Sagehen News

Exceptional PI status for Jeff

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 17:10:43 PDT

Today, the UC Berkeley Office of the VCR granted Exceptional Principal Investigator status to Jeff. The reason it's "exceptional" is that Jeff is not a Ph.D., nor Berkeley faculty, so until today we have been unable to compete directly for research grants.

Typically, this is not a problem, since researchers find their own funding. But, as part of the wider research into the effects of the Sagehen Forest Project basin forest restructuring, we are looking at a broad spectrum of wildlife and watershed effects and we had an important funding gap. The project provides an opportunity for some critical hydrology work and the Sierra Nevada Conservancy generously stepped in to fill the void with a $50,000 grant to Sagehen.

New York Times article on LCTs

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 10:44:08 PDT

A Lahontan Cutthroat Trout fattens up in the Forest
Service office aquarium.

The New York Times has a great article today about the Pyramid Lake Lahontan Cutthroat Trout recovery.

Slideshow.

More information about Sagehen's LCT program.

Lahontan Cutthroat Trout on Sagehen TV.

Hwy-89 Stewardship Team update

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 09:56:41 PDT

Here's a great recent article from California Deer explaining the Highway-89 Stewardship Team's genesis, mission and history.

This summer, the Team is offering it's first professional development course, August 12-16, 2013: Innovative Approaches to Wildlife/Highway Interactions. See the link for more information and to register.

Bear cub update.

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:45:31 PDT

This week, I pulled the cameras installed during the bear cub reintroduction in January.

Looks like the cubs slept until late February, came out, then returned in mid-March. The camera trap caught the pair romping playfully around the den.

A couple weeks later, it caught a coyote trolling in the area for a few days.

More photos here.
KGO-TV's coverage of the event.

Additionally, we released two more cubs this week. Unusually, we just opened the trailer and let them go, rather than placing them in a hibernation den under the snow.

Watch the video to learn more.
Photos of the release.

Weislander Vegetation Surveys moving online

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 16:06:24 PST

A Weislander survey photo from Gold Lake.

As part of a massive data library effort (BIGCB), the Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology has started uploading historic photos from the Weislander Vegetation Surveys of the 1920's to CalPhoto. You can do narrow queries to pin down specific locations like the Sagehen area.

These photographs can provide (and are providing) information about vegetation and landscape changes over the past 100 years or so.

More info about the surveys.

Sagehen and the other Berkeley field stations are working with the BIGCB to identify, coordinate and make available historic datasets that can be used to produce new understanding of environmental change over time.

Indeed, these datasets are the only way to detect and quantify these changes. Sagehen researchers are already producing new publications from narrowly rescued data found in old binders and shoeboxes.

New book on the UC Reserves

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 15:54:11 PST

New book from UC Press includes
Sagehen.

A new book highlighting the UC Natural Reserve System (including Sagehen!) is now available from UC Press.

The Environmental Legacy of the UC Natural Reserve System includes photos and descriptions of the 38 reserves, which are little-known, and scattered throughout California's diverse ecosystems.

More bear cubs!

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 17:38:05 PST

Sarah Holm and Jason Holley of
Cal. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife get a cub ready
for it's new home in the wild.

Two more bear cubs entered the wild at Sagehen this week. Thanks to the volunteers and agency folks who helped make the event a great success!

In this case, the sibling cubs' mother was killed with a predation permit after causing structure damage. The cubs were discovered later and someone attempted to sell them on the side of the road, which is a big no-no. Fish and Wildlife confiscated the animals and they were rehabilitated at a facility in South Lake Tahoe.

A cub sleeps in the sled that will transport it to the den site.

We installed the orphans in a den and covered them last Thursday. The cubs typically wake up when the drugs wear off, come outside and take a look around, then either go back in and fall asleep again, or wander off and find a different den site.

Send us your links of you have photos posted of the event. KGO-TV will be running several stories covering the entire process of rehabilitation. I'll post the links when they become available, as well as any later camera trap photos letting us know what the cubs are doing.

Naturalist observations yielding big fruit.

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:42:18 PST

Here's a great article about how current research is benefiting from the phenology observations of environmental icons Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold and his family.

Here at Sagehen, we are beginning to collect similar observations using iNaturalist and willing volunteers. You can use our iNaturalist observations to assist with your own local plant and wildlife IDs.

Get in touch if you'd like to join us!

Happy Holidays!

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 10:48:28 PST

Most significant Sagehen science

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Sat, 22 Dec 2012 01:04:09 PST

We recently fielded a short turn-around request to provide a list of the three most significant papers ever produced at Sagehen.

This was a really hard decision to make. Who decides value? How do you measure? This challenge gets to the heart of a question we've been asking ourselves for years: how do you stitch a bunch of scientific facts into a narrative that has meaning?

