Ponderosa Mortality After Fire

The best data comes from Hull Sieg, Carolyn, et al. "Best predictors for postfire mortality of ponderosa pine trees in the Intermountain West." Forest Science 52.6 (2006): 718-728.

This graph shows probability of death based on both “crown consumption” (actual burning of the crown) and “crown scorch” (browning of needles due to heat injury). It shows that probability of tree death increases above 50% when Crown Scorch increases past 75%, whereas tree death is above 50% when crown consumption is only 25%. A combination of the two is determined to be the best predictor of tree mortality.

Here are some diagrams of crown scorch and crown consumption. In general, if there are brown needles on the tree that is scorch, if they are black or missing it is consumption.



(from Tree and forest restoration following wildfire by Peter Kolb)

Teachers and What I Learned

This post has been a work in progress since I realized in 2007 that the university couldn't teach me what I needed to learn.  Since then, I've worked on farms and learned ecology from teachers in the field.  But it took me a long time to learn that the real lessons I needed were those that could heal my own body.

Foundation Pose by Eric Goodman - taught me how to load posterior chain, how to bend from the waist. His plank taught me how to activate abs and what neutral spine really means.

Alan Thrall taught me how to deadlift. I went from not being able to do it or hurting myself to lifting regularly.

Brian Mackenzie and Dr. Park taught me to nose breathe during aerobic exercise, and all the time, and that I'm naturally a mouth breather.  Maybe that's why I have sleep apnea.  I never realized it was normal to breath though the nose. 

Diet
Diet gurus, yoga teachers: never taught me anything and may (raw diet) have sent me down the wrong path.  Omnivore's dilemma (eat whole foods, mostly plants) is probably best.  Paul Pitchford has a lot of really deep diet advice, unfortunately it doesn't work for me.  Neither do blood type diets, etc. 


Other Teachers
Headspace app taught me to meditate. But Andrew Weil's 4-7-8 breath works just as well now that I have a few key concepts.

Happy body book by Jerzy Gregorek taught me that relaxing after exercise is as important as muscle tension, and the importance for spine health of hanging (traction) after compression on the spine.

Paval Tsatsouline also teaches that strength is learning to completely tense and then relax muscles.

Getting an inversion table teaches how to stretch spine and soas muscles. 

Slack line teaches balance.  "Gorilla feet" Vibram 5-finger shoes help with balance and teach what is correct shape of the foot.  Altra shoes are also good for this.

I learned a lot in the last 5 years!

Tropical Reforestation

Tree Meditation
Trees are somehow a focus for my life.  Ayurveda teaches that I should be like a tree: no-harm, no killing, no lying, no stealing, no sexual misconduct, no intoxicants.  Simple clean food offered freely, with fresh air and rain.  And a place to stand and grow - upward and downward.

Earth molds water.  Water nourishes trees.  Trees touch the earth and feel the air.  Trees stand apart from all philosophy, and yet are subject to our philosophy, our economy.  Strange that in my job I plan the cutting of hundreds of trees from computer documents and databases. Somehow I am both, I have my roots in the reality of trees and mud, but my arms in the ethereal computer worlds of planning and economy, laws.

Can I do something to balance the world, something electronic for the trees?

Forest Reforestation
There are problems with many reforestation efforts. Monocultures that don't help local people, protests around the world against REDD+.  In Japan, people are waking up to the problem.  (Link)  The problem of monoculture or few species planted in US cities has led to invasive insect pests wiping out large areas, for example in Worcester, MA.  The International Society of Arboriculture says the goal should be to follow the 20% rule (max 20% of any genus/species).

Example solutions: Health in Harmony listen to people. They give people healthcare, pay them to plant and monitor forest.  Other groups like Eden also pay people to plant.  Trees for the Future tries to create sustainable agroforestry.  Search engine ecosia donates money to these and other organizations.

But I have concerns about cost effectiveness and the ability to scale.  TFTF has only helped a few thousand farmers in the 30 years they've been around.  But CharityNavigator rates these groups highly; they have good governance, but they may not be as effective.

