Amazon Adventures in Science Three: First days in the field: June 21 – 23

As we dived off of the main highway and onto a deeply channeled clay track cut narrowly through the glistening and vibrantly green mess of foliage so peculiar to tropical rainforests I felt immediately relieved of my fatigue. I enjoyed the site of familiar faces—the Melastomataceae family with its conspicuously ladder-like secondary venation, as diverse and dominant as ever on roadside edges; the creeping Dilleniaceae with its dark, sandpaper leaves; the ringed trunks of Cecropia with leaves shaped like giant human hands more than two feet across.

Cecropia leaf: conspicuous early colonizer of high-sun areas

Josema, our lively chauffer who dubbed himself appropriately with two of the five English words he knew, “Professional Driver”, nimbly negotiated some 25 km of a road some would consider unwalkable!

A treefall bars the way on the entrance road to BDFF. Experienced hands with a couple of machetes make quick work of it!

Cook and “mateiro” (forest guide) Antonio and I spent the next two nights at the Colosso field station—simply a few tin roofs with tarp walls and a simple kitchen, and ample places for hanging hammocks. This is one of several sites belonging to the Biodiversity Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP), which for about twenty years has been monitoring the evolution of plant communities in different-sized fragments, regenerating pastures with different histories of land clearings, animal dispersal across gaps and different forest regeneration stages, and anything else that could be conjured up under the project’s title. The prominent forest edge I had been envisioning for my study did actually not exist anymore at these sites as the pastures have now been regenerating for 15 years. However, we identified a nice edge along a road within regenerating pasture, which would perhaps be an even more appropriate representation of a plant community evolved in a high-heat environment. The ‘original’ shaded primary forest understory community for comparison to the edge would be the central hectare of a ~9-ha square fragment.

Colosso field station... that's pretty much it! The instruments wait out the rain under the tin roof.

These three days were a perfect example of the clash between high hopes and the reality of the field! The first step was to make measurements of photosynthesis on ‘shade’ (forest interior) and ‘sun’ (regenerating pasture) plants to make sure they could both handle the standard light level I wanted to throw at them for measuring VOC emissions (plants can shut down photosynthesis if exposed to much higher light than they are accustomed). While waiting for CO2 cartridges to arrive by boat from Santarem, I planned to simply use ambiental air for measurements. With a leaf clamped in a chamber with light shining on it, the LiCor 6400 compares CO2 coming into the chamber to CO2 going out and thereby calculates photosynthetic uptake of carbon. (More details on photosynthesis and instrument function in later blog entry devoted to this subject.) It turns out that ambiental CO2 concentrations, particularly near the ground, are way too erratic for these measurements! After several cumbersome iterations of method alteration to overcome this problem, I finally figured out that if I just fill a trash bag with ambient air and tie it around the machine’s air intake I get nice, stable CO2 concentrations due to the evenly mixed air! On the last day, after being rained-out for half of day 2, we set out to complete our measurements with this excellent method and the last pair of batteries imminently died (note to self, why not bring the charger?). We made good use of our time by identifying every plant species in the regenerating pasture.

Chamber head of LiCor-6400 clamped to leaf for photosynthesis measurements.

Flower from the Melastomataceae family, I love these flowers!

A hawk spreads its wings to be cleansed by the afternoon rain.

Antonio reviewing one of our plant guides in the ‘dining room’.

An evening walk finds an excellent Cane Toad enjoying a puddle! Those large sacks behind its head exude poison from the open pores, explaining its completely unconcerned demeanor.

AK-AZ Day 4: Reintroduction to Civilization (July 25)

Cumulative Mileage: 1830

Stone Sheep appeared as we entered a section of the Rockies very different in character from the mountains of Alaska and the Yukon we left behind. These were carved not by glaciers, but by water forming extremely steep-sided V-shaped valleys and pointy peaks. It looked like very difficult hiking, but there were some really fun looking streams and we imagine some great routes could be found with some careful map analysis.

Stone Sheep in a rugged landscape

The road for about 120 miles from Liard Hotsprings was an exciting mix of tight corners next to ruggedly steep limestone mountains and many steep climbs and descents. Stone sheep hiding behind blind summits on the road presented an additional challenge. This area was also great for seeing wildlife – we saw 3 groups of stone sheep, a grizzly bear and 2 groups of caribou – all before lunch!

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly visiting the road right in front of our car

After the steep limesteone cliffs following Liard Hotsprings, notable landscape types included striking forested plateaus, and spruce forests reminiscent of Fairbanks. Between Fort Nelson and Dawson Creek, the landscape became a vast series of gradually rolling agricultural fields, similar to England.

