Studying trees from top down

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, forestry, canopy research, eighth continent, environmentalism, ecotourism

Behold Canopy Meg, Dr. Meg Lowman, called "Your Highness" by friends, a pioneer in forest canopy research, doing what she loves best.

In The Arbornaut: A Life Discovering the Eighth Continent in the Trees Above Us, Dr. Lowman describes her life, beginning as a shy, nature-loving girl, to become a pioneer in forest canopy research. She describes the twists and turns of beginning a scientific career when women were actively discouraged from doing so. A big turn was when she decided she needed to get into the treetops to study how the leaves differ between those near ground level, and farther up. They differ a lot!

In Australia, with the help of friends who are cavers, who use ropes and ascending equipment, using a slingshot she welded from some metal rods (It is illegal to buy power slingshots in Australia), she shot a line over a branch 75 feet up a coachwood tree, and learned to climb.

It didn't take long to learn that leaves in the upper part of a tree are different from those lower down. At ground level, where all earlier research had been done, it is darker and more humid, and the air is still. At the crown, the sun is relentless, the air is dryer or even arid, and the wind is almost constant and sometimes quite strong. Thus, the leaves lower down are larger, greener, and softer; the higher you go, the smaller, yellower, and tougher they are.

There are so many aspects to Canopy Meg's life and career that it is hard to remember more than a few. In spite of the bias against women in science and the roadblocks and the "glass canopy" even in tree research, she persisted—quietly and shyly, as is her wont—and is finally recognized as the pioneer she really is. But not without numerous scars from the "glass" she had to break through. She left a few prestigious positions, after having built viable educational and scientific organizations, when a board of directors changed course and hired a supervising manager, who made it his (always, his) first order of business to "put her in her place."

Earlier in her career she focused as much on the technology as on the science, developing or co-developing the techniques of bringing people to the treetops safely and with some measure of comfort. While she has rope-climbed Eucalypts upwards of 200 feet, a sweaty task you may be sure, some of her students who study Redwoods have been faced with climbing nearly 400 feet. That's a lot of rope work, and a heck of a daily commute! Enter the tree crane, for those scientific programs with sufficient funding (a million dollars or so for equipment, and thousands per day to pay the crew), and the canopy balloon (maybe less costly, a little). The crane shown is in use in Papua New Guinea, and the balloon in French Guinea.

The balloon is used in conjunction with several kinds of "tree raft" such as this one, light structures that can be left in the treetop for a few days at a time. Why, it looks quite comfortable! But the author writes that she makes sure not to drink much before ascending. It's a long way down to a lavatory, and she declines to carry a jug the way many men do.

There is much more to treetops than leaves and leaf research. Bromeliads and other epiphytes, including orchids, inhabit the branches, and sometimes seem to coat them. In this complex ecosystem there could be as many species of animal, from nematodes to insects to bats to rodents to the ubiquitous primates, as are found as ground level. Everywhere she and her associates and students have looked, they have found new species. Not just a few here and there, but hundreds. She writes of one collecting "bioblitz" that collected so many new beetle species that her systematist friends will be 10-20 years getting them all described and properly published. This is partly why she calls the forest canopy "the Eighth Continent".

And guess what all those insects are doing? Eating leaves (and each other, and trying to avoid being eaten by birds, and each other). Early estimates placed the amount of defoliation trees experience at 5-10% yearly. Not so; it is typically 30% or more. In some climates, where the trees are always adding leaves, it is 300% per year! When climatic stress or other ills weaken a tree, that level of herbivory soon kills them, hence the author's concern with a warming climate, which is a definite stressor.

Her work has always included education. That is becoming a primary focus. Firstly, education of students of all ages. Canopy walkways such as this one allow easy access for children, and other designs are wheelchair-friendly. Take a group of youngsters a hundred feet or so into the treetops, and you'll change a few lives. That goes for their parents and grandparents also.

She is equally involved in creating and maintaining opportunities for women in biology and the sciences in general. I suspect she would be heartened by an article I recently read about the number of women astronomers, which are becoming a majority at many institutions. But it is not just numbers. It is promoting pay equity and raising the prestige of productive female scientists, removing barriers to their growth as scientists.

Just as a side note: In a career of 40+ years writing scientific software, I have had both male and female supervisors and managers. While I have had a few bad bosses of both sexes, I have had a larger number of good female bosses than male. My two lifetime favorites are a man and a woman, so I don't consider sex either a benefit or detriment to being a good supervisor or manager.

