Litter bags filled with willow leaves and flowers prepped for deployment and deployed in streams at Mount St. Helens. Photos by Carri LeRoy

Litter bags filled with willow leaves and flowers for undergraduate Iris Garthwaite’s independent research project as part of the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program. We use metal ID tags to track willow identity, plant sex, and weevil attack status. 

Willow leaves incubated in the streams of the Pumice Plain decompose and skeletonize over time. Photo by Carri LeRoy 

Litter bags installed in streams help us determine decomposition and organic matter cycling rates. Willow leaves and flowers are colonized by microbes and aquatic macroinvertebrates that eat microbes and shred leaves. SURF student Angie Froedin-Morgensen focuses on invert ID. 

Our research truck turned solar-powered drying oven – our solution to drying leaves at a remote field site! Photo by Carri LeRoy.

The whole crew gets involved when it’s time for peak leaf fall! Our studies are often limited by how much leaf litter we can catch at abscission. On multi-day trips, we get creative about drying leaves – we converted our research truck into a solar-powered drying oven!