Are we in England? I think we took a wrong turn somewhere…

We pulled off the highway for supper beside a beautifully quiet river that provided welcome calm from our long drive. Looking at the trees and their reflections in the slow moving water, we thought back to some of our discussion on the drive while reading Gary Snyder’s Practice of the Wild: it is we who attribute meaning to what we see; the trees don’t know they have a beautiful reflection, the water doesn’t know it’s moving slowly as opposed to quickly; through being, they realize the essence of themselves; perhaps looking at things from this perspective could help us to see the essence of things, as Dogen did of the ‘mountains and rivers walking’, instead of only what our mind attributes to them. In all our travels we seek meaning in experiences, but maybe we should think to differentiate between experienced meaning, and meaning attributed only by our minds and their perception by relativity.

We were very sad to see a dead black bear by the side of the road, from its injuries presumably killed by a passing car. I initially felt really angry about this tragedy, but then we have been clocking up speeds of 70 or 80 miles an hour, and it could just have been bad luck on the part of the driver and the bear.

We drove late in an attempt to get to Seattle on time on Monday to see Ty’s family. At about 9.30pm, we stopped at a petrol station to refuel our tank, which with only a quarter full wouldn’t have got us the remaining 100 miles to Prince George. But the petrol station was closed and the pumps weren’t set up to take card payment out of hours. We had to drive a 45 mile loop off the highway to a much more remote town in order to refuel! It amazed us that this road doesn’t seem to have 24-hour card payment petrol stations – apparently locals drag extra fuel around with them in the winter. Something to bear in mind in the future!

I was dozing off when Ty suddenly put the breaks on and a large moose loomed into view, taking up the whole of the neighbouring carriageway. We were nearly at a stop and with a bit of road left to dive into, but it was nice that it decided to lope off in the other direction—you can never tell with moose on the road, they are pretty stupid and seem to move at random!

Fireweed nicely accents the roadsides

AK-AZ Day 3: Liard Hot Springs (July 24)

Cumulative mileage: 1018

In the morning we crossed over the continental divide drooling over the ideal off-trail hiking among rolling rocky ridgelines and beautiful streams. The sky above was sunny and blue, and yet it was somehow still raining on our car! We suspected yesterday’s raincloud had dispatched a follower to linger just above the Subaru. We were a bit concerned about dwindling fuel as distances to functional fueling stations in this landscape are unpredictable and can be up to 100 mi or so.

Easy alpine hiking around the continental divide

Jutting cliffs followed in the descent into forest beyond the rolling alpine of the divide

We descended through changing vegetation and geology, finding our first Pines (Lodgepole?) and jutting cliffs (wish we had a Roadside Geology for Canada!). To our surprise, shortly after passing a “Caution—Bison” sign, we were indeed confronted by a group of ~25 Wood Bison lounging and munching grass on the roadside. Bison were extirpated in BC in 1906, and reintroduced in 1995. The population has increased from the 49 introduced individuals to 100 in 2007—still a far cry from the >168,000 that roamed NW North America in the 1800s. These animals reach about 2m in height and 2000 pounds. In a second group we saw, a pair crossing the road behind us were clearly taller than the car!

Caution: Bison

Wood Bison!

We arrived nice and early at Liard Hotsprings, about 3pm, and after the obligatory shot of Scotch (the Canadian ‘zero-tolerance’ law regarding alcohol and driving had left us with some catching up to do), we headed to the hotsprings for a much needed soak. The forest around the hotsprings is quite diverse with typical boreal forest shifting to a warm wetland rich in minerals. The warm, humid microclimate created by the hotsprings allows for a unique plant community to occur including a particular fern that is peculiar to hotsprings. We were impressed that the natural character of the hotsprings had been maintained, instead of being “improved” as so many are.

Soaking

AK-AZ Day 2: Six Hundred Miles of Rain (July 23)

Cumulative miles: 750

Camp 1: gravel pits offer solace to thrifty campers!

Morning coffee: Ty experiments with the coffee maker on top of the Subaru at Camp 1

Beautiful moth at Camp 1

We crossed over the border into Canada at about lunchtime (~300 miles from Fairbanks). The first 150 miles or so of the road in the Yukon Territory required skillful maneuvering among the constant fissures and potholes over a road whose waves of tarmac resembled more a tumultuous sea. All day we passed under the most impressive raincloud we’ve seen, providing continuous rain for six hundred miles!

