Removal of plants from the climate chambers -- Cool Spring

[christophe-rd]

Hi @DeirdreLoughnan, @lizzieinvancouver, @wangxm-forest and @FrederikBaumgarten

Just a quick summary so far, especially for you @FrederikBaumgarten, since we haven't chatted in a while.

Spring was very early this year so we decided that instead of putting the Warm Spring treatments in the chambers, so they could have an early spring, we put the Cool Spring treatments in the chambers in order to delay their spring. Unfortunately, Warm Spring treatments that remained at Totem had bud burst much earlier than I thought, so we missed all of this very crucial data. It will now be hard to argue that Cool Spring and Warm Spring have a meaningful difference in their growing season days as we don't have a precise date for much of the species (4 out of 9).

That being said, we now need to decide when to remove plants from the chambers. We decided (when Warm Spring Treatments were still going in the chambers) to remove them on a species-by-species basis when most of the individuals have bud burst. Now that it is Cool Spring treatments that are in the chambers, what should we do? Keep the same logic? Remove them all at the same time once they have reached several weeks in the chambers? Please let me know what you all think!

[lizzieinvancouver]

Thanks @christophe-rd ! Though I would quibble with:

It will now be hard to argue that Cool Spring and Warm Spring have a meaningful difference in their growing season days as we don't have a precise date for much of the species (4 out of 9).

We can still argue this ... as the plants outside are still well ahead of the plants in the chambers, even for these species. We've just the lost chance to estimate the treatment effect well, including across species and individuals. This will limit how we can analyse the data and likely lower our statistical power (we will not be able to estimate species or individual variation and thus inflate our noise term in most models), so is not a good outcome, but also not as dire as the phrasing here. We can recover from this.

From @DeirdreLoughnan on 12 April 2024:

Mao and I finished the first round of observations today. We have missed budburst for Acne, Bepa, Poba warm treatment, and Prvi. Essentially all individuals are already at stage 4. But we will have pretty good data for most of the other species.

Can we add here the full species list to help the discussion? I think our options at this point are to move all species at once, or move in 2-3 species groups (with group 1 already established!) ... whatever we do for this we will need to repeat for the fall.

(Just for those ever reading this issue later -- this was not a super early spring; it was pretty average for springs in the last 6 years.)

[lizzieinvancouver]

I chatted with @DeirdreLoughnan today and we wondering if species batches would be good for a couple reasons:

1. If we do them altogether some species will get really small treatments most likely (e.g., Quercus).
2. Some plants do not look so good in the chambers, and it sounds like it's the ones that have budburst... plants often do not do well in chambers for too long so it may be good to take out species set 1 (some set of early species) -- in ~2 weeks

[christophe-rd]

Hi @lizzieinvancouver

Can we add here the full species list to help the discussion? I think our options at this point are to move all species at once, or move in 2-3 species groups (with group 1 already established!) ... whatever we do for this we will need to repeat for the fall.

Here's the list of the species: Acer macrophyllum Acer negundo Alnus rubra Betula papyrifera Pinus strobus Prunus virginiana Quercus macrocarpa Populus balsamifera Sequoiadendron giganteum

[christophe-rd]

I chatted with @DeirdreLoughnan today and we wondering if species batches would be good for a couple reasons:

1. If we do them altogether some species will get really small treatments most likely (e.g., Quercus).
2. Some plants do not look so good in the chambers, and it sounds like it's the ones that have budburst... plants often do not do well in chambers for too long so it may be good to take out species set 1 (some set of early species) -- in ~2 weeks

That sounds good, let's do this! How do you think we should separate the batches?

[wangxm-forest]

That sounds good, let's do this! How do you think we should separate the batches?

If I'm understanding this correctly, we probably should take out the species with most individuals have already been fully leafed out, which are: Bepa, Acne, and Prvi. (And maybe also Alru? since most of them look pretty sad inside the chambers).

[lizzieinvancouver]

Bepa, Acne, and Prvi.

That's my understanding too. And then we will decide on the second and potentially third 'batches' of species as we see what leafs out outside when -- aiming for most species to get something like a 4 week delay at least.

I am not sure what to do about ALRU. It seems like they may not be usable for the experiment. Could someone post a photo perhaps and update in issue #8 ? Thanks.

[DeirdreLoughnan]

@lizzieinvancouver @christophe-rd @wangxm-forest I would propose the following dates for moving samples:

1. May 1(ish) Bepa, Acne, and Prvi
2. May 14: Pinus, Sequoia, Pob
3. May 30: Quma, Acma---I might move the Sequoia to this group too Or depending on who much changes in the next four weeks, we may decide to just have two groups. But I expect the Quercus and the Acer to bet two of the latest to leafout.

We will take some photos Monday and share them here. The Alnus in particular seem to have dried out without rooting and they show no real evidence of budbust (I think they pretty dead). But we did see some small roots starting to form on one of the Poba samples, so there is still some hope!

The Sequoia are quite purple, but this is apparently due to exposure to cold. I am a bit surprised that the ones in the greenhouse are not more green as it has been quite warm recently.

[christophe-rd]

@DeirdreLoughnan thanks! Your suggestions sound really good, thank you so much! Unless @lizzieinvancouver or @wangxm-forest have some comments on this, we should plan on moving the trees on May 2 (this will be my first workday).

[wangxm-forest]

@lizzieinvancouver @DeirdreLoughnan @christophe-rd

The Sequoia are quite purple, but this is apparently due to exposure to cold. I am a bit surprised that the ones in the greenhouse are not more green as it has been quite warm recently.

It seems that Sequoia needs lots of light as a seedling. Could it be an indication of a lack of light?

[lizzieinvancouver]

we should plan on moving the trees on May 2 (this will be my first workday).

Sounds like a good plan!

[DeirdreLoughnan]

@christophe-rd @lizzieinvancouver @wangxm-forest If the plan is to move plants outside starting May 2nd, should they be experiencing a ramped warming in the growth chambers over the next week?

[christophe-rd]

@christophe-rd @lizzieinvancouver @wangxm-forest If the plan is to move plants outside starting May 2nd, should they be experiencing a ramped warming in the growth chambers over the next week?

Good idea. However, I don't know how the species are currently arranged in the chambers. If I schedule a temperature ramp, it should be only for the species that will be moved on May 2nd.

[lizzieinvancouver]

Good idea. However, I don't know how the species are currently arranged in the chambers. If I schedule a temperature ramp, it should be only for the species that will be moved on May 2nd.

Can we fit all the ones that need to be moved into a new chamber? It feels like we may be out of time for this and will just have to skip the ramping ...

[DeirdreLoughnan]

@lizzieinvancouver I believe @wangxm-forest and @christophe-rd discussed this over text and it was decided we would not ramp them.

[christophe-rd]

Hi @DeirdreLoughnan, @lizzieinvancouver, @wangxm-forest!

So, 40 out of 45 WarmSpring Qumas are now at phenostage 4. I think we could remove them from the chambers earlier than when we initially intented. What do you think?

[wangxm-forest]

@christophe-rd That sounds good to me! And I'm back in Vancouver, if you need any help moving them sometime this week, I'm happy to help!