topped snags were cut at 20ft, but cavities appeared to be located near the tops of snags regardless of their height. The majority of cavities (83.8) in topped snags were in decay classes one (59.1%) and two (24.5%). In burned snags, the majority of cavities (87.5%) were in decay classes one (18.8%), two (37.5%) and three (31.3%) with decay classes two and three containing the majority of the cavities (68.8%). Below 20ft, topped snags had a greater percentage of cavities (14.9%) than burned snags (6.7%), although there was a greater percentage of cavities in burned snags overall (burned = 24.8%). Creating snags via topping appears to be worth the investment as wildlife appears to use topped snags as much as snags created in a prescribed burn (topped = 49 cavities; burned = 59 cavities). In the future, studies will also compare snags created during the Meridian wildfire of 2010.