The last couple of hundred miles of Alaska provided views of stunted black spruce, marshes, and the vast spruce burns that characterise the Alaskan interior. The next several hundred miles traverse broad subalpine valleys around 3000 ft in elevation. Stunning peaks and varicolored rivers keep the driver entertained. Near the continental divide, after Haines Junction, we saw former burn areas completely dominated by young Aspen trees. In some places we noticed remnants of fallen burnt trees intermixed with hundred-year-old Spruce and a subcanopy of Aspen all stunted to the same height. Those examples seemed to demonstrate perhaps at least one hundred years of post-fire succession in which each stage still remained—the burnt wood, the Aspens, and the Spruce—demonstrating the very slow turnover of the boreal forest.

Typical interior Black Spruce and Sphagnum bog.

A scenic pit stop at Haines Junction

A very rainy day

The car system is working excellently so far, despite being packed to the brim. We’ve hooked up my subwoofer bass and computer speakers using a power inverter plugged to the car’s cigarette lighter for some quality sound. We’ve created easy-access locations for everything including hanging stuff sacks from a rope tied between the ‘OS’ handles, and a ‘kitchen in a basin’ neatly stored in the back. When we want to cook in the rain, we prop up the hatch and tie the camping tarp from the roof rack to a tree and stake out the corners for a quick and dry cooking and dining area.

BC seems to have the annoying habit of barricading their gravel pits, so finding a campsite required an hour of searching on dwindling gas in the dark (the absence of 24hr light is a novel aspect that comes with heading south). We camped on a muddy wing of some dirt road heading to a designated hunting area—it all looks the same once you’re in the tent though.

AK-AZ Day 1: Exodus Under the Midnight Sun (July 22)

Cumulative miles:  130 (!)

The last day of packing was, as expected, more time consuming than expected!  Ruthless separation of needs and not-needs spawned piles of items for Fairbanks’ re-use sites: covered areas to leave give-away stuff at the trash dumps.  The efficiency of those sites is amazing; some items were gone the next day, and on our final trip the stuff was snatched up right from the trunk of Chris’s car!  We enjoyed a final drink on the deck of Pike’s over the Chena River with Chris—we owe Rhiannon and him MUCHO for allowing us to trash their cabin for two days and of course tie up a couple of loose ends for us—> Thanks guys!  We will miss our Fairbanks friends lots, we promise to be back for many cool trips in the future.

Fairbanks: Ty saying goodbye to Chris after a beer at Pike’s

Fairbanks farewells: Chris,  Marielle and Ty

Our 9:30pm departure from Fairbanks was about 12hrs later than originally planned, which has unfortunately precluded any spontaneous river floats along the Al-Can Highway so far.  It’s been heart-wrenching to drive past such breathtaking scenery, spectacular hiking, and ideal packrafting rivers, but we’ve planned to spend more time in Washington and California, so we’ll have to return to this vast and beautiful country for future epic trips.  We’ve been scoping out and making notes of every good river, and on the Alaskan side, drawing possible routes on our Topo! software.

Between Fairbanks and Canada we saw two large moose, and those have been the only charismatic macrofauna we’ve seen so far.  That wonderful northern latitude low-angle sun painted lingering pink skies mirrored by droves of flowering fireweed as we pulled into a gravel pit at midnight for our first camp, having covered just 130 miles for day 1 (gravel pits make excellent free camp sites along Alaskan roads!).  Teeth were brushed ‘on the hoof’ as a caribou might do while plagued by the blood thirsty hoards (mosquitoes).  We thanked modern civilization for the invention of lightweight tents so we could sleep peacefully without concern of massive blood loss (for those of you who don’t know Alaska, we consider the mosquito our State Bird).

AK-AZ Setting off on our 3,500 mile drive!!!

Miles travelled: 0
Location: Fairbanks, Alaska

Hello all,

Sorry not to have kept you up-to-date with our summer - time and internet have been sparse. Ty and I went out at the week end on a hiking and packrafting trip with my friend Lily and our friends Ed and Anne, who we met at the white water course later summer. Ed is now renting out packrafts in Fairbanks, and both are SUPER fit! (Anne is training for an ultra marathon and ran 35 miles the previous w/e, ug!!) Suffice to say that I was the slowest on the trip, and found it a good challenge to keep up the pace - we managed 14 miles hiking on Saturday and completed the rest of the hike and a good float the next day, making about 38 miles in all! Not bad for 2 days. We were back in Denali National Park and the scenery was beautiful. Not too much bush-wacking either.

