All bogged down

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Tom Rankin

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On 5/24/6, Laurie, my son David, and I went with Prof. Michael Kudish to visit a bog in the Catskills, which has never been studied before. Dr. Kudish is probably the foremost authority on Catskill flora. (The bog is near Dick Cheney's alternate dwelling - an 'undisclosed location'! :D )

We only had to walk a few minutes from the road to get there, but we were hauling heavy metal poles, sampling equipment, shovels, etc. for studying the bog, so we were glad it wasn't a long walk.

The bog turned out to be about 600' long and 150' wide. It was in a mixed forest. The trees suddenly stop and the bog starts. The types of vegetation change very quickly. Suddenly, there are mosses, ferns, flowers, different types of trees, even different types of birds and animals. We walked around the outside of the bog to measure it (it appeared we were following a deer run most of the way) and noted the inflow and outflow. Dr. Kudish took notes at a furious pace. He cataloged all the plants in the bog and measured trees nearby, noting some old growth as well. We dug down to various depths in the bog and took samples of the peat and silt.

This was an interesting bog in that there was a thick layer of silt over the peat. So, it seemed that there was first a bog, then a lake, then another bog over time. How much time, we will have to wait and see, as Dr. Kudish will be sending samples off to be Radio-Carbon dated.

The whole day in the bog was fascinating. My son is an environmental biology major at SUNY ESF, which is where Dr. Kudish did his undergraduate studies, so they hit it off. Although my son will probably become an ornithologist, I think he really enjoyed being out with an experienced scientist in the field.

After the bog, we drove to another place I had wanted to visit for a long time, ______ Lake. It's on private property, so you can only get near it. We bushwhacked to within about 100 feet, on state land. I took a few pictures from within the trees. What a beautiful Lake! :D

The flies were out in force all day, but a little DEET kept them at bay!
 
What a tease!

I think I have a good idea of where you were but don't worry, I won't tell either! :rolleyes: :D
 
I wonder if the good doctor is familiar with the Hawley Bog in western Mass? It's an easy walk to it from my house. It's a quaking bog, I believe, but I am not entirely certain just what that means.....It is a very pretty place with a boardwalk meandering through it...many unusual plants and other life forms...Have walked it in all seasons to admire its beauty..... :)

...Jade
 
BTW, Tom, the bog he took our group to was near the summit of Twin Mntn; according to DrK; at that time it was one of the very few high altitude true peat bogs in the Catskills! (and I can't recall now what the criteria for "true bog" are) :p

Jade, your bog sounds lovely. I love hiking on bog bridges.
 
starbug2000 said:
Any (non-location-disclosing) photos of the bog? It sounds like an interesting place.
Sure! Thanks for reminding me!

http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4854.JPG - At the edge of the bog
http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4863.JPG - Painted Trillium at the edge of the bog
http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4872.JPG - Dr. Mike getting down and dirty!
http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4868.JPG - Bag and Tag
http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4870.JPG - David, ready for the bugs!
http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4876.JPG - Near the heart of the bog
http://home.hvc.rr.com/trankin/IMG_4871.JPG - Cinnamon Ferns - very abundant!
 
jade said:
It's a quaking bog, I believe, but I am not entirely certain just what that means.....
una_dogger said:
at that time it was one of the very few high altitude true peat bogs in the Catskills! (and I can't recall now what the criteria for "true bog" are)
ok, I'll bite:

I'm pretty sure quaking bogs are bogs where the sphagnum mat lies on top of water and is thin enough in spots that it is not solid & therefore walking on top of it is sort of like walking on a waterbed. (in some cases there is a floating mat unattached to the shore) If the part of the bog you are standing on consists of moss w/ peat underneath that's thick enough that it damps most of the vibrations (or is peat all the way down to the bottom of the pond / kettle hole) then it won't "quake" when you walk on it, though the peat moss might be a bit squishy.

most bogs that we call bogs are actually fens; a true bog or ombrotrophic bog has all of its water intake come from the atmosphere ("ombro" = rain), either through rain/snow or fog, whereas fens can receive runoff from higher ground. I don't know much about NY state bogs but in New England nearly all the true bogs are in Maine in Hancock or Washington County, near the coast where much of their water comes from fog. A true bog will generally have a lower pH than a fen; the term "bog" in a scientific sense sometimes includes more acidic fens so that the difference between "bog" and "fen" may be a choice of pH cutoff rather than where the water came from.

