Intern Number Four, Alex Rozen

My name is Alex Rozen and I am the final summer intern for the NSRWA! I am from Carver, Massachusetts and I graduated from Carver High School this spring. I am very excited to begin my first year at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the fall! Although my major is currently undecided, I am very interested in environmental science, and I am so happy to have the opportunity to help out at NSRWA.

On Thursday the 13th of June, Sara Grady, Emily Pitman, and I went out to Mill Pond to set up quadrats around clumps of purple loosestrife plants along the bank of the pond made by the Mill Pond dam.  Purple loosestrife is an invasive species of purple flowering plant that is native to Europe but was introduced to North America in the 1800s. It thrives in shallow wetlands, so Mill Pond is an ideal location for a takeover by the plant. Our mission is to release a purple loosestrife eating beetle, the galerucella, into the Mill Pond area to suppress the current invasion.

Now that the quadrats are in place, we will return to Mill Pond to record the plotted purple loosestrife and then monitor these marked plants when the galerucella are released.

Emily (in the blue) and I (in the pink) staking out the quadrats (top) and in  front of the purple loosestrife plant (bottom)

I am excited to see the results of the galerucella release and all of the other things in store for us interns this summer at the NSRWA!