Ty and I had a fantastic time on the Amazon-PIRE field course in Brazil last month - posts and photos on this coming soon I promise! We met some amazing people, who we very much hope to keep in contact with as friends and researchers. It was a great introduction to the options available for graduate research and to the Amazon in particular.

Over the last couple of days Ty and I have been packing up all our worldy possessions. We just managed to stuff everything into the Subaru and now we are about to set out on our 3,500 mile journey to Tucson, Arizona, for the start of graduate school! First stop will be Liard Hotsprings in British Columbia, Canada. It's already 8.20pm and we haven't left Fairbanks, so we probably won't make the border tonight. We hope to get as fair as Tok.

I can't guarantee how much internet access we'll have on the way down, but we'll do our best to keep you updated!

Marielle.

Amazon Adventures in Science - Two

Project background: In the Biosphere 2 rainforest, there remain 25% of the original number of planted species. Why did these species survive and not the others? What factors drove this local extinction? Under the glass in Biosphere 2, it is HOT! As you climb up to the upper levels, it gets even hotter. At times during B2's life, the cooling systems were run at a minimum of energy. After this period (before U of Arizona), many of the trees got cooked! I think that heat was one of the strong pressures that formed the plant community which exists today.

How do plants deal with heat? One of the most important factors seems to be the ability to produce large amounts of anti-oxidants, which volatilize (or are emitted in gaseous form) from the leaf and are measured as volatile organic compounds (VOC). In high heat, an organism's physiology and chemistry runs faster and makes more mistakes. These mistakes can be in the form of "free radicals", which are powerful oxidants that can destroy cells. This is why the plant needs good antioxidants.

Importance: Some of these VOCs drive very important atmospheric interactions. Some of them act as nuclei for cloud water, and actually make it rain over the forest. Isoprene, the most commonly studied VOC from plants, can either reduce or increase ozone in the atmosphere, depending on local conditions.

My question: Are plant communities at forest edges dominated by species that emit high amounts of VOCs? As the Amazon (and other forests) becomes increasingly fragmented, or chopped into pieces, these interactions between forest edges and atmosphere become increasingly important.

My methods: To standardize the leaf environment, I'll use a device that clamps onto the leaf and controls light, temperature, and CO2 concentrations. (The device is normally used to measure photosynthesis.) To measure VOCs, I'll use a new advance in air monitoring technology, a hand-held detector that can measure VOCs at the parts-per-billion (ppb) level! This instrument will measure gases from the exhaust line from the leaf chamber.

Ty

Amazon Adventures in Science - One

On my way to the Amazon!!! It was inevitable that I would make it to that sea of overwhelming life one day. I think it is appropriate that my first visit is for ecology research. This is exactly the reason (well, one of them) that I chose to pursue natural sciences.

The primary purpose of the trip is a two-week field course on tropical biogeochemistry. However, I'm going down a few days early and staying a few days late to work on a project I've been developing at Biosphere 2 in Arizona. I've made it one of the group projects, which I'll be leading, for the course.

The course is put together through the Amazon-PIRE program (Partnership for International Research and Education) lead by principal investigator, Scott Saleska at the University of Arizona. Several scientists who work at Biosphere 2 are taking part in the course. Joost Van Haren will be leading studies on soil gas efflux (gas emissions). Kolby Jardine and Trina Shartsis will be leading projects on volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in air. And there's me, Ty Taylor, leading a project on VOC emissions from plant leaves.

We'll arrive in Manaus on Sunday and head to the PIRE house, a convenient place recently acquired for PIRE researchers to use. On Monday morning I'll head to the field. The site is called Biodiversity Dynamics of Forest Fragments. I have to bring my own hammock and there will be no internet! (what a relief!) I'll be back in Manaus on Wednesday for a couple days off before the course.

Ty

Packrafting Verde River with access through Mazatzal Mountains, Arizona

Overview:

This was a packrafting trip in the Mazatzal Mountains in central Arizona including a float on the Verde River between East Verde River and the landing strip. The trip was a loop from where I parked my car at the end of FR 406 from Doll Baby Ranch Rd, W out of Payson. I took two and a half days to cover 51 miles: 8 on trail, 7 off trail, 14 floating, and 20 hiking back on a "trail" (usually nothing more than deceiving cairns!). Below is a two-part Video Journal, followed by Trip Details, New Gear Systems, Natural History Highlights, and Photo Gallery.

Video journal: Packrafting the Verde River accessed by Mazatzal Mountains, Arizona.