Here's what we came up with. What do you think?

California Naturalist updates

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 23:46:07 PST

The official text is now available!

We're very excited to be working with Leslie Smith, who will be taking over coordination of the Sagehen California Naturalist courses this summer!

Leslie is a perfect match for the program. She sent us a list of some of her qualifications:

-BS in Biology

-Masters in Interdisciplinary Science Teaching

-Classroom Science Teacher (27+ years)

-Concept Developer/Coordinator of the Natural Science Outdoor Education Center at South Yuba River State Park

-Facilitator for FOSS science educator trainings out of UC's Lawrence Hall of Science (6+ years- current)

-Professional Development Facilitator for CSU Chico Science Project (5+ years)

-Regional CREEC Coordinator (CA Dept of Ed Environmental Branch)

-Also of relevance, I've been working over 10 years with watershed agencies and organizations in the CABY IRWMP (you may very well be familiar with this, but in case you haven't, this is the organization that developed the DWR mandated Inter Regional Watershed Management Plan for the Cosumnes, American, Bear, and Yuba Rivers). The role I've played has been to translate water resource issues into educational projects.

More information about the 2013 courses available here.

Scary close call.

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Fri, 14 Dec 2012 10:22:44 PST

ACR Personal Locator Beacon

A couple of kayakers had a very scary close call on Stampede Reservoir this week when they capsized in cold water and had to swim for shore, suffering life-threatening hypothermia. One of our researchers played a big part in the rescue.

This incident got us thinking again about a nagging worry--that something like this might happen at Sagehen.

The fact is that a fair number of Sagehen visitors head into the backcountry all alone. They seldom have the budget to pay assistants to accompany them. We do ask folks to leave their travel information on our whiteboards just in case, and we try to keep an eye on everybody, but we don't have the resources to log people in and out.

Cell phone coverage is largely absent in the watershed. We do have radios that we make available to researchers who head out into the field, but radio signals are intermittent in the basin. With no back-up, when Jeff and I go out into the field we don't go alone. But that doesn't mean we won't both get into trouble, especially since we get out and about all year around, not just in the relatively benign Sierra summers where a night out would likely be uncomfortable, but not life-threatening.

The other day, we stopped at REI to investigate Personal Locator Beacons. Unfortunately, with their annual subscription fees, accidental triggering penalties, and/or refurbishing costs when triggered, this is not a cheap or effortless solution, especially if you are looking at providing them for a number of people.

====================

2 Missing Kayakers Rescued Monday at Stampede Reservoir

Posted: Dec 11, 2012 2:55 PM PST

Updated: Dec 11, 2012 2:55 PM PST

The Washoe County Sheriff's Office RAVEN Helicopter Unit, Search and Rescue and HASTY Team members are being credited with saving the lives of two missing kayakers at the Stampede Reservoir in Truckee, California late Monday night.

The Sheriff's RAVEN Flight Crew, Search and Rescue and HASTY Team members responded to Stampede Reservoir at the request of the Sierra County Sheriff's Office. The Sierra County Sheriff's Office requested our assistance in locating the adult husband and wife kayakers who had been reported missing.

RAVEN, Search and Rescue and HASTY Team members began searching the area when they located the male on the north shore. The RAVEN Flight Crew landed on the shore and made contact with the male. The male immediately led Sheriff's crewmembers to the area where his wife was laying. The female was instantaneously assessed and found to be extremely hypothermic due to having capsized her kayak.

Due to the patients' critical physical condition, the RAVEN Flight Crew members elected to transport the husband and wife to Renown Regional Medical Center directly rather than wait for Care Flight or REMSA to arrive from a significant distance.

RAVEN Flight Crew delivered the patients to Renown medical staff at Pickett Park, where they were admitted for further treatment and examination. After this, the RAVEN Flight Crew returned to Stampede Reservoir to recover the HASTY Team members who remained behind due to weight considerations.

The RAVEN Flight Crew recovered the HASTY Team members and returned to the Stead Hangar without incident.

After the rescue mission, the Washoe County Sheriff's Office received several sincere messages of thanks from friends and colleagues of the rescued husband and wife.

These messages credit the Washoe County Sheriff's Office RAVEN Flight Crew, Search and Rescue and HASTY Team members involved in this mission for saving their loved ones lives.

From Washoe County Sheriff's Office

Sagehen animals in National Geographic

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 21:14:34 PST

Photographs of some of Sagehen's animals are in this month's National Geographic.

It's a lot harder to photograph wild animals in a big tree than to photograph the same species at Sagehen while we are running a MAPS bird banding station and revisiting Calhoun trap lines in advance of the Sagehen Forest Project treatments.

The photographer David Liitschwager, and his assistant Anand Varma had some luck: the Lodgepole Chipmunk was the only one we trapped all season.

They also had some challenges: the Northern Flying Squirrel had a little scratch on his nose (Photoshop definitely verbotten), and the Robin lived up to his genus (Turdus), spray-painting the inside of the enclosure every time he was placed inside.

Truckee Green Network

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:59:15 PST

Sagehen is now a partner in the Truckee Green Network. From their website:

The Truckee Green Network (“TGNW”) mission is to serve the Truckee community in support of activities and organizations that foster sustainable living and environmental protection & restoration. These organizations are Partners in conducting these activities, and we are organized to support their endeavors.

Force Majeure

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 17:22:14 PST

Here's a document explaining the philosophy behind the Harrison's 50 year art project here at Sagehen.

The project is moving along, with the science team gradually coalescing and gathering the data that will be required for GIS analysis. The project will take advantage of some of the forest manipulations created by the Sagehen Forest project.

DataUp goes live

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 14:01:01 PDT

DataUp is a fantastic new open source tool helping researchers document, manage, and archive their tabular data and it even integrates with Microsoft Excel.

The DataUp tool has four main features:

1. Check for best practices;
2. Create metadata;
3. Get credit for data: obtain an identifier;
4. Archive & share data.

Why use DataUp?

Good data management practices ensure others can use and reuse your data well into the future. In addition, DataUp can help you meet newly implemented funder requirements for data management.

By documenting your data, making your data publicly available, and providing a persistent identifier for citation, you are also contributing to open science, and transparent research processes.

Forest Project Meetings.

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:12:26 PDT

Jeff expounds.

Barney shares his vision.

Tuesday was back to back meetings in the lower Sagehen Forest Project demo plot.

First was a meet-and-greet with our PSW liaison Rick Bottoms, Truckee District Ranger Joanne Roubique, and the new Deputy Regional Forester, Barney Gyant. It was great to meet and get a chance to catch Barney up on Sagehen plans and projects. We're definitely on the same page and we look forward to working with him in the future!

Next on the agenda was a tour of the lower Sagehen Forest project demo plot with Joanne and her Vegetation Management Officer, Scott Conway; the National Forest Foundation's California Program Director, Vance Russell; and the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit's Deputy Forest Supervisor Jeff Marsolais and Vegetation Management Officer, Rita Mustatia.

The meetings overlap!

Discussion of the treatment strategy and the process.

Scott, Joanne and Jeff discussed the treatment design and the collaborative process behind the Sagehen Forest Project. Jeff and Rita talked about the challenges in the Lake Tahoe basin, some of their plans for fire mitigation and forest health, and how the SFP might fit into those plans.

We're very excited about the wider scope possibilities of the SFP!

More photos.

The Usual Autumn Drill!

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:24:45 PDT

Plumbing repairs.

Annual fire extinguisher inspection

and service.

Bi-annual propane refill before the snow flies.

Helen and Newton Harrison arrive with some of the new

science team for a meeting about the 50-year art/science

project.

The summer craziness has subsided.

Sagehen still has plenty of visitors, but they tend to be part of well-organized classes with instructors and staff to keep things running smoothly.

This time of year is when we get a lot of Sagehen annual business taken care of. Refill the propane, make repairs, inspect the fire extinguishers.

And hold and/or attend a LOT of meetings!

NTEEC meeting at the Tahoe Cross-country
yurt.

New logo we made for NTEEC.

5th-Graders Galore!

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:25:39 PDT

"Pleine-aire" meeting with Candy Blesse about the 5th-

grade program.

Jeff adds bunk-beds with rails for the 5th-grade boys: they
tend to fall out!

In partnership with UC Berkeley and the Tahoe-Truckee Unified School District, Sagehen's GK-12 program brings Berkeley graduate students together with Truckee school district 5th-graders to improve the skills of both.

The local kids get science instruction in a compelling, hands-on setting from real scientists. And the grad students learn how to communicate with non-scientists.

The program has been a fantastic success at Sagehen over the years, with measurable and significant improvements in the kid's science test scores.

Catching grasshoppers for population surveys.

Over the next 4-weeks, Sagehen will see hundreds of 5th-graders, each spending 3 days here. If we had indoor meeting space, we could expand the program to other schools that are clamoring for it, but our fair-weather seasons are already full to overflowing.

Science that seems more like fun!

Healthy snack time!

North Fork visit

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 10:02:31 PDT

Snow Mountain and the North Fork of the American
River drainage.

Jeff, Jim, Mel and I visited the North Fork Association Lands a couple weeks ago to talk about research opportunities with Ted Beedy, the manager. Joining us was Lisa Thompson, a fisheries biologist with UC Davis extension.

As follow up this week, Ted arranged with Walter Hewlitt for a site on his land to place a met/data tower that will provide a communications link to the basin from a new node of our radio network to be placed on the Crow's Nest.

For future research opportunities, Lisa is pondering a trans-Sierra macroinvertebrate transect, and Sagehen collections manager Erica Krimmel is planning to collect plants to supplement the historic North Fork plant list collated in the late 1800's.

Photos.

Biotas updated.

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:29:08 PDT

Our basin biota lists have just been updated.

Sagehen California Naturalist Reenie McMains just converted our basin plant and insect lists to Excel. Thanks Reenie!

This allowed Erica Krimmel to update our plant list to the major changes of the new Jepson taxonomy. Thanks Erica!

This allowed us to upload our lists to iNaturalist where users can examine by taxa or sighting, download CSVs, upload their own observations, ID other people's observations, and expand our basin lists.

And we can use this data to document species, and study changes to plant and animal communities in the future. Very exciting!

July Meeting and Event Highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 23:31:36 PDT

An Oakland teacher learns geology at Cal: Blast.

Ob for iNaturalist.

UC Davis, ENT 109.

Kris Boatner and Scott Conway of the Forest Service talk

during the SNC field trip.

Sagehen has been busy! We hosted a lot of very important and productive meetings and events in the last month.

Here's a run down of the highlights:

Betsy Mitchell brought Cal: Blast to Sagehen. CAL: BLAST project is a 3-year collaboration between Oakland Unified School District, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and UC Berkeley. The program has Berkeley grad students train Bay Area 3rd-5th grade teachers in field sciences. Photos.
iNaturalist held a training session on their web tools. Photos. Sagehen is now using iNaturalist to coordinate, consolidate, update and document our biota lists. We are also making a big push to train our California Naturalists to use iNaturalist to provide documented observations of the plants and animals living in the Sagehen Basin. As conditions change in the future we can then see how things shift and how community composition changes. In the past, there was no practical way for a handful of scientists to monitor life on this scale. But this is an excellent task for citizen science.
Our longest running field course, UC Davis' ENT109, finished up another successful semester. This course has been coming to Sagehen every other year for about 30 years.
Our Faculty Director, Jim Kirchner, just finished a week here at Sagehen. We were able to discuss the big science questions and meet with many of our partners to talk about possible projects.
The Sierra Nevada Conservancy held their "Sierra Nevada Forest and Community Initiative (SNFCI) Regional Coordinating Council Meeting" here. SNC funded the facilitation for the Sagehen Forest Project, so it was great that they were able to tour a demo plot and learn more about the project.
We held a collaboration meeting with the new University of Nevada-Reno, Associate VP of Research Services; College Dean; professors and grad students, and the ED of the Tahoe Science Consortium. This was a great opportunity to show Sagehen to these important neighbors and explain all the coordinated research we already do with UNR and Desert Research Institute. See photo in the previous post!

Read more about what's happening at Sagehen on our calendar, and see more photos on our Facebook page.

Sagehen 365 Project

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:26:38 PDT

This montage is something I tried recently to show

a single meeting more clearly. Maybe this is cheating!

Sagehen is doing a 365 photo project, which involves posting a photo a day for one year. Our hope is that the photos give insight into what goes on at Sagehen Creek Field Station.

But I'm finding that picking a single photo to represent each day is leaving out a lot of activity this summer, when we typically have multiple groups, multiple meetings and/or multiple activities every day!

You can see and follow the project on Flickr, or by liking our Facebook page, where the photos automatically post every day.

Radio upgrades

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Wed, 01 Aug 2012 22:15:38 PDT

Beginning in 2009, the UCNRS, led by Mark Stromberg, wrote a couple of cyber-infrastructure grants to the National Science Foundation to upgrade network infrastructure across the reserve system. These applications were successful and now the rubber is finally hitting the road. The equipment is on site and we are configuring and deploying it.

Jeff and Kevin have been working since June and are making a big push this week to upgrade Sagehen's radio network backbone to true mesh. We are also expanding our network into the North Fork of the American River to support science in the other reserves of the Central Sierra Field Research Stations. Another node will be deployed on Highway-89 for the Stewardship Team's undercrossing studies.

And we're off! California Naturalist begins at Sagehen

noreply@blogger.com (Faerthen Felix) — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 12:04:05 PDT

Our first California Naturalist training course is off and running as of last night!

17 great students got an introduction to Sagehen and to the program, then helped us mark Purple Fritillaries for a research seed collector. UC Santa Cruz Arboretum director Brett Hall came up to help explain California's complex biodiversity.

As part of the course, the students will contribute to the Sagehen project on iNaturalist. This project is putting locations to the plants on our species list, helping us track presence/absence over time and observe any movement due to changing conditions.

Anyone can participate and post your own plant sightings in the Sagehen area. Here's a fantastically detailed guide to the website and application.