hydrangeas in the snow

February 5, 2010AnnaComment

When I arrived home today there was a little red box waiting outside my door in the snow...

and it had my camera cord in it! And other fun things made of fuzzy yarn and lacy paper and sparkles. Thanks Mama and Grammy :)

So being newly reunited with my cord, I extracted the pictures that were waiting for me in my camera and found these snowy hydrangeas from my front step in Illinois .

[Did I mention the snow? We are getting hit by the epic Northeast Blizzard of 2010 as I type.]

Have a lovely weekend, whether you are snowbound or not.

My plans include some baking, attacking my backed-up laundry situation, a baby shower, superbowl party, and of course many hours of reading and writing for school.

Hopefully I can put a dent in my expectations; I usually plan too many things to do on weekends and end up disappointing myself when I can't accomplish them all! Alas.

Well I'm off to make another humongous mug of tea.

Today I realized I am a tea junkie.

My mountain of boxes is getting outta control.

repeat photography

February 4, 2010AnnaComment

Happy almost-Friday everyone! Oh my goodness, where is the week going? I've been pairing up some repeat photos of Lassen Volcanic National Park in CA in the lab and I think it's really cool...so I am going to teach you about it!

Repeat photography is one of the tools we use to visualize vegetation change in a specific location. It's exactly what it sounds like; we take an old picture of a national park taken in the 20's, 30's or 40's back when the parks were being established and advertised, then go back out and find the EXACT SAME SPOT where the photographer took the picture and take the exact picture again. Almost as soon as national parks were established, an enormous fire suppression policy took effect because wildfires are bad and we should put them out, right? (wronnnng) We are now realizing that fires were an important part of lots of forests and ecosystems because they cleared out underbrush and allowed big trees to grow without competition for resources, among gazillions of other reasons. Fire suppression has resulted in the growth of LOTS of little trees that would have been wiped out otherwise. Fast forward 80 years and these little trees are getting pretty big, which creates MORE fuel for future fires to burn, thus creating a bigger risk for high intensity fires that aren't natural (aka BAD).

Comparing photographs of the same site reveals how forests have changed from fewer bigger trees to many smaller trees, which also blocks the dramatic vistas that characterize the national parks.

Here's an example of my favorite from Yosemite. The picture on the top is from the early 1900's and the one on the bottom is from the 1990s.

{original}

{today}

WAAAA! If you go there today, you would have no clue that what you're seeing is not natural at all!

Forest and park managers are working to restore natural conditions by using prescribed fire, and researchers help by determining what "natural" or reference conditions were. And that is part of what I do at grad school!