Environmental Studies and Biology | McDaniel College

The following is an computer-generated summary of the video transcript.

I'm majoring in environmental studies in biology. I'm from Eldersburg, Maryland, and my Capstone Project was looking at restoring Singleton Matthews Farm. So my project started last semester when I came out here with a partner and identified as many tree species. That's we could out here to get a baseline of what was already here. Then we also use camera trap data to figure out which animals were here. The camera trap is a little camera that we attached to a tree, and it takes a picture when an animal walks by it. So some of the species that are commonly found here we saw in the camera trap data. There was red fox, rabbit, ground hog, a lot of squirrels, possums and raccoons. I started doing research on what ecosystem restoration is how to do it, what to consider when planning for it, and I researched what the ecosystem here could be. The mammals that are here are very characteristic of an oak hickory forest, So to make the farm better, what we would do is plant more species that are typical of oak hickory forest, like more oak trees, hickory trees and try to increase habitat. One of the main goals is to increase connectivity, so there's a lot of forest over there that's not part of the farm. So by increasing the size of the forest on the farm, we're making the habitat bigger. We're making it easier for animals to transition from area to area, which makes it easier for them to reproduce so it could increase their population size and make the overall area healthier. So the work I did last semester identifying the tree species and animal species have already here. We use and applied to the restoration project that we're doing with their conservation biology class for a final. So so far for the restoration, What we've gotten done is a bunch of clearing the land. So it took a bunch of machetes and chopped down all the thorns and vines, and now we have to dig up a lot of the roots, and then after we do that, we're gonna go by our plants, depending on which area you have, depends on which plants are gonna be planting, and another goal in restoring the farm is to make it better for people to. So Singleton Matthews Farm was donated to make Daniel, and then McDaniel bought part of it from Johns Hopkins and Dr Singleton. When he left his part of the farm to Hopkins, he wanted the farm to be used like an academic retreat. So for academic a treat, what we would do is we're planning on putting camping sites in about one into the field so the students and faculty can camp out here and get closer to nature. Then we're also considering agriculture that may be students, create involved with and just be a fun place for students to come and hang out on the weekends, especially during finals times.