One more branch (he-he) of Dr. Lowman's career has been promoting ecotourism, such as by using canopy walkways, as an alternative to "extractive forestry" (logging!). A thriving forest is really like the goose that will lay golden eggs one after another, while a logged forest may yield gold once, but then that's done. In many places, plantations that replace forests are less lucrative than ecotourism.

Canopy Meg is more than a great scientist, she is a great communicator. Her book is a joy to read. She has instantly become one of my favorite people of all time.

I don't support MADD any more

 kw: musings, disappointment

I used to support MADD (Mothers Against Driving Drunk), but over the last dozen years they have become more strident, and now they've jumped on the scare tactics bandwagon.

I heard an ad today that claimed, in a very foreboding tone, "Someone is killed in a drunk driving accident every 50 seconds." I went, "Whah??"

Just for context: An hour has 3,600 seconds. Divide by 50 and you'd have 72 deaths per hour, which is 1,728 per day, or about 630,000 per year.

The total number of traffic deaths in the US each year is about 33,000, and about 10,000 are due to drunk driving. That's about one every 52 minutes (MINUTES, not SECONDS).

The total number of traffic deaths worldwide each year is about 1.3 million, and about 300,000 are due to drunk driving. Compare that to 630,000. Of course, the ad didn't say whether the US or the world was their scope. Either way it is dramatically incorrect.

It doesn't matter. I won't support an organization that tries to scare us into donating.

Too few of the little things

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, insects, invertebrates, conservation, rewilding, polemics

I have read that there are about 1/4 to 1/3 fewer insects on the Earth than there were half a century ago. For some insect groups, the remaining amount must be much lower. I remember driving cross-country in the 1960's, when we needed to wipe or clean the windshield of the car, and the grill, at the end of the day, and sometimes at midday also. That doesn't happen much anymore.

It's harder to collect butterflies than it was when I was a kid. I grew up in several places across the country. Whether in California, Utah, or Ohio, during the warmer months there were always several different kinds of butterflies in view. I just had to pick which one(s) I might like to add to my collection. 

Once, at age eleven, I picked up a praying mantis that was on a tree, where we were taking a walk in the forest. It was more than five inches long. It fought back a little—those spikes on the front legs can draw blood! But when it was warmed by my hand it settled down. I wondered if I could make a pet of it, so I tied kite string to it, just a bit loosely in the middle of the thorax where it wouldn't slip off. I tied the other end to my bedpost that night. In the middle of the night I awoke. Hearing a small noise I sat up, and nearly jumped out of my skin when the mantis flew right into my face. With wings and clawed "arms" outspread, it looked the size of a dinner plate! When I regained my composure, I untied it and let it out my window. Whew!

Children have a natural affinity for insects and small animals, if their parents and others don't drive it out of them. That affinity is the first emotion Vicki Hird draws upon in her book Rebugging the Planet: The Remarkable Things That Insects (and Other Invertebrates) Do – And Why We Need to Love Them More. While insects are the main "stars" of the book, the author expands the common term "bug" to include earthworms, garden snails, and other small, invertebrate animals.

Perhaps you know that most almonds are grown in California's central valley. Did you also know that keeping that almond crop pollinated every spring requires the services of most (some say 80-90%) of the honeybees in the U.S.? Millions of beehives and billions of bees are trucked to and from California every year. That by itself may have a lot to do with "colony collapse disorder", which leads to ever-increasing losses of honeybees across the country.

For several years I participated in the Great Sunflower Project, growing a certain species of sunflower each spring and counting how many native bees, and what kinds, would visit a particular plant during a daily 15- or 30-minute viewing session. Near the end of the season, when most of the flowers had ripening seeds, I had the added bonus of seeing goldfinches come for the seeds; I seldom see goldfinches otherwise. This endeavor is important because, if our honeybees fail, native bees must take up the slack! Fortunately, most sweat bees and mason bees and bumblebees are even more diligent pollinators than honeybees. There just aren't as many of them. One of the suggestions in Rebugging has to do with making homes for mason bees and other native bees, to increase their numbers in our gardens. In our case, we grow garlic chives, which has white flowers that draw bumble bees and at least 15-20 other species of bees (and hoverflies and certain wasps) for 2/3 of each summer.

Going through the book, one learns that pollination is not the only "service" provided by insects. Another has to do with rot. You may know that fungi work at breaking down fallen plant matter, from tree trunks to leaf litter. Fewer know that fungi are just one part of the "cleanup crew", which includes insects, slugs and snails, and earthworms. Some years ago I learned why, in pre-Colonial America, the natives ("Indians") were so famed for moving silently through the forest. There were no earthworms in North America before the 1600's, when some arrived in soil brought with plants from Europe. The forests before about 1650 were deep with leaf litter, which was only slowly decomposed by fungi and native snails and beetle grubs. Modern forests are almost litter-free because of European earthworms. The soil in my garden has one or two dozen per shovelful of dirt.

