![]() “I remember this tree, for sure,” someone chirps, a sentiment that seems more appropriate as an epitaph on a lost hiker’s headstone than as a vote of directional confidence. ![]() “Have we come to any intersections at all?” asks Ambrose, 48, whose attention has been focused on answering my questions instead of spotting landmarks. ![]() Anthony Ambrose describes the safety measures the team takes when climbing the giant sequoia trees in Sequoia National Park. It’s Ambrose and Baxter’s goal to collect and analyze tree samples to understand how the sequoias are faring under these rapidly changing conditions, and what might be done to protect them. Even the great giant sequoias are showing concerning signs of stress. California’s forests generate fundamental ecosystem services by creating healthy watersheds, providing wildlife habitat, and sequestering atmospheric carbon, and they’re dying at unprecedented rates. Since 2011, a total of 102 million trees have perished, with tens of millions more on death’s doorstep. According to the United States Forest Service, 62 million trees have died in California this year alone. Scientists at UC Berkeley’s Dawson Research Lab, the two are part of Leaf to Landscape, a program in collaboration with the United States Geological Survey, the National Park Service, and the Carnegie Airborne Observatory, that is focused on studying and managing the health of the giant sequoias.Ĭalifornia, of course, is in the middle of a historically punishing drought at a time when there’s never been more demand for water. It’s the fourth day of two weeks of fieldwork led by Baxter and fellow forest ecologist Anthony Ambrose. The ivory glow of a full moon offers enough illumination to hike without fear of face-planting, but it makes for a poor navigational beacon. “I feel like we’ve gone too far,” says forest ecologist Wendy Baxter, 36, stopping the group. on a warm August morning, our hearty group of scientists and climbers is having a tough time finding the damn things. “In every direction Sequoia ruled the woods…” Muir waxed in Our National Parks, “a magnificent growth of giants grouped in pure temple groves.” And yet, at 4:00 a.m. They reach heights of nearly 300 feet their trunks can span more than 30 feet and they’re nearly impossible to miss if you’re tromping beneath their canopy. Thousands of them grow in this 2,300-acre grove, including five of the ten largest specimens in the world. The dominant feature of the Giant Forest is the giant sequoia ( Sequoiadendron giganteum), the biggest tree on Earth. Drawing his poetry from the obvious he named it, quite simply, the Giant Forest. He founded the Sierra Club and dubbed its synonymous mountains the “Range of Light.” When Muir sauntered upon a montane plateau in what is now known as Sequoia National Park on that autumn day, he found a very large stand of very large trees. Muir had a thirst for exploration and a talent for storytelling. By the time John Muir and his trusty mule Brownie splashed across the Marble Fork of the Kaweah River in the fall of 1875, the Scottish-born naturalist had already seen his fair share of California grandiosity: Yosemite Valley the high Sierra Mariposa Grove.
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