I decided to give the University it's fair due and publish through their system. Update your links:
Webpage:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/reid0058/fieldbook/
Feed:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/reid0058/fieldbook/atom.xml
Rain
I know it sounds crazy, but it's been raining here. Well, it rained for 30 minutes, but pretty hard. The river went up a couple of millimeters! It's been sort of misting for the last couple of days. The mosses have really greened up.
The forest.
While Justin has been keeping himself busy with sundry activities, I haven't exactly been sitting on my ass. At least not all day.
I've been admiring mountain ranges:
Here's some course woody debris:
Here's some leaf litter:
I've also been thinking a lot about fungi. Here's a mycotroph, the Spotted Coralroot Orchid I found in the woods. Unlike other plants, these orchids get all of there nutrition and energy from the association with mycorrhizal fungi. The fungi decompose wood and leaf litter, giving the nutrients to plants in exchange for carbohydrates. The orchids however take both the carbs and the nutrients from the fungi, so it's kind of like they're parasitizing other plants. Super awesome!
I've been admiring mountain ranges:
Here's some course woody debris:
Here's some leaf litter:
I've also been thinking a lot about fungi. Here's a mycotroph, the Spotted Coralroot Orchid I found in the woods. Unlike other plants, these orchids get all of there nutrition and energy from the association with mycorrhizal fungi. The fungi decompose wood and leaf litter, giving the nutrients to plants in exchange for carbohydrates. The orchids however take both the carbs and the nutrients from the fungi, so it's kind of like they're parasitizing other plants. Super awesome!
Sunday
Well, I decided to spend Sunday like any good american, I went to town to see Star Trek. I drove 25 miles, it took an hour, and the movie was pretty decent. The best part about going to town is getting food, I like to eat, and I was starting to run low on things to eat. The second best part is seeing the ocean, which I will never tire of. Every time I get through the trees and catch my first glimpse of wave I get excited. I stopped at a very nice highway rest-stop and made contact with the watery underworld. It was a good Sunday.
A little earlier, a little wetter
I'm back at Angelo Coast Range Reserve for four weeks. About ten days ago there was a massive rain storm, the biggest of the winter. It was a little later than usual. Things are green, which is surprising. The water levels are high, but receding quickly. I'm looking forward to how this is affecting the stream ecosystem. The rain brought enough water to scour some of the stream bed, and it might have flushed out a bunch of nutrients from the watershed.
Rocaforest
There are some huge trees hanging around in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. These were in Rockefeller Forest.
View the full-size version
View the full-size version
24 hours of madness
I decided that I needed to know what happens in a deep pool in the stream. Not just what happens, but what happens throughout the day, and in 5 different locations: the inlet, the outlet, 4 meters deep, 1.75 meters deep and 40cm deep. I managed to get almost three hours of sleep in-between sampling.
Base camp:
Honestly, I was afraid of the dark. It was very dark, very, very dark. There are cougars, and bears. I had three strategies for cougar/bear defense:
Of course, the kayak felt like the safest place to be, but there was no way I was going to try to take a nap on it.
6am: first light. Between 4am and 6am I went from being able to see the milky way, to not needing a headlamp.
This is the Geopump, I use it to suck water up from the depths. I think it's kind of cute.
Morning on the stream is beautiful, but then so are all the other times of day. I would know, I was there.
Evening upstream. This is the boardwalk to Walker Meadow, just upstream of my pool.
10pm. The last sampling. As I'm heading out bats swoop down in front of the kayak skimming the surface of the water for insects.
Base camp:
Honestly, I was afraid of the dark. It was very dark, very, very dark. There are cougars, and bears. I had three strategies for cougar/bear defense:
- Light, and more light. I used a lantern and a headlamp. The lantern formed a bubble of safety around me, and acted as a beacon, so I knew where to land the kayak.
- noise - I whistled, and I sang. Oddly enough, the only song I could think of was Neil Young's "Hey, Hey, My, My (Into the Black)"
- Scent marking. Yeah, every time I had to pee I helped build an invisible barrier. Maybe.
Of course, the kayak felt like the safest place to be, but there was no way I was going to try to take a nap on it.
6am: first light. Between 4am and 6am I went from being able to see the milky way, to not needing a headlamp.
This is the Geopump, I use it to suck water up from the depths. I think it's kind of cute.
Morning on the stream is beautiful, but then so are all the other times of day. I would know, I was there.
Evening upstream. This is the boardwalk to Walker Meadow, just upstream of my pool.