Another "service" is that insects in particular are "served up" to birds and mice and other small animals. A Little Brown Bat, for example, eats 1/4 to half its body weight in insects each night. Some portion of those will be mosquitos, though the bats prefer moths and "meatier" flies when they can get them. I've observed on farms that chickens will run down grasshoppers and crickets, which are big, fatty and calorie-rich.

Much of the book is advice about "rebugging" here, there and everywhere. So much so that it has a preachy tone that grows more and more intense. That's unfortunate, because nobody responds well to nagging. The last chapter or two are so exhortation-dense that I could hardly stand to read them. I remember reading Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, the quintessential environmental polemic. It was so very influential because it exposed the huge problems with pesticide use without adopting a nagging tone. Vicki Hird is tilting at the "windmill" of the big pesticide companies and Agribusiness. So was Rachel Carson. Ms Hird will have better success if someone with Carson's sensibility helps her produce a major rewrite of  Rebugging.

Dinosaurs, Dinosaurs!

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, paleontology, dinosaurs, science

Searching for "dinosaur hunter", I had this in mind:

This image is from the Anyone4Science website, which caters to educators and children.

It is way cool to go out in the field, do a bit of digging, and find a big skeleton like this. I have been to Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado, where you really can see scenes similar to this, and a preserved cliff has bones sticking out everywhere.

Typically, fossil hunting is rather humdrum. When an animal dies, usually by predation, it doesn't take long for its killer and scavengers to thoroughly dismantle it and scatter the bones while picking them clean. In most environments the bones also are soon dissolved or digested, and nothing will remain. A fossil skeleton such as the one shown is the result of an unlikely series of events, such as sudden burial by a landslide, in either a dry climate or one with a handy bog with reducing conditions. There are also "water traps" such as the La Brea pits in Los Angeles, California or the Mammoth Site near Hot Springs, South Dakota (but there are no dinosaurs in either of those places). So you more typically find scattered bones, or bits of bones, and they have to be sorted and fitted together to assemble a skeleton, or some part of a skeleton.

The recent book The Science of Jurassic World: The Dinosaur Facts Behind the Films, by Mark Brake and Jon Chase, touches on this matter, but focuses more on the science behind the question, "Can dinosaurs really be cloned from ancient mosquito guts?" Spoiler alert: In a word, NO. But it made for a fun premise, as handled by author Michael Crichton for his book Jurassic Park and the series of films still being made in the Jurassic World franchise.

Also, to keep the book from being no more than a pamphlet, the authors dug into quite a variety of matters, such as, "Was Dr. Alan Grant's job a walk in the park?" (Sure, after 3+ decades of study and research), "How Did Dinosaurs Get So Big?" (Call it an arms race, between herbivores that needed to be too big to kill, and predators "growing" to meet the challenge), and "Tyrannosaur family life" (some tyrannosaurs may have hunted in family group packs, but we don't know if T. rex did).

I don't know whether it is a lack of education, or a new habit among writers of the X Generation (and since): Every few pages I encountered a partial sentence. It's like they never discovered the semicolon. Two examples:

"For more than 150 years, people have been mounting dinosaur skeletons for display. Skeletons that were discovered, dug up, and diligently prepared for subsequent analysis and potential mounting." (p 61. The period before "Skeletons" should be replaced by a comma. The second "sentence" doesn't stand on its own.)

"So, dinosaurs evolved relatively rapidly. No doubt driven by shifts in our planet's oceans, climate, and continents." (p 68. While a comma can replace the period before "No", a semicolon is better because of the comma-delimited list later on.)

In either case, the second "sentence", if viewed in isolation, is meaningless. They should actually be dependent clauses. Such instances appear at a rate of one or two per chapter, primarily in the first half of the book. Doesn't anyone employ copy editors any more? Or are copy editors equally at fault?

Out of more than 25 chapters taking up such questions, they could have dispensed entirely with one that was crafted to slander President Trump. There is no science in that chapter; it is a quintessentially ugly bit of polemical politics. As Solomon wrote, 3,000 years ago, "As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honor." The authors lost all the regard I had had for them from reading the earlier chapters.

To close the loop: When I searched for "dinosaur hunter", this is typical of what I found:

The image is from an advertisement at ArtStation. 

That hunter looks rather passive in the face of a charging T. rex. Also, he has no hope of surviving unless he is carrying an RPG.