Summer Research during Unusual Times
Despite pandemic-related restrictions limiting those allowed on campus this summer, progress continued on land research projects that have been underway for several years.
Dr. Andrew Martin, an archaeologist and associate professor in the Art and Art History Department, has worked with a team of students since 2017 to excavate a small Native American village site in Grassy Hollow on the campus’s West Farm. The research was prompted by the anticipated construction of a gas pipeline. The team discovered 14 sites, four of which were significant and caused the pipeline route to be shifted in order to protect these sites. In seven test pits alone, 1,000 artifacts were uncovered, some of which date to 10,000 BCE. Last October, Dr. Martin presented a conference paper about the dig at the Midwest Archaeology Conference. This summer, no further excavation occurred, but Dr. Martin began creating a website to publish and share these discoveries with other researchers.
Meanwhile, Dr. Greg Bruland, a professor in the Biology and Natural Resources Department, has been studying the campus’s small streams. Working previously with current students and with recent grads Ian Armesy (C’19) and Rhiannon Davis (C’20) this summer, he monitored hydrology, erosion and sediment transport, and water quality. Over the past year, in particular, a project to monitor the impact of the pipeline on hydrology and water quality has yielded an abundance of data that will inform how effective revegetation and other erosion-prevention activities have been on the pipeline site. Dr. Bruland will also use this data in his Freshwater Ecology class and hopes to coauthor an article with a student researcher for publication in a scientific journal.
Finally, a longtime study of timber rattlesnakes on a different part of campus continued this summer under the direction of Dr. Scott Eckert, chair of the Biology and Natural Resources (BNR) Department. Research began in the 2010–2011 school year with two BNR students, Rigel Valentine (C’11) and Ken Baughman (C’12), whose senior projects explored how the snakes were using their hibernacula (shelters for hibernating) on the bluffs. Ken’s study focused on the cues snakes use to determine when to emerge from their hibernacula in the spring. Because his research was largely the first such study in Illinois, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources used his work to set schedules for activities such as controlled burning so as not to interfere with the snakes’ emergence.
Every year since then, during the snakes’ transition from hibernacula sites to foraging sites, Dr. Eckert and his teams of student assistants—this year Armesy and Davis worked with Eckert—capture the snakes, gather vital biological information on them, and implant each snake with an identification microchip. Some snakes are also implanted with radio transmitters and then tracked all summer as they move to their foraging areas. To date, more than 80 individual snakes have been identified and more than 50 have been tracked all summer (some for as many as five consecutive summers). The tracking has provided a clearer understanding of the way timber rattlesnakes use Principia’s forests and the locations of their critical habitats.
This research has also been important to former biology major and snake team member Andrew Jesper (C’16), currently a PhD student at the University of Illinois. Using cameras placed in front of hibernacula entrances, he monitors the snakes’ movements in and out of their hibernacula and has further refined scientists’ understanding of the cues timber rattlesnakes use when leaving their hibernacula. His ongoing monitoring will be the basis for his doctoral work.