snow near Mammoth Lakes.

the drive across the desert.
Team Jeffrey pine beetle over Boca Reservoir, Tahoe National Forest


Me, Miles, and Jessica in Yosemite (a slight detour on the way to our sites)



Miles and Me rock hopping



The river at Sequoia National Park through "rose-tinted" glasses

new work, new sites, and new everything

The field season has started for me and i've spent the last month, give or take a few days, out in the forest getting work done on a new project. we're studying how pollution and drought are affecting the forest in CA and how bark beetles are responding to trees that might be stressed. we started our work in mid-May in the San Bernardino National Forest. I flew from Davis to meet one of the principal investigators from the Forest Service in Riverside and two undergraduates from University of Colorado, Boulder. We planned to spend the next 25 days camping in the woods with our equipment. We headed to the field and started sampling trees. We spent time coring trees to figure out how old they were. It was hot and dusty and hot and dusty. Many of the trees we cored were small, but old, indicating that they were either growing under stressful conditions (not enough water or nutrients) or crowded and stressful conditions (too much competition). We had beautiful weather and some great camping spots. From San Bernardino we headed north to Sequoia National Forest, where some unforeseen weather forced us north, but we did enjoy the coldness, a bit ( and of course the minnesotan in me rejoiced). We then traveled up the east side of the sierra nevada through through the desert, which if you haven't been is quite a trip! Gorgeous sites, but a lot of hot and open expanses. We traveled to an area outside Mammoth Lakes in the Inyo National Forest and, wouldn't ya know (as they say), we found some un expected weather, especially for mid-May. But we were able to get a shower, wash our clothes and spend some time seeing what else was in the area, which included some very nice hot springs and great views of the mountains. We weren't able to complete much of our because of the snow, sleet and rain, so we continued north to try our luck at Tahoe.... The weather was junk so I took a hiatus back to Davis for the week to finish some lab work and see Andie clean my clothes and get ready to head back to the field. In the meanwhile the others spent some pretty chilly wet nights in the woods at the Tahoe and Lassen National Forests. I returned at the end of the week to get back to work. For the rest of the trip the weather was spectacular! We completed our sampling of trees at Lassen and Tahoe and on the return trip south, we decided to chance it and try our luck with the weather at Sequoia National Park. We spent three nights there and all of the stars aligned for the completion of the first month of field work. Rather than walk through the pictures, I'll simply display some of the shots from the last week and half of work (as a single post) as we traveled the east and then west side of the Sierra Nevada via Yosemite National Park. Amazing. And they say call it all work?!