On a Saturday morning, University of Alaska Southeast biology student Alannah Johnson loaded up her pickup with science equipment, drove out to Echo Cove and located a few randomly-selected points on her GPS.<\/p>\n
On weekends, Johnson counts mushrooms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe forest would be pretty stinky without them,\u201d she said while setting up a 1-by-2 meter plot around her GPS waypoint. \u201cThey break everything down.\u201d<\/p>\n
The undergrad has identified about 50 different types of mushroom as part of her research in Juneau\u2019s H\u00e9en Latinee \u201cexperimental\u201d forest, a 40-square mile plot of land near Echo Cove set aside by the Forest Service in 2009 for scientific research.<\/p>\n
Seven years into the H\u00e9en Latinee\u2019s development, researchers with the Forest Service and UAS have put the finishing touches on a few long-term projects which will allow them to track the impacts of climate change on one of the world\u2019s most diverse landscapes.<\/p>\n
UAS ecologist Brian Buma is doing some of this work. He has recently finished surveying the forest\u2019s biomass \u2014 the total amount of organic material the forest holds. The H\u00e9en Latinee is extremely hard to access, so Buma relies on what\u2019s called LiDAR, which works on the principles of radar, but uses light emitted from a laser.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first step is just to see what\u2019s back there,\u201d Buma said. \u201cLiDAR produces almost a 3D map. With this we know how much carbon exists in the forest from ocean to ice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buma attached his LiDAR equipment to the bottom of a small plane which flew over the H\u00e9en Latinee to capture a 3D image of the forest canopy and undergrowth. The resulting data allowed Buma to estimate the forests biomass, a baseline number that will be used as research continues in the H\u00e9en Latinee.<\/p>\n
Buma\u2019s work has brought scientists one step closer to setting up decades-long surveys on the effects of climate change, says Forest Service ecologist Rick Edwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea is that pretty much everything that happens in a coastal temperate rainforest is influenced to a large degree by the flow of water. To understand that you have to understand what\u2019s there in the forest. With that as a basemap, we are prepared to ask a variety of questions,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n
One of the questions that looms largest, to Edwards, is the effect of melting glaciers on the H\u00e9en Latinee\u2019s watersheds and the salmon it feeds. The forest is home to three glaciers and the Cowee Creek and Davies Creek watersheds.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of questions revolve around the warming landscape and the diminishing of the glaciers as a product of what\u2019s out there,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cWhat impact that will have on the distribution of vegetation, how fast vegetation grows, how productive. … What that\u2019s going to do as water warms and glacial inputs are reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n
The experimental forest encompasses 6,000 vertical feet, stretching from \u201cwhite caps to ice caps,\u201d in Edwards\u2019 words. To study such an area, you need data that represents every elevation.<\/p>\n
To do this, the Forest Service has recently put the finishing touches on the last of three weather stations \u2014 at 300, 2,000 and 3,000 feet above sea level in the Davies Creek Valley.<\/p>\n
That project finished this summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have three large alpine glaciers that are shrinking. As those diminish, as snow comes later and leaves earlier, there will be a resulting change in those hydrology systems,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cThis will have a profound impact on aquatic systems and salmon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edwards is not yet sure what impact glacial melt will have on the H\u00e9en Latinee. One guess he has to do with treelines.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn other parts of the country, an emphasis in predicting climate change effects is on the northward expansion of species that might like warmer weather. They\u2019re thinking more in the lateral changes in animals and plants,\u201d Edwards explained. \u201cIn the Tongass, we think about that, that\u2019s certainly a factor, but here, we also think about the vertical change in the distribution of species.\u201d<\/p>\n
Edwards said that, due to extreme weather changes across elevation, Southeast\u2019s treelines are much lower than you would expect down south. He expects trees to migrate vertically as climate change progresses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we\u2019ve predicted we\u2019d see is an up expansion of forests into the alpine,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p>\n
Work will continue in the H\u00e9en Latinee, which means \u201criver watcher\u201d in Tlingit, for decades, Edwards said, as the slow march of climate change science progresses. In the future, the Forest Service plans to make the area more accessible to the dozens of universities interested in researching the Tongass.<\/p>\n
They hope to develop service roads into the forest, a small cabin for overnight stays and a modest, on-site facility for processing samples.<\/p>\n
Johnson, for her part, will keep counting mushrooms. She hopes to correlate her research with Buma\u2019s to see how forest biomass corresponds to the presence of fungus.<\/p>\n
A California native, she says the forest was one of the major draws for her to attend UAS.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s one of the main things that drew me to UAS \u2014 your classroom is your backyard,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In the future, Edwards hopes, researchers like Johnson will flock to the H\u00e9en Latinee. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s kind of the bird in the cage for climate change,\u201d Edwards said. \u201cIt\u2019s a bit like field of dreams, if you build it, they will come.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Sports and Outdoors reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 or kevin.gullufsen@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a Saturday morning, University of Alaska Southeast biology student Alannah Johnson loaded up her pickup with science equipment, drove out to Echo Cove and located a few randomly-selected points on her GPS. On weekends, Johnson counts mushrooms. \u201cThe forest would be pretty stinky without them,\u201d she said while setting up a 1-by-2 meter plot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-30513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30513\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30513"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=30513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}