A call from Don Pigott from Yellow Point Propagation provided a much needed excuse for a subalpine escape. Don wanted mature larch cones. The details were to find a sample of viable seeds from 10 individuals in two separate stands. Adrian Leslie and I decided to pick a relatively close by and familiar location to look for some these samples - above Whitewater ski hill, in Ymir Basin.
Leaving the ski runs below Ymir Basin
Adrian and Ellie looking for trees that had cones
Once up to the shorter trees that we could access with our pruning pole, we discovered that other seed predators were well at work.
Adrian inspecting a poorly developed cone
This critter was probably Strobilomyia macalpinei, something that I found a fair amount of in the stands I suveyed in the Rockies.
A problem...fly larvae were already harvesting the seeds!
An old vet..
This was a classic open, timberline stand, where avalanche disturbance and deep spring snow packs allowed the larch to continuously regenerate among surviving older seed producers. The other high elevation species, spruce, fir, and whitebark pine were relegated to protected ribbons below rock outcrops, or mature larch groups.
In the end, a dissapointing cone crop - but a beautiful day out in the mountains and great break from the office!
Me clipping off cones, using a pruning pole.
Another cone with a smaller larvae instar
Two well developed cones, and a short shoot that couldn't make up its mind whether to be a cone or a branch
Well, we're at it again for 2012! So far there there are 85 new students spread over four diploma and one degree program in the School. We've had the College wide orientation, our own get together with first and returning second year students, the first week of field trips, forestry bridge installations, getting to know LANs, servers, and GIS.
SEG faculty assistant, Leanne Reitan and I, manning the orientaiton both
new students vying for cross-cut champions title!
Our new SEG crowd getting treasure hunt instructions
For me, it's been a lot learning in my new role as the Chair of the SEG. I've been getting to know a whole lot of College staff that I never really appreciated before - an eye opener!
Feb 2012 - It's been a busy time since Field School last spring. Right now I'm a month in teaching a revitalized forest ecology - now terrestrial ecology and biology course. For the first couple of weeks students and I have been out on the college campus learning how to identify shrubs in winter,
measuring different tree plantations, and observing evidence of out-of-season wildlife wandering around in the warmer temperatures that we've experienced this January.
more recently, this class moved up to the Nancy Greene Lake area, west of Castlegar, to examine forest structure and ways of measuring site productivity.
Folks have been busy staring through prisms, rapping DBH tapes around trees, estimating stand ages, and generally having fun! Students will find the hard part settling down in the computer lab to restle with data that has been collected over the next few weeks...
Well, we’re halfway through field school which has been an interesting and busy time so far. The Recreation, Fish and Wildlife students started off with a chainsaw safety course where they learn how to strip down and clean saws, what safety equipment to use, and how to safely make some basic cuts.
Bucking and limbing
Our Integrated Environmental Planning students spent the first week working on a restoration project on the City of Nelson’s shoreline. This was in conjunction with Eileen Senyk of Benchmark Environmental Services, the folks from the City of Nelson, and Thor Smestad from Terra Erosion Control Ltd. This was an interesting project where we were attempting to stabilize the softer material remaining on the small peninsulas originally created to compensate for lost fish habitat in this region of the West Arm of the Kootenay River.
Peninsulas on the north side of the airport runway
This four day short course in environmental restoration started off with a walk through of the sites to discuss issues with Eileen, Eric White, Crystal Klym (Central Kootenay Invasive Plant Committee), and Thor.
Invasive plant discussion
live staking
Following this, the students attacked some weed hotspots and learned a number bioengineering techniques, including live staking, brush pockets, and their crowning achievement, a branch box breakwater.
Mixing humus, mycorrhizae, peatmoss, and nutrients for planting
Sharpening live stakes.
Brush pockets and the start of the branch box breakwater
Adding branches...
