Once you have set up your site and tagged your plants, you are ready to collect data! Here is a quick description of how what you will do:
1. Collect your first data as soon as the majority of berries on the plant are ripe (this is usually when you set up your site)
2. Collect data once a week until the plant are covered with snow or until you can no longer monitor them without disturbing them (e.g., by shaking snow off).
3. During the period when plants are covered with snow you will take snow depth measurements once a month and take some pictures.
4. Once the snow melts you start monitoring once a week again. If the snow melts in the middle of winter, resume monitoring until the ground is covered with snow again.
5. When all the fruits are gone OR when the plants flower again (which ever comes first), you stop monitoring.
6. When the majority of berries are ripe, start monitoring again for year 2.
Go to the "Step 5: Submit Data" page to find out your options for submitting data and to download the data sheets.
Site name, date and species MUST be filled in for the data to be of any use to us!
We are tracking individual plants, so we want to make sure we know who is who!
Note: youth groups will likely use names while individuals may use just numbers. As long as we can keep track of individuals, we don't care!
Count berries in six different categories (see the berry category page for more pictures):
In this example, the data for these two lowbush cranberry plants are recorded on the datasheets for youth groups (one datasheet per species, top two images) and on the datasheet for individuals (1 page for all plants, bottom image)
Make a note of anything interesting that you saw. For example, maybe you saw ants scurrying around the berries, or a bird removing one. Maybe a moose bedded down on your berry patch and knocked most of the berries off.