Just before Long Island was hit with the rain and thunder brought on by Tropical Storm Elsa, the LIISMA team made it to four priority waterbodies at Sears-Bellows County Park to conduct aquatic invasive species monitoring.
In the fall of 2020, in collaboration with the Long Island Metro AIS Task Force, LIISMA created a waterbody prioritization assessment. This assessment and subsequent plan scored Long Island water bodies from 1 to 6 (6, being the highest priority) based on several factors with the goal of determining which water bodies should be prioritized for invasive species monitoring in the 2021 field season. If a waterbody is within an invasive species prevention zone (ISPZ) or management complex, contains rare ecological communities or species, and/or hosts emerging species, then this waterbody would be rated as higher priority. (A complete breakdown of scoring is listed at the end of this article)*. From this list of over 700 water bodies, seventeen of them scored a 6 and were scheduled into our field season for the LIISMA team to survey.
Over the course of two days, we surveyed 4 waterbodies spanning 22 acres within Sears-Bellows County park. They included:
- Bellows Pond — 14.5 acres
- Big House Pond — 4 acres
- Little House Pond — 1 acre
- Division Pond –2.5 acres
Big House Pond, Little House Pond and Division Pond are all Coastal Plain Atlantic White Cedar Swamps, with a state conservation ranking of S1 – critically imperiled in New York. These beautiful swamps were filled with a number of sedges and rushes, as well as carnivorous plants like native sundews (Drosera spp.) and bladderworts (Utricularia purpurea and U. vulgaris). They are also home to their namesake, the Atlantic white cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides), which are extremely slow growing trees that may live up to 1000 years.
At each pond, we conducted rake tosses using two rakes that have been removed from their dowels, and clamped together with a long rope attached to the end. Based on the acreage of a pond, we conducted that number of rake tosses (i.e: 15 acres = 15 rake tosses) where we “tossed” the rake into the water, pulled it up, and assessed the density of plant coverage as well as identified the plants that are are caught by the rake. We then documented that information in Simple Aquatic Survey Pro (SASPro), a program within theSurvey123 ArgGIS app that was developed by the iMapInvasives team for streamlined AIS surveying that is crosswalked directly to the iMapInvasives database.
The majority of our rake tosses yielded native plants like bladderwort, watershield, white waterlily, and pondweeds. In deeper sections of Bellows pond, no plant matter was caught.
Along with rake tosses, we also visually scouted the area for invasive species, and found two stands of phragmites — one in Big House Pond and the other in Little House Pond. Within Big House Pond, the stand consisted of less than 50 stems, with a few old stems present. In Little House Pond there were less than 10 stems and no old stems present. We are working on collaborating with the county to manage these populations so as to prevent their spread and impact in these critically imperiled areas.
Throughout the rest of the field season, we will be surveying at Little Long Pond, Long Pond, and Crooked Pond in Sag Harbor, Oyster Pond in Montauk State Park, Round Pond in Otis Pike State Forest, Fox Pond in Calverton Ponds, as well as Connetquot East Pond and Connetquot River in Connetquot State Park.
Phragmites in Big House Pond
