Hey,

Speaking of debris falling.

We know it can get wet under a tree when a researcher is hidden above.

I'm sure there is dead silence above when "joe hiker" stops to gawk, due to their code of secrecy.

What a chance for a game. Play ignorant, and hang out taking pictures to see how long they can hold it.

Considering how little of the redwood forest is explored, if I were in research, I'd probably start a program to train recreational climbers to go into the redwood parks inner areas. Not just any climbers, but ones who had references, etc..

But they could go on missions to explore various trees that were not overly complex, but still rather tall.

Then their mission would be to take photographs of the trunk and limbs as they went up the tree, to form a catalogue of how much or how little was growing on various trees.

mdvaden wrote:
Hey,

Speaking of debris falling.

We know it can get wet under a tree when a researcher is hidden above.

I'm sure there is dead silence above when "joe hiker" stops to gawk, due to their code of secrecy.

What a chance for a game. Play ignorant, and hang out taking pictures to see how long they can hold it.

Here's what happens when you get over 100-150 ft. in a conifer (depending on the size of the tree) You can't see the ground and you pretty much can't hear anything on the ground unless it's fairly loud. So you can walk around a tall tree containing climbers and they'll likely not know you're there unless you start raising a rucous.
-moss

mdvaden wrote: Considering how little of the redwood forest is explored, if I were in research, I'd probably start a program to train recreational climbers to go into the redwood parks inner areas. Then their mission would be to take photographs of the trunk and limbs as they went up the tree, to form a catalogue of how much or how little was growing on various trees.

There must be great potential for these extra 'eyes' in the canopy. However, to obtain meaningful data, photographs must be taken in a consistent way each time and put into context with text describing position relative to the overall structure of the tree and photos/information about the surrounding environment and localized climate statistics. Also th climbers would need a reasonable knowledge of botany/entymology to be able to spot anything out of the ordinary. All of this would require training course(s) for all volunteers as well as someone to compile and sort out all of the data before anything can begin to be gained from this program. Nevertheless, I think it's an idea worth putting forward at least!

Michael

I think that the knowledge would be minimal. Maybe know how to ID a Douglas fir from a redwood.

The climber would not need to know much botanical stuff. All they would need to do is take images at intervals including close-ups. With good photos, the scientists could figure out what the plants were. Doubt they would want samples removed anyway.

It would be nice if the height of the photos could be known, or the estimated height. With a person on the ground, one person could read a tape and radio for each area a photo was taken, but good chance both people would enjoy climbing simultaneously. Unless a non-climbing volunteer went along.

Like, if you took this photo, you would not need to know the ID - just say what tree and and about how high (At tree top, a GPS would probably work well too):

Also, a laminated cheat-sheet could be supplied. There is only a limited number of species that are common. But I'd imagine that such a project would function well, simply by an abundance of images showing how much of what is at various levels.

One other idea came to mind about recreational climbers helping research.

Suppose each expedition was accompanied by someone like Robert Van Pelt. Suppose he takes 30 climbers into Jed Smith redwoods. Then the whole group works in unison. Like climbing trees that are 200 feet apart in a rectangular grid.

This means that no "undisclosed" trees would need to be disclosed. It would merely be sampling the redwood canopy in multi-acre plots.