Mathias Grant time again.

From Alex Glazer at the UC Natural Reserve System:

"This is the twenty-first annual call for applicants to the UC Natural Reserve System’s Mildred E. Mathias Graduate Student Research Grant Program. Grants may be awarded to any graduate student currently enrolled at the Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Santa Barbara or Santa Cruz campuses who is using one or more of the NRS reserves for his or her field research project. There are no restrictions on the research topic, and students from all academic disciplines are strongly encouraged to apply.

We have increased the funding for grants this year. The maximum individual grant is now $3,000 instead of $2,500, and the limit on total awards has increased from $30,000 to $38,000. The deadline for submitting an application is October 20, 2008. Letters of recommendation and permissions to use reserve(s), are due no later than October 27, 2008.

Grant applications and all supporting material will be submitted electronically."

More information about the Mathias Grants and a link to the application system.

Sagehen becomes a Meraki research partner.

Meraki is a new company that is marketing technology developed at M.I.T. We've been using some of their new mesh-networking devices for our station & basin wireless networks.

The devices include a radio & an access point, along with nifty software that makes them self-configuring: they look around for other Meraki devices & internet connections, then automatically set up a wireless network.

So, why is this system brilliant? Well, because it saves the truckloads of money, trouble, time & technicians required to keep a network fed & happy manually. And if a node goes down, the remaining units automatically reconfigure themselves to bypass the problem child.

The other big problem these devices solve for us is that they offer internet-based administration so that it's REALLY easy to see where the problems are--you don't have to actually go out into the field & examine every little piece of the system to determine why your network is down. As we expand our network into the 9,000 acre watershed & up to the ridge lines to track meteorology & wildlife, this becomes a bigger & bigger deal--we simply haven't had great luck keeping a network up & running near Carpenter Peak when we have to climb up to it regularly on skis, then troubleshoot all the communications pieces on several towers with a laptop, outside in ridge-top weather.

There's even a public interface that anyone can use to see the Sagehen mesh network:

The devices were initially designed for city neighborhoods so that lots of people can get together & build a network with no technical skills, while spreading out the [low] cost. We are so excited about the science possibilities of these devices that we have partnered with Meraki & will be working with them to expand the research potential of the devices. We also plan to deploy the devices as part of our Highway-89 Road Ecology project.

Cujo!

The local Forest Service office has an aquarium in their lobby. A couple of years ago, they put some Lahontan Cutthroat trout fingerlings in it so the public could see these native fish up close.

One of the fish was more aggressive than the others & chased his companions out of the tank, or ate them. He grew to such a good size that he can no longer turn around in the aquarium, so today he moved to the Sagehen fishhouse channel.

You can take a look at "Cujo" on our fish-cam.

Highway-89 Road Ecology.

The Highway 89 Stewardship Team formed to provide research, outreach education & mitigation of animal-vehicle collisions, with the goal of developing exportable tools & techniques useful worldwide.

Watch videos about the road ecology project.

The team includes:

• Sierra County Fish and Wildlife Commission,
• Sierra County,
• USDA Forest Service: Tahoe National Forest & Pacific Southwest Research Station,
• California Department of Fish and Game,
• California Department of Transportation (Caltrans),
• University of California Cooperative Extension,
• UC Berkeley-Sagehen Creek Field Station,
• California Deer Association,
• University of California, Davis.

We now have a GPS-collared deer herd & high school outreach program in place. The program hired an outreach coordinator & a science advisor. The first mitigation effort—a wildlife underpass—is now under construction at Kyburz Flat just up the road from Sagehen.

Learn more:
• Scientists Hope To Learn From Underpass Project, FS Today.
• Animal X-ing, Sierra Sun.
• Sierraville (California) Highway 89 stewardship team: ahead of the curve, Proc. of the 2005 International Conference on Ecology and Transportation