Winter is here!
Don't be jealous if I tell you it was 70F and I was sweating! ha, but it is true. Down here at 31.4NL, and a mile high at 5,538' the sky, it gets pretty cold at night, but hot during the day.
I started a new tree project on the San Pedro River, and just published my Field Report for Mesa Verde NP from my 6 months there this year. Will give you the links below.
Part One: San Pedro River, Mexico to Arizona, it is one of two major rivers that flow North in the entire United States, and it is one of the last undammed rivers in the Southwest flowing for 175 miles. However, it has been under attack for a long while now. If it wasn't the border wall tearing up the desert, and crossing the San Pedro, cutting it in half and blocking all animal migration, it is currently development depleting the groundwater. There is a legal battle between those pumping water like Fort Huachuca and the city of Sierra Vista and those like the Nature Conservancy and the Center for Biological Diversity fighting for the millions of birds, amphibians and animals here.
I was out there yesterday hiking from the San Pedro House located on the River about 30 min NW of Bisbee, Az where I am for the winter. The river is shallow but running and the trees are grateful for it. This area is a Wildlife, Bird and Desert Riparian Corridor. There are jaguar and cotamundi that frequently move up and down this river.
Read more from a current article by the Nature Conservancy in how creative minds are replenishing the San Pedro; https://www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/arizona/stories-in-arizona/returning-water-to-the-san-pedro-river/
Jaguars – all of them male – occasionally have been seen in southern Arizona over the past decade, to the delight of researchers and schoolkids in Tucson, who gave the cats such names as Macho B and El Jefe. ... “Jaguars used to live as far north as the southern part of the Grand Canyon,” he said.
|
|
I measured a tree that was approximated 1885 inches around, 5 main trunks that were at least 10' across. According to a tree age calculator it says this tree is 1201 years old, and started its life around 820!
Common for at least 25 that I measured while walking the trail are older than the trees at Mt. Tabor which surprises me. But remember Mt. Tabor Park is really young, the reservoirs were put in after a very large old growth forest was cut, so it is ever so important that we take notes and pay attention to these young but grand trees growing at the park.
I hope you are taking walks even in the rain, because there is magic in a forest, all times. The dripping water from the mosses in the upper story, the wet bark smells and the leaves changing colors and falling to the earth below.
I learned all of the trees there in the park in winter, it is incredibly difficult to absolutely certain about the species of a tree without leaves, so bring out your thinking caps and take notes, take photos, and use the GLOBE app to upload your tree information. I am still tracking from here, and look forward to hearing more of your stories.
If you have any collections, photos, stories of your tree trails, please send to my email and I will share in the next newsletter.
|
|
Notes about Douglas Fir in the Winter: Cold hardiness is a characteristic of this evergreen tree. The closer the Doug Firs are to the coast, the more they are affected by moisture and they adapt to this regime more dominantly as temperatures in Portland remain fairly stable without the freezes. The Douglas Firs will "harden" in the winter, in other words they stop growing fatter adding more sap, and send more down into the roots which appears as hardening. These cues for the tree are winter temperatures.
Cautions to look for: If Fall temps due to wildfires, warming and dry conditions, are staying high when the time for seasons to transition, it could injure the conifers. Classical signs are browning. If the soil is dry, and winds or external warmth like more sunnier days than normal affect the tree, it affects the soil and root moisture of the trees. Kinda like you skiing and getting dehydrated and getting a sunburn. So keep your eyes out looking for possible browning of the trees during winter. Makes notes in your data collection too!
|
|
|
Big Leaf Maples love being with the Douglas Firs, so what happens to the Maples when their friends the Firs are hardening in the winter? The Seeds do not live more than one winter under field conditions so BigLeaf Maple's seed bank is only one season.
Bigleaf maple seeds overwinter in the soil, germinating at low winter or spring temperatures. They require 60 to 120 days of cold stratification (meaning both cold and wet). If there is a dry winter like what I wrote above about the Firs, where it is drier or warmer than usual, the seed potential of Maples to germinate lessens. These two trees have adapted for and ecosystem evolution of a wet cool forest.
More Notes:
Various animals, including Douglas's squirrels, northern flying squirrels, finches, and evening grosbeaks eat the seeds, especially during winter when other foods are scarce. In the spring, deer mice were observed eating germinating bigleaf maple seeds in the Sierra Nevada.
Riparian communities with Bigleaf maples are habitat for many small animals. Numbers of creeping voles, Townsend's chipmunks, Western Redbacked Salamanders, and Pacific Giant Salamanders small mammals and amphibians that use Douglas-fir-red alder riparian communities with Bigleaf maple as habitat.
Many bird species live in Bigleaf maple. Birds such as brown creepers forage on large bigleaf maples, flycatchers and Barred owls prefer Bigleaf maple and conifer forests.
So keep your eyes out for owls, what trees you see them in, remember the call 5 hoots for a Great Horned and a "Who Cooks for You, Who Cooks for you Now" from the Barred, who are also much louder than the Great Horned Owls.
|
|
Remember if you need any help or inspiration, please contact Hap at the Friends of Mt. Tabor Visitor Center and my email: info@blackcoyotemedicine.org
With warm wishes for the soul of twilight, for the sol sestere, the standing still, pause, of winter before returning, bringing you joy, clarity and an amazing 2022. See you in the New Year! Candace
|
|
|
|
|
|