Policy action to improve REDD+ payments could make a huge difference, but the scale is too big for me to think about, and maybe for anyone. There will always be problems with a system that big.  The Effective Altruism community's assessment of Coalition of Rainforest Nations (CoRN) tries in vain to wrap their analysis around policy.  Policy is just too amorphous to apply straightforward risk and return.

WRI's Global Forest Tracker (10 year report on deforestation) will be important to measure and monitor leakage.  Mondabay also has good rainforest statistics page.

WRI supports restoration with venture capital as a way to scale, it is unclear how this makes money. they speak in corporate-ease, another example of how the real work is in board rooms or on the ground? Its hard to tell.

Ecosia has nice on-the-ground videos showing the work they support.

Conclusion
I need to research more, learn more.  Restoration is a passion project for me, but to be professional it may need to be something like WRI or EDF. But i'm not a corporate person, being in the field is what inspires me.  Maybe, like a tree, I can grow from the earth and reach into board rooms?

Exercise Types and Crossfit

Types of Exercise
Long and slow - metabolic conditioning. Generally should be below 60% HRM. Similar to recovery workouts, but those are usually short and slow, less than 30 minutes, on the day after a hard weight or interval training.  Metabolic conditioning is at least 30 minutes, but can be quite long, depending on conditioning.  Builds aerobic (heart) and metabolic (mitochondrial density).  Do not combine with weights in same workout.  Good to use different muscles from those trained in weights. Stronger By Science article.

Weights, skill work (short and intense with long rests).  Need to rest enough between sets to bring heart rate down and to recover muscle energy. Let HR return to near-resting before each set. Weights are usually periodized so not trying to hit PRs every time. Important to stop far before exhaustion.  Missing weights for several weeks does not result in a decrease in strength (PainScience article). 

Interval training (HIIT, short intense with short rests) training at ~80% HRM. Includes sprinting. Can work close to exhaustion. May be added to weight lifting at end of workout as a "drop set". 

A Note on Crossfit
Distinguishing the public-facing sport of Crossfit from the reality in a Box can be difficult.  Crossfit from the outside, despite introducing functional fitness, looks like a very regressive and simplistic training style characterized by unimodal "short and hard" training, whereas anyone who studies exercise science knows that athletes train at different intensities, not just 100% all the time. And from the inside its clear that's what Crossfit does, with Box coaches setting up interval circuits in their gyms, etc. But all of the official workouts from the Crossfit.com homepage to the Open, to the Sanctionals to the Games look like unimodal exercise.

REDD+

[A note on REDD+]

During the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol the inclusion of tropical forest management was debated but eventually dropped due to anticipated methodological difficulties in establishing – in particular – additionality and leakage (detrimental effects outside of the project area attributable to project activities). Eventually, the national forest monitoring system was introduced, with elements of measurement, reporting and verification (MRV).

Reference levels are a key component for any national REDD+ program and critical in at least two aspects. First, they serve as a baseline for measuring the success of REDD+ programs in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from forests. Second, they are available for examination by the international community to assess the reported emission reductions or enhanced removals. In that sense it establishes the confidence of the international community in the national REDD+ program. The results measured against these baselines may be eligible for results-based payments.]

Flu

We have been sick with Influenza A, apparently of the lineage from the H1N1 pandemic of 2009. The flu vaccine is not effective against it.  The vaccine did work against Influenza B that was circulating in December, only unvaccinated people got sick with that one, but B is milder than A. 

The most common comment from people who had A this year is that they understand how people die of it.  Ali says she knows now how she will die, not cancer or stroke (her old fears) but just a simple flu.  We both got antivirals and maybe they shortened the duration, but they provide no relief for days. 

The first day you just feel weird, tired, have a slight fever and think you "might" have the flu.  The next day is worse and you have a fever all day and can't eat.  Extreme lethargy sets in.  That night is the worst, fever above 103 and you hallucinate and want to die.  Acetaminophen does nothing for it, but aspirin does help a bit.  On the 3rd day you feel better and can eat a bit, but are easily exhausted.  That night you sweat again all night and now the phlegm gets bad and you wake coughing.  Cough medicine does nothing, but a combination of decongestant and expectant and something to knock you out (antihistamine) lets you rest.  The 4th day is much like the 3rd, and you live in fear of nightime.
You might try to go to work, and you'll get dressed and eat breakfast in a daze, then send in for more PTO and go straight back to bed.  On the 5th day you'll make it in to work and check emails, tell everyone you're not contagious because you haven't had a fever in 24 hours and you washed all your clothes, then get a headache and feel brain dead and go home early.

