Wildflowers going off!

Although last winter was pretty dry, this spring's prolonged, cool temperatures & a couple of rain storms resulted in one of the best wildflower years we've seen, including multiple unusual varieties of penstemon & currant, great camas lilies & outrageously prolific tobacco-brush blossoms.

Both the variety & quantities of flowers have been off the charts, so get out there before it's all over.

Also, Al Grigarick has updated his excellent on-line wildflower & conifer identification tools with new additions & some improved images.

Summer Speaker Series underway

The annual Sagehen Summer Speaker Series is underway. The next speaker is Joe Sapp, who will talk about Sagehen's slave-making ants on July 10.

More info.

Master's Thesis evaluating ARC Program effectiveness completed

Christine Hooper has completed her study of the Sagehen ARC Program. This appears to be the first thesis to emerge from Sagehen that is related to sociology & education rather than field sciences.

BRIDGING THE GAP: THE UNION OF PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC GROWTH
ARC: DELIVERING LITERACY AND PERSONAL GROWTH FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS THROUGH OUTDOOR EDUCATION

"This action research project is an evaluation of the effectiveness of experiential outdoor education, specifically the Adventure-Risk-Challenge (ARC) program, and its intent to bridge literacy and personal growth in order to support student success in the classroom. It examines the connection between personal and academic growth. The focus of this study is on eight English Language Learners (ELL’s) that participated in the ARC program during the summer of 2007. All were motivated individuals with a range of literacy gaps, including struggling with writing. This program is unique in its combination of ELL student focus, outdoor adventure and literacy instruction. Therefore, there is little or no research which directly addresses this integration of educational outcomes. The methodology of this research incorporates both quantitative and qualitative data centered on student writing improvement. The results indicate that an integrated academic and leadership curriculum improves student writing significantly."

SPLAT-related Thesis completed.

Nicole Vaillant has completed her Ph.D. thesis: Sagehen Experimental Forest Past, Present, and Future: An Evaluation of the Fireshed Assessment Process. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

"The first chapter investigates the past through a fire history reconstruction of lower elevation Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi) and Jeffrey pine – mixed conifer stands within Sagehen. Using fire perimeter maps and dendrochronology, the historic fire regime (frequency and seasonality) was determined. This chapter explores the influence of Native American land use practices, Comstock Era logging, fire suppression and climate indices (Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the Palmer Drought Severity Index) on the fire regime at Sagehen.

The second chapter focuses on the present comparing three geographic information system (GIS) data sets utilized in the fireshed assessment process available for Sagehen. Eight GIS data layers are required to model fire behavior in FlamMap (Finney 2006), a landscape-level fire behavior and propagation model. The eight layers required include: elevation, slope, aspect, canopy cover, canopy base height, canopy height, canopy bulk density and fuel model. The three GIS data sets being compared in this chapter included:
1) data created using LiDAR and plot information for Sagehen,
2) pre-existing Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project (Landfire) data (Ryan et al. 2006), and
3) pre-existing Tahoe National Forest Stewardship and Fireshed Assessment data (Bahro et al. 2007).

The three GIS data sets were evaluated against the extensive grid of fuel and vegetation plots to test the correlation of canopy cover, fuel model, canopy base height, canopy height and canopy bulk density to current conditions. Modeled fire behavior metrics (fire type, flame length and fireline intensity) were compared between the three GIS data sets to better understand the implications of different source data on management decisions made during the fireshed assessment process.

The third chapter will again concentrate on the present comparing six SPLAT treatment plans created for Sagehen. Four of the plans were created by the Tahoe National Forest in conjunction with University of California, Berkeley using the fireshed assessment process. These four plans take into account accessibility, cost, landownership and ecological objectives. The second two plans were theoretical. The first is based on the pattern outlined by the fundamental research on the SPLAT theory (Finney 2001). This plan does not consider any of the above limitations. The second was created using the treatment optimization model within FlamMap (Finney 2007). This SPLAT plan excludes areas not available for treatment including watercourse protection zones, archeological sites and locations protected for sensitive or endangered plant and animal species. Potential fire behavior metrics (fire type, flame length, fireline intensity and arrival time) were modeled in FlamMap to evaluate the effectiveness of the six SPLAT plans.

The fourth chapter assesses the longevity of treatment effectiveness to reduce potential fire behavior for one of the fireshed assessment SPLAT treatments into the future. A forest vegetation growth simulator was utilized to model natural regeneration and growth of trees in Sagehen from 2005 through 2055 for the untreated and treated landscapes. Modeled fire behavior (fire type, flame length and fireline intensity) was used to assess the effectiveness of the treated landscape compared to the untreated landscape from 2005 to 2055.

There is much to be gained by integrating the past, present and future of Sagehen Experimental Forest into a spatial and temporal evaluation of the fireshed assessment and SPLATs. To my knowledge, no other watershed has the amount of information available for such a detailed analysis. Nor has there been a detailed evaluation of proposed SPLAT treatments created through the fireshed process. This study would be a first for both SPLAT placement and fireshed analysis, and should be of great value to land managers."

Big improvements to basin network & communications.

Campus & AT&T installed our new T-1 line in May, tying us into the Berkeley campus network for the first time ever. It was a big effort to get the phone lines from Hobart Mills conditioned & up to snuff.

The T-1 line also allows us to escape from the usurious satellite internet charges that rose dramatically after the war started & sucked up our entire discretionary budget last fiscal year.





Also, Kevin Browne & Marshall Minobe of the UCNRS spent a couple weeks here at Sagehen in May.

Marshall helped us install the sensing instruments & communications equipment on the new 100-foot towers, while Kevin worked to get the basin wireless communications sorted. We now have a new Meraki wireless mesh network around the station facilities for user access to the internet & Kevin will be moving us to professional-grade Cisco mesh networking equipment for the basin towers in July.