53^i

FOR HIS ENTIRE ACADEMIC CAREER, Jerry Franklin hashad his head in the trees—specifically, in the majestic old-growth conifers of the Pacific Northwest. In the 1960s, ifthe influential University of Washington forest ecologistwanted to inspect the heights of an ailing noble fir or Sitkaspruce, he might have spent the better part of a day riggingropes and clambering up through branches. Although theview was exhilarating, attaining it was neither simple norsafe—nor very efficient. Thirty-five years later, the job hasbecome as easy as this:

"Can we drop down and move over for a closer look?"It was a warm, clear morning in southwestern Washington.

Franklin and I and two of his proteges, David Shaw andRand Knight, were gliding through the crown of a stand of500-year-old fir and hemlock trees in the Wind River Exper-imental Forest, not far from the Columbia River Gorge.Only minutes earlier, we'd been standing amid the huckle-berries and trilliums on the forest floor, bathed in the softlight that filtered down from above. Wearing hard hats andbody harnesses, we'd stepped into the gondola of a newlyerected construction crane, clipped our lanyards onto thecage's safety railing, and been lifted into space. In the par-lance of canopy researchers, we had become arbornauts.

The 285-foot-tall crane, owned by the University ofWashington and managed by it and the U.S. Forest Service,is the first such installation in North America and thelargest of the world's three canopy cranes. The two othersare both in tropical forests: One, with a 138-foot tower, hasbeen operated by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Insti-tute in a wooded Panama City park since 1990; the AustrianScience Foundation recently erected the other, a 134-foot-tall crane in Venezuela, on a tributary of the Orinoco River.

Designed for use in congested cities, the behemoths aresurprisingly well suited to the close confines of a forest.They're reasonably unobtrusive, have a small footprint, and,most important, permit researchers to get to places that areimpossible or too risky to reach by climbing: the tops oftrees and the tips of branches, where most of the biologicalaction in a forest—the budding, branching, and photosyn-thesis—takes place. The disadvantages, of course, are thatinstalling a crane costs in the high six figures; it costsresearchers $185 an hour to use; and on top of that, it isstuck in one place—although the one in Panama may beinstalled on a track in its next proposed location, in a forestat the other end of the Canal.

The upper story of tropical and temperate forests remainsone of the least explored realms on earth. Broadly stated, themission of the Washington project—which is expected tocontinue for at least five years—is to investigate the struc-ture and function of an old-growth-forest canopy. The pro-ject is as much about basic science as about applied forestry.One objective, for instance, is to understand how a natural 8forest operates, in order to design second-growth stands thatmimic old-growth ones. This is the mandate of the "new -qforestry," of which Franklin is a chief architect. The strategy 2is to retain some "legacy trees," snags, and deadfall whenlogging so that managed forests will have as much structuralcomplexity—which translates into genetic and biologicaldiversity and wildlife habitat—as possible.

A U D U B O N 65 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1995

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TRUCTiOni CRANE

Pt 'canopy cranecruises the treetops atWashington's Wind River

,opf.xperimental Forest.

E FIRST TIME

A U D U B O N A UDUBON 67 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 199566 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1995

microscopic organisms onthe surface of needles—theyeasts, algae, and bacteriathat Franklin calls scuz—todetermine their role in thefood chain. Others are eagerto examine fungi that live inthe needles and seem tooffer protection from herbi-vores. Physiologists willmeasure the photosynthetic-energy contribution of nee-dles at various levels, relatingthat to the amount of lightfalling on the needles.

Franklin himself is intriguedby the life cycle of insects

that live in the soil and along streams but may mate in thecanopy. Biologists want to know where bats roost. Shaw, thesite director and an ecologist specializing in tree diseases, hasstarted examining dwarf mistletoe, a potentially devastatingparasite that infects huge numbers of western hemlocks.

The crane will operate both day and night, all year long.In winter, for instance, researchers will study how much rainand snow an old-growth canopy intercepts and holds, andhow snow retention may reduce the kind of storm runoffand erosion that characterizes second-growth stands.

Recently there has been talk of arboreal science's enteringa golden age. As late as the 1930s, researchers were trainingdomesticated monkeys to fetch samples from the canopy ofMalaysian jungles. Botanists have put slingshots, polepruners, and insect foggers to similar use. They've borrowedtechniques and hardware from alpinists, cavers, and arborists.They've fired ropes from crossbows, ascended via boatswain's

chairs, lineman's spikes, ladders, even the ankle straps thatAmazonian natives use to worm their way up tree trunks.

Advances in climbing equipment, including such innova-tions as cranes and a dirigible that has been deployed inFrench Guiana and Cameroon, have propelled canopy stud-ies beyond the purely observational and taxonomic—survey-ing and cataloguing work—to experimental research. Oper-ating from a safe, stable platform like the Wind Rivergondola, researchers can return repeatedly to their study sitesto monitor the physiology of a forest, to see how it interactswith the atmosphere, how nutrients cycle through theecosystem, what role lichens and other epiphytes play.

"Canopy research is in its infancy," explains Franklin. Asthe prime mover behind the Wind River crane, he securedfrom Congress a $1 million appropriation, fended off oppo-sition