Oct 16th - Volunteers needed for biosurvey of future Lake Arlington Native Garden site.

Arlington Water Utilities and Tarrant Regional Water District are teaming up to create a native plant demonstration garden and prairie restoration at the Lake Arlington Spillway. Before any construction efforts get underway this fall, we would love your help documenting existing biodiversity on the site. The project site is currently a field of low-growing grasses and forbs, both native and non-native, surrounded by low-lying fields with wetland vegetation and bordered by native trees. The site is owned by Arlington Water Utilities and only accessible with permission via a gated entrance.

We are hosting our first biosurvey on Saturday, Oct. 16th from 8am to 10pm. We would love to have anyone interested to join us in documenting the flora and fauna of the site. You can come anytime throughout the day and stay as long or as little as you like. Snacks will be provided under a covered area with chairs for relaxing and socializing.

If you are interested in volunteering, please sign up at this link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0f4eaaaa2ea4fcc61-lake. After registration, we will send an email with directions to the site, instructions for entering the gate and signing in, and a map of the area to explore. If you would like more information not included here, please contact Kimberlie Sasan on iNaturalist at @kimberlietx or by email at kimberlietx@gmail.com.

Posted on 25 September, 2021 21:58 by kimberlietx kimberlietx

Comments

Shucks! I wish I could come to this... Alas, I'll be out of town. Looking forward to seeing the observations come in though! :)

Posted by sambiology over 2 years ago

I will be there. I am part of the Bee City Arlington and Betsy Marsh did a talk with some others about this property and asked for our help. This is also a good plan to help us boost bee observations. I am doing an iNaturalist talk at Fish Creek ahead of the Texas Pollinator BioBlitz. This is good. I will have to make a check of all my gear but I may be out there the whole day. I am not familiar with all of what is no this side. I go to the Lake all the time. It will be a good opportunity to explore new grounds. This project is something special. Our area doesn't really have anything like this set up. I am looking forward to this. I have already signed up for it. It will be a good day of exploration.

I am curious as to note what kind of species are out here. Unlike Richard Simpson and Bowman Springs Park this remains mostly untouched so that will be a good opportunity of its own to see some species that are already there. I will have to bring all my gear including my birding scope just in case we see any birds during the day. I will have all my supplies with me too and my gear. I am curious to know what kind of insects are over in this area. Lake Arlington is a great place to look for insects. Richard Simpson is one of my normal haunts and it is no too far from this location. I have seen the biggest insect loads on that side. Bowman Springs is a good place but mostly for birds and some dragonflies. Folks who are reading this we need more bee observations at this spot. Bees, bees, bees please! I know I will be distracted by a lot of things but I will be looking for bees for the long haul of the day. I will also be taking notes on the insect predators we find and the plants that host them. I have been thinking about my game plan long before this was announce for they did mention they did want to BioBlitz. I am so ready for this.

Posted by galactic_bug_man over 2 years ago

I'm definitely interested, will see if other students would be willing to come!

Posted by stephtran over 2 years ago

-EDIT- I was really looking forward to this but forgot I had a field trip for my Environmental Restorative Biology class that Saturday :(( Can you please remove my slots so someone else can sign up?

Posted by madisong over 2 years ago

Signed up! Looking forward to exploring a new place.

Posted by jblinde over 2 years ago

I will see if I can sneak away from a family gig in Gainesville. =)

Posted by k8thegr8 over 2 years ago

I can be there from 8 to about 10 or 10:30. Have to work that nigh,t but will help as much as I can!

Posted by lulubelle over 2 years ago

Thank you to everyone that came out! Your help is SUPER important to us! Please try to get all of your observations uploaded within the next week so they can be identified and we can start analyzing the data to share it with project stakeholders. The project is already collecting your observations, so you do not need to do anything special to have them included. If you have any questions, please reach out to me so I can make sure all observations are included. (Note: We are aware that many observations are uploading with a location description of "DW GDNS" which is misleading since the location is in Arlington. So far, it looks like only the description is incorrect but the coordinates are good and still loading observations to the project. I'll post more details on the project page if this affects your observations.) Visit the project page here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lake-arlington-native-garden-biosurvey-fall-2021

Posted by kimberlietx over 2 years ago

Some fun stuff was posted! I tried to toss on some ID's -- there are several that still need some ID'ing though:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/identify?project_id=lake-arlington-native-garden-biosurvey-fall-2021

Posted by sambiology over 2 years ago

@kimberlietx I missed it but can I go by myself and make observations?

Posted by madisong over 2 years ago

It looks like everything I had is in there- I was super excited to find the neon skimmer, I thought those were done for the year. It was great fun to explore a new place!

Posted by jblinde over 2 years ago

@madisong Unfortunately it is not open for exploration yet. I'll be sure to tag you in other events happening out there!

Posted by kimberlietx over 2 years ago

@kimberlietx, let me know if other events come up, please & thanks!

Posted by lulubelle over 2 years ago

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