The first layer tiedown in the branch box
Tying down the last layer with 1/2 inch manila rope
Adding beaver protection (2 inch stucco wire). The white latex paint is to prevent sun scald
Time flies! Here are a couple of pics from the tree viewing trip in the Valhallas I talked about in Feb. The snow was deep – but kind of reactive, Biologists Peter Corbett, Tyson Ehlers, and I were able to easily able to ski cut out small soft slabs down to a 30cm rain crust.
There were some big old whitebark pine trees, but many were dead (mostly beetle kill). Sadly, still a lot of high elevation logging up there, too, taking the lower tall subalpine pines.
Nevertheless, we still manage to see the bright side of our adventure.
June, July, and August were months spent studying local ecology. I spent a day out with my daughter’s grad one class to look at aquatic insects and their habitat.
Another day was spent up on Grassy Mountain looking at fairy spuds (spring beauty bulbs) the meadow voles had cached and forgotten, and the interesting “grassy bald” vegetation that appears at elevations far lower than you would expect to find alpine tundra (likely due to the warmer regional climate and southern aspect creating drought stress for tree seedlings).
There were opportunities to also sample some of the local fish populations right below my office, at the confluence of the Columbia and Kootenay rivers with local biologist (and avid fisherman) Craig Smith.
There were other professional development activities to be had out on the local rock with my colleagues Keyes Lessard and Delia Roberts
Our wood lot crew of Stacey and Tracey came out to help with caging whitebark pine cones to protect them from predation the Clark Nutcrackers and squirrels.
Stacey gearing up for a tree climb
Stacey in action placing the wire mesh covering over some cones
Here's a shot of white pine blister rust spore sacs on one of the smaller whitebark sapling.
Me, fighting with some branches, the city of Castlegar in the background
It’s the middle of February and we’ve being going so hard I’ve been letting this report on activities fall way behind. Already this winter (it feels like spring) folks in Forest ecology and botany (RRS 163) have been out looking at forest structure and succession in a variety of field sites. One of the problems of assessing these sites in the winter is figuring out which species of shrubs are present – as the majority have shed their leaves for the winter. The RRS 163 folks have been spending time learning to identify these species just from the twigs with their winter buds.
In the lab, my second year university botany class (Biol 210) has been sectioning and studying the meristems of local native plants and set up a germination study for whitebark pine.
This species of high elevation pine is endangered throughout most of its range, due to three main changes in the subalpine environment. The first, white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola), has become an epidemic on whitebark pine since its introduction to North America early in this century.
The second change, the implementation of effective fire suppression, has reduced the regeneration of whitebark pine. This pine species depends on the creation of open areas, where competitive canopy and understory cover has been removed in order for seedlings to become established. There is concern that fire suppression is leading to successional replacement of whitebark pine by more shade tolerant species, such as subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa) and Engelmann spruce (Picea engelmanni).
Until recently, Canadian whitebark pine populations where not considered to be under great threat from mountain pine beetle. However, a very large increase in beetle activity in British Columbia in the last few years. Oops! I forgot climate change….but that’s another rant. Learn more about the species and issues here.
Why collect and germinate seeds? Well, the trees that are left after an area has been severely infected by blister rust may have some genetic resistances to the disease. So we collect seeds from these ‘plus’ trees to grow out the seedlings and then attempt to determine if they really do have some genetic resistance by exposing the new individuals to blister rust spores. If they are resistant then more seedlings from those trees will be grown for restoration planting.
Now, germinating the seeds in any amount is notoriously difficult. One method to improve germination success in difficult or ‘recalcitrant’ seeds is making a small nick or cut into the seed coat. This allows water to be more easily taken up by the embryo and has been shown to increase germination success. Therefore, our interests in the germination study is to determine how much of an effect hand nicking the tough mature seed coat of whitebark pine has on boosting germination success of this species.
I’ve also inflicted whitebark mania on the ADGIS spatial statistics students. In their statistical refresher month, they have been learning how to use R for data analysis of whitebark prescribed burn data from the Rocky Mountains National Parks.
Well, all this hard work is going to deserve a trip to the subalpine on skis sometime soon to check out the trees...Maybe some fun pictures next week.