Hike:

There is a good place to park the car and camp where the road is gated. Beyond that point the road continues, closed to public traffic but open to foot-travelers. The first ~5 miles follow this dirt road. Just before meeting the East Verde river, a sign points to Bull Spring trail to the left. Following that trail takes you up to the ridge line that parallels the East Verde on its South side all the way to the Verde River. Due to a bad case of trail blindness, I didn't pay careful enough attention and arrived at the ridge further East than intended - a fact I didn't realize until a couple of topographical surprises alerted me that I wasn't where I thought I was!

The Mazatzals are a very lumpy bunch of mountains in some places, requiring some very precise map reading at a small scale to keep on track. However, in general, the ridge is easy to follow even if you end up on the wrong hill a couple times. Mostly the brush is easily traveled - the biggest impediment being "Cat Claw" (Acacia greggii). In places there are some fun rocky high points requiring some clambering near a steep drop. The rock is occasionally limestone, which I found to be much more open with respect to brush than other substrates.

From the river, I followed trails leading to Bull Springs trail, and took Bull Springs trail back to the road. The trail was very difficult to find from the river. I saw no obvious beginning, but I just hiked up into the hills and found it pretty soon. The trails have several bifurcation points with sometimes-misleading signs requiring some accurate map assessment. I found hiking on these trails can be much harder than hiking off trail. When you are on the trail, the hiking is fast, but it quickly disappears into heavy brush while you wander around looking for cairns. Hiking off trail, I generally get onto ridge lines as quickly as possible where brush is less dense and navigation is easier. Bull Spring had plenty of water, although I made it the twenty miles on my five liters.

Float:

The Verde River was at about 350-500 cfs. (Camp Verde read 350 while Horseshoe Reservoir read 600). This flow was low for most boats, but optimal for a packraft. There were two rapids that might be called class III, though they were very easy to plow through. Mostly there were frequent wave trains and fun small channels to run through over sand bars, usually leading into a fun little section of rapids. Good fun without being scary. Paddling constantly I averaged 3mph, so it was not a fast river. The flat sections were very slow. The takeout is easy to spot if you pay good attention to your progress on the river. On the right (W) bank there is a well traveled trail dropping into the water to ford across, connecting with the trail I ascended back through the mountains. There are two orange spray painted dots on the rock to mark this point.

A packraft could probably run this river down to 250cfs, although there would be some butt bruises. For the record, the East Verde was far too low for floating for those of you crazy enough to want to do so!

New Gear Systems:

Hobo Stove! The morning of the drive I butchered a tin can to pile twigs in and boil water with a small contained fire. It worked great! The design could use a better air-drawing system, but it proved that one need not carry fuel when there is fuel all around! (video of hobo stove below)

Natural History Highlights:

#1: Caterpillar Parasitoidy by Wasp!: This is a real treat! This wasp, about 4 cm long, has paralyzed a caterpillar and is carrying it beneath its body. The wasp belongs to a parasitic group in the Hymenoptera, the Apocrita (Hymenoptera = wasps, bees, ants). This one appears to be of the family Braconidae, most of which are endoparasitic--laying eggs inside the larvae of butterflies, beetles, and flies. This one appears to be lacking an ovipositor, a long apendage that drills into the body of the host to deposit eggs. So it may be one of the early lineages within the Braconidae that are ectoparasites, and it is carrying the caterpillar back to its hole where it will chop it up and feed it to it's own larvae!

#2: Flame Mariposa (Calochortus kennedyi): A very rare and beautiful Lily! (ID based on Cabeza Prieta Natural History Association - Sonoran Desert Plants page online.)


Photo Gallery:

Claret Cup Cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus): Species ID based on Google searches.

Claret Cup Cactus (Echinocereus triglochidiatus): Species ID based on Google searches.


The Tarp set up using two trees

Beneath the cozy tarp with life vest as pillow

East Verde meeting some gorge



White and black heron (where the heck is my bird book!?)


Tarp set up using one tree and one bamboo stick


Glassy section of the Verde. Some rapids shown in the Trip Journal at top.


Flame Mariposa (Calochortus kennedyi): A very rare and beautiful Lily! (ID based on Cabeza Prieta Natural History Association - Sonoran Desert Plants page online.)


Fouauieria splendens and Prickly Pear


Verde River with Squaw Butte in center-left-distant.



Coati tracks!



Diamond Back Rattler! My first rattler encounter--it's rattle was unmistakable!


My second rattler encounter moments later! Same species, but completely different behavior.




Bull Spring in all its glory! Apparently this is some of the nicest looking water you can find in the Arizona backcountry.


40 miles down, 11 to go!

Exhausted and happy camped next to the truck.