Its mostly just staring at a wall, watching star trek and trying not to think about anything.  The body has taken over and is going through its reboot sequence and the mind is totally superfluous. The body doesn't want the mind to do anything, but the mind feels it has something its supposed to do, it just can't remember what.  Eventually it realizes the body knows best and the mind finally relaxes, gives up on whatever complicated socially-determined pressures it had programmed itself to believe in, and goes along for the ride.

Missing Mammals?

 Animal population distributions can be assessed using iNaturalist.  The website is used by citizen scientists to report animal and plant observations.  Rare animals may not be mapped well, but my hypothesis is that large mammals are well mapped because humans tend to make note of them.  This may be less true for nocturnal animals, and it also depends on the presence of humans.

Raccoon observation from iNaturalist.

The map above of raccoons and the map below of coyote observations shows that both species are well-distributed across the U.S.  Clusters of observations are probably more likely due to sampling bias around large cities rather than actual differences in population density. 

Therefore, these maps can show overall distribution but may not be as useful for determining densities.

Coyote observations from iNaturalist.

The next map shows that moles do not occur in the central arid and mountainous part of the U.S.  It appears that these animals need mesic conditions and rich soil.

Mole (family) observations from iNaturalist.

In contrast, Pocket Gophers, a similar group of burrowing animals, are found throughout the arid West as well as along the Pacific coast and in Florida.

Pocket Gophers

But another burrowing mammal, the Prairie Dog, is restricted to the arid West:

Prairie Dogs

While the Prairie Dog distribution makes sense at the continental scale, zooming in reveals interesting patterns.  In northern AZ, Prairie Dogs are mainly restricted to the I-40 corridor, despite extensive grassland habitat in, for example, the Chino and Prescott valley area. The data for this zoomed-in view is much sparser than the national map and it is likely that there are many areas with missing observations. 

However, I am confident that any highly-visible Prairie Dog colonies in the Prescott area would have been photographed at some point.  Given the presence of suitable habitat surrounding occupied habitat in AZ, it may be that Prairie Dogs populations have been extirpated and fragmented across northern AZ.

Prairie Dog observations in northern AZ.

Each of the above species distributions can be related to environmental variables, but other mammal distributions are more complex.  Porcupines feed on the growing tips of conifer and deciduous trees, but apparently do not occur in much of the Midwest and southeastern parts of the U.S.  I'm not sure why this would be, as there is plenty of what looks like suitable habitat in these regions, and the presence of the species in the southwest and the northeast spans a large environmental gradient.

Porcupine distribution

Porcupine observations are quite scattered across much of the West, despite the fact that they are fairly visible in trees; birders looking for birds would be very likely to see them. There are large areas of suitable habitat in AZ, for example along the Verde river in Cottonwood.  I'm not sure why this species hasn't been observed anywhere on the Verde river.  Perhaps it has been extirpated from these areas.  Or, the two observations around Prescott may have been of dispersing animals and the population is only reproducing in the higher elevations around Flagstaff.

Porcupines in northern AZ.

Badgers also show a predominantly Western and great-plains distribution.  They need large areas of open space.

Badger distribution

However, in Northern AZ few animals have been observed.  This nocturnal burrowing animal may simply escape frequent detection, or it may be very infrequent on the landscape.  Supporting the idea that humans rarely encounter this animal, many of these observations are road kill.  Interestingly, badgers are found in AZ both in high-elevation mountain habitats and in low-elevation Sonoran desert habitat!

Badgers observations in AZ.

 Another animal with a strange distribution is the Opossum.  It seems to avoid most of the interior arid West, except for southern AZ.  The observations in Tucson would seem to be environmental outliers compared to the populations along the West coast and in the Eastern U.S.

Opossum distribution.  

Much can be learned by studying species distributions and noting where animals have been observed as well as where they have not.  Trying to explain the observed distributions raises many questions. The mysteries surrounding animal distributions are fertile ground for theorizing about animal behavior, history, and habitat needs.