Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Pine Tree Reserve Nature Walk September 28th 2022

On this Wednesday, like most of my Wednesday mornings, I went on a morning walk around the chestnut hill reservoir. Since it was early in the morning, it was still cool with a breezy coming off the water. While a reservoir is manmade by nature, many of the plants and animals I found around it greatly represent the biodiversity around us. I wanted to find both animals and plants. More specifically, I wanted to look for plants that would be considered maybe weeds in a garden but, here in the wild, contribute to the beauty of biodiversity. First, while I couldn’t properly identify the wild plants I spotted around campus, they are a good example of convergent or divergent evolution. These plants seem to be from different species groups from my observation, however, their leaves look similar on different scales. Therefore, they either evolved divergently from a relatively close ancestor or had convergent evolution from different recent ancestors to look similar. I also loved seeing the American Asters around the reservoir, which look similar to one of my favorite flowers: a daisy. I took a picture of them as I would hypothesize that they could be a close relative to daisies. I also found it super cool to see so many animals in the reservoir. At home, I live near a really beautiful pond. Growing up, I always remember seeing geese, swans, turtles, and fish living together. However, a recent construction accident causes oil and other contaminants to get into a small part of the pond. This has left it very different than before, and I haven't seen any turtles or swans in a while. As we discussed in class, human interaction can cause many issues in our environment that animals and plants can not evolve to survive in. Therefore, seeing them in the Chestnut Hill Reservoir is a testament to the maintenance and protection the town provides. Finally, while walking around the Reservoir, it made me think about the cultural ecosystem service this space provides us and how lucky we are to have it.

Posted on September 30, 2022 01:11 PM by reginahfinn