"Bogs of the Northeast" by Charles Johnson is a good source for this stuff. if you're too lazy to borrow/buy the book, NH Natural Heritage Bureau has a nice online report on the Bogs and Fens of New Hampshire (warning, it's a large PDF file) which gets a bit into the technical stuff in sections (especially the quantitative/statistical ecology, bleah), but it's pretty well written & describes various subtypes of bogs/fens according to their pH and plants you find there.

I'm still envious, though. :rolleyes:
 
Fens can be interesting places - in the bottom corner of our former home in Williamstown, VT was a fens of approximately 1 acre. I learned details of it somewhat accidently in talking with a fellow who worked for the Nature Conservancy and happened to have done the inventory on it. It was at the bottom of a long hill, and bordered a small stream, so surface water flowed just under the surface. While you didn't want to walk on it during the spring (sank too far down), during the summer and fall you could so long as you wore rubber boots. It was a fascinating place, full of strange and exotic plants, including the Venus Flytrap, which I'd assumed was a tropical plant. One of our cats loved to explore it also.
 
una_dogger said:
BTW, Tom, the bog he took our group to was near the summit of Twin Mntn; according to DrK; at that time it was one of the very few high altitude true peat bogs in the Catskills! (and I can't recall now what the criteria for "true bog" are)

The one we went to was sort of part fen and part bog. There was a stream, but part of the area was higher than the inflow as well.

Laurie has been to many bogs with Dr. K, and she says there are bogs on Sugarloaf, Balsam Lake, Westkill, Dry Brook Ridge, to name a few.

Dr. K. looks for fossils to see what the forest looked like way back when.
 
Looks suspiciously like the area surrounding the peat bog owned by my college, though ours is a bit of a hike from the road and a bit west of what I consider the Catskills as well-How close to the road is this bog?
 
Tom, all cool stuff. Looks like many of the lower elevation Catskill bogs I know. High elevation bogs are actually fairly numerous in the Catskills, probably because small glacial basins were so easily scoured out in the relatively soft sandstone (as opposed to the harder rock of the Adirondacks and other northeastern mountains). Many of these are in small saddles near summits limiting the run-off water that enters the bogs. The last ice age covered the Catskills up to about 3900' on the higher peaks. I believe the highest documented peat bog is on Doubletop at 3820'. The oldest peat bog that Dr. Kudish has found near Mongaup Pond has been radiocarbon dated to 8990 years, and with the normal correction factors Dr. Kudish estimates it may be as old as 10,040 years.

Dr. Kudish is giving a lecture on First growth forests in Ulster County (mainly Catskills) at Ulster Community College on May 31, 2006, 6 PM. On that webpage, is a link to a description of his book The Catskill Forest, A History, with an excerpt on bogs. There is also is an email address for Dr. Kudish. He is quite receptive to having "porters" assist him on his Catskill hikes and studies. He is quite eager to answer questions about his work if you choose to assist him. Although you may be collecting bog bore samples, you will never be bored.

His book describes about two dozen bogs that he has studied (including some recent studies in the addendum). It also discusses his work with microfossils (e.g. pollen grains) and macrofossils by which he has been able to document the advance and retreat of various tree and plant species in the Catskills. The bog studies are just a small piece of this monumental work. The book is quite readable by non-scientists while also being very scholarly. The description of the book at Amazon also has more extensive excerpts which can be viewed online. I believe I consult his book several times per week, probably more than all of my other Catskill books combined. It is probably the most authoritative book ever written on the natural history of the Catskill Mountains.
 
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