Sagehen on iNaturalist

Sagehen is now participating with iNaturalist, a citizen science website.

In preparation for a new California Naturalist training program to be held at Sagehen this summer, we have a brand new interactive project page on the iNaturalist site where you can submit your observations of plants, wildlife, insects, etc. from the Sagehen Basin and surrounding areas.

"This iNaturalist project gives UC California Naturalists and other visitors the opportunity to share their natural history observations with a broader online community while contributing to growing citizen-science datasets on the distribution of the plants and animals in the local area."

There's even a mobile app you can use to contribute your observations.

View more observations near Sagehen Creek Basin on iNaturalist »

Fukushima radiation study

Sagehen is a sampling site within the National Atmospheric Deposition Program (NADP). Every week, along with hundreds of other sites, we package up any precipitation received and send it to the Central Analytical Lab in Illinois for processing.

The scientists at NADP just published a study tracking radiation fall out from the Fukushima reactor meltdown in Japan last year. They found radiation in approximately 20% of US samples, including some very high levels in places. It doesn't appear that Sagehen samples showed any radiation, but other California sites did.

NFF meeting.

Jeff and I attended a meeting held in Truckee by the National Forest Foundation in early February.

The NFF "Treasured Landscapes, Unforgettable Experiences" campaign is "working to restore our damaged forests and restore Americans connection to these public lands."

Conservation campaign work will take place on keystone sites, which NFF has carefully selected based on conservation need and values. A section of the Truckee River watershed beginning at Lake Tahoe has just been added to the list of keystone sites.

The Foundation formed a Local Coordinating Council to advise them on how to proceed with the conservation work. It appears that the Sagehen Forest Project will feature prominently, with the Sagehen basin treatment model to be replicated at a number of additional locations within the keystone site, including parcels of both public and private land.

Get more information and download meeting notes at the SFP blog.

Force Majeure project moving forward

Helen and Newton Harrison are making progress on funding for the Harrison's 50-year "Force Majeure" project, including combined art/research work at Sagehen, a project they call "Sagehen: A Proving Ground."

Here is the Harrison's description of "Force Majeure" and the Sagehen project. Download the entire project PDF (889K):

The project we are working on is titled, “Sagehen: A Proving Ground.” It is a work intended to field test or “prove” the ideas and imagery that we first presented...several years ago. Those works, the “Force Majeure,”* set out to invent ecological interventions at a scale able to address the deteriorating ability of the high grounds to hold and release water.

As those high grounds around the world warm up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Centigrade) and more, the rivers that spring from them will experience ever more severe floods and droughts, as the surrounding landscapes suffer increased fire and erosion leading to decreased water quality. In the case of Tibet, we are looking at 1.2 billion people negatively impacted within the next 100 years.

The Force Majeure work proposes a series of solutions that will reduce stress to water resources, reducing erosion while improving the long-term availability of water for ecological, human, agricultural, and other critical uses. 

====================================
*Force Majeure, when framed ecologically, refers to the environmental outcomes from human-accelerated global warming acting in transaction with the vast industrial processes of extraction production that have destroyed forests, depleted topsoil, a severe lessening of ocean productivity and created a vast chemical outpouring into the atmosphere, the earth and the water.

Summer calendar

The Sagehen summer events calendar is beginning to fill up. This year, we have some great new programs in addition to old favorites like our Summer Science Speaker Series, Geomorphology Workshop and Kid Zone Family Camp.

Take a look at our events page for more details about new programs like:

• Land Ethic Leadership Workshop;
• Youth Fishing Camp;
• California Naturalist Training;
• Road Ecology Workshop.

Some of these are already booking up, so get busy and sign up! Other courses will have more information posted soon.

Burning slash.

Finally got a weather window to burn some slash piles around the station today: 2 at the Leopold Cabin, 2 at the Lower Camp.

This year has been so dry and snowless, it's been impossible to light a fire.