10pm. The last sampling. As I'm heading out bats swoop down in front of the kayak skimming the surface of the water for insects.
Into the Jungle [updated]
I helped with the fish survey yesterday. The fish survey is an effort to understand where steelhead salmon are, how many of them, how big, and what they eat. We hiked an hour up Elder to Misery, which wasn't entirely miserable. A lot of the trail wasn't really a trail, some people like to call it a deer path, but that's a lie. I can't imagine deer using the path. We had to scamper over and under trees, pull away branches covered in spiderwebs, and hop across boulders. It felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie, totally covered in cob webs and collecting little bugs like they were worth their weight in gold. And they'll probably cost much more than their weight in gold to analyze.
Electro-fishing is electro-awesome! The light was getting low, but this really was an action sport. I'm thinking about getting one and starting a magazine, "Recreational Electro-fisher." Electro-fishing uses a battery and transformer to send pulses of current into the water. You use a wand (anode), and a braided steel wire (cathode) trails behind. The pulses of current between the anode and cathode send the fish into convulsions, and they often swim towards the anode, where you scoop them up with a net. Fish are unharmed when used correctly.
Ferry to Kingston
As long as you're going to leave your research site in the middle of nowhere for a week, you might as well have your lovely girlfriend meet you. Everyone took a week off to escape the wildfire smoke that has been smothering us for the last three weeks. I made it to Seattle, where my generous friends have been hosting me. Em and I decided to borrow a car and head to Port Townsend on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. After waiting in a very long line of cars for more than an hour we got to board the ferry to Kingston. From Kingston it was an hour to Port Townsend where we ate some lunch and visited Fort Warden State Park, AKA where "An Officer and a Gentleman" was filmed.
Stream life
I found these eggs in the stream while I was incubating some bags of leaves. I have no idea what they are, but they were pretty.
Get the big picture on the wildfires
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/07/californias_continuing_fires.html
Seventeen gorgeous pictures of the fires and fighting efforts across California.
Seventeen gorgeous pictures of the fires and fighting efforts across California.
An Oasis
This little plant is a morning oasis. The tiny hairlike trichomes covering the leaves collect dew and support a little community of insects.
Oops! Did I dye the river red?
I dumped 5ml (about two teaspoons) of 20% Rhodamine WT into Jack of Hearts stream. It was awesome. The stream turned red and pink. Don't worry though, Rhodamine WT is designed and EPA approved for this purpose. It's just that I used about 10x too much.
Field Day
Did I mention it was smoky? To our eyes the sun was a bright red ball of fire, and a sure sign the apocalypse was near.
California Coast north of Fort Bragg
I love the ocean. Here's my favorite little beach, just north of Fort Bragg around sunset. The full size image is amazing, check it out!
Thunder!
It's the craziest, most backwards thing. Two nights ago we had these clouds roll in, then lightning! It rained for about 20 seconds, nothing even got wet. We heard thunder until 10 yesterday morning. The messed up part is that our little rain storm resulted in more fire than water. There are fires burning and smoldering north of us. The air is visibly smoky, and people with asthma are supposed to stay indoors for the next two days. We're not in much danger of fire, but this is the first time I've experienced a thunderstorm that left me dryer than before it came.
Junebugs Mating
The female sits in a little hole in the dust and dirt and the male flies around trying to locate her by scent. He eventually lands somewhere in the vicinity of the female and bumbles his way towards her. If he's lucky, he's the first one there. When it's over, the female quickly ducks back down her little hole.
University of Minnesota EZProxy Bookmarklet
Are you a student, staff or faculty member at the University of Minnesota? Do you ever find yourself at a webpage of a journal publisher, when you realize you haven't gone in through the Libraries system, and the publisher won't give you access to the full text? All you have to do is make a bookmark with this code:
When you find yourself at a page requiring authorization through the University Libraries, just click your new bookmark and it will ask you to login (if you're not already) before sending you back to the correct page, fully authorized! Of course, it will only work if the Library has itself purchased access to the articles. But it's great when you follow a link in a news story to Nature and want to read the real deal.
javascript:location.href='http://floyd.lib.umn.edu/login?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)When you find yourself at a page requiring authorization through the University Libraries, just click your new bookmark and it will ask you to login (if you're not already) before sending you back to the correct page, fully authorized! Of course, it will only work if the Library has itself purchased access to the articles. But it's great when you follow a link in a news story to Nature and want to read the real deal.
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