UC Berkeley has a fantastic new program that is of great utility to those of us in the hinterlands. They have begun podcasting many of their basic courses. These are not watered down "Continuing Ed" courses. You can download podcasts [or listen to webcasts] of real courses in biology, chemistry, economics, psychology, and other fields.
Check it out here.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
This year, our winter caretaker JP moved on. Brandon Schwartz, the local Forest Service Avalanche Forecaster, is staying in the Johnson Cabin with his fiance Jamie this season & taking care of the place during our absences. You can access the local snow & avalanche conditions advisory here.
There still isn't much snow in the area & the skies appear to be clear again for the coming week. This means that access to the station continues to be easy over a lightly snowpacked road. It is finally warming up from the weeks of unusually cold weather, so we hope to get all the broken water pipes fixed this week now that things have thawed out & the plumbers are catching up.
Last week the power company brought in a crew & helicopter to replace the broken pole on our line.
There still isn't much snow in the area & the skies appear to be clear again for the coming week. This means that access to the station continues to be easy over a lightly snowpacked road. It is finally warming up from the weeks of unusually cold weather, so we hope to get all the broken water pipes fixed this week now that things have thawed out & the plumbers are catching up.
Last week the power company brought in a crew & helicopter to replace the broken pole on our line.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
The holidays were challenging for us here at Sagehen, with winter storms taking out the power & phone lines yet again. While Sierra Pacific Power Co. did thin the line this fall, they apparently missed a few bad eggs. The damage included 9 segments & ultimately shorted out our ancient transformer, which had to be replaced. This transformer had apparently been significantly damaged sometime in the past, causing dirty power that has undoubtedly been the source of the mystifying & intractable network & electronics problems that have plagued us since our arrival in 2001.
The fall was incredibly busy this year, with numerous meetings taking up a great deal of our time in addition to record-setting use levels that continue to stretch further & further into the shoulder seasons.
Jeff continued his extensive community networking with significant involvement with local groups like the Truckee River Watershed Council [TRWC], Truckee-Tahoe Regional Education Coalition [TTREC] & the Truckee River Implementation Team [TRIT] that is working to re-establish the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout in the wild.
In addition, September saw Jeff & I attending the annual Organization of Biological Field Stations [OBFS] meeting, held this year at Flathead Lake, Montana. This is a great opportunity for us to talk to other folks who are dealing with the same challenges we are. We learned about some really clever approaches to problems & were able to take part in the legendary OBFS fund-raising auction [how much did I spend on this crap?].
October held the annual UC Natural Reserve System [UCNRS] managers & stewards meeting at Zzyzx Springs in the Mojave desert--a fantastic setting for another really beneficial get together. Since we're all in the same boat, it helps to share challenges & solutions, while figuring out ways to work together toward common goals. The annual constume party was spectacular as usual, with the theme of "Evolutionary Dead-Ends" providing rich fodder for the science lunatics.
In November, Jeff flew out to Ashland, NC for the national Experimental Forest meeting that occurs only once every 5 years. As a non-Forest Service manager, Jeff offers a unique perspective on Experimental Forest management that is proving beneficial to other forest managers.
One of the themes that came up in several of the earlier meetings is the National Ecological Observatory Network [NEON], a major National Science Foundation initiative to invest in research infrastructure that can take field biology to the next level. Two meetings in Berkeley in November & December focussed on the California segment of this proposal: CalEON. We also worked to coordinate the UC Berkeley field stations as a state-scale data transect, and strategized how these assets might best integrate with the larger NEON network.
Jeff continued his extensive community networking with significant involvement with local groups like the Truckee River Watershed Council [TRWC], Truckee-Tahoe Regional Education Coalition [TTREC] & the Truckee River Implementation Team [TRIT] that is working to re-establish the Lahontan Cutthroat Trout in the wild.
In addition, September saw Jeff & I attending the annual Organization of Biological Field Stations [OBFS] meeting, held this year at Flathead Lake, Montana. This is a great opportunity for us to talk to other folks who are dealing with the same challenges we are. We learned about some really clever approaches to problems & were able to take part in the legendary OBFS fund-raising auction [how much did I spend on this crap?].
October held the annual UC Natural Reserve System [UCNRS] managers & stewards meeting at Zzyzx Springs in the Mojave desert--a fantastic setting for another really beneficial get together. Since we're all in the same boat, it helps to share challenges & solutions, while figuring out ways to work together toward common goals. The annual constume party was spectacular as usual, with the theme of "Evolutionary Dead-Ends" providing rich fodder for the science lunatics.
In November, Jeff flew out to Ashland, NC for the national Experimental Forest meeting that occurs only once every 5 years. As a non-Forest Service manager, Jeff offers a unique perspective on Experimental Forest management that is proving beneficial to other forest managers.
One of the themes that came up in several of the earlier meetings is the National Ecological Observatory Network [NEON], a major National Science Foundation initiative to invest in research infrastructure that can take field biology to the next level. Two meetings in Berkeley in November & December focussed on the California segment of this proposal: CalEON. We also worked to coordinate the UC Berkeley field stations as a state-scale data transect, and strategized how these assets might best integrate with the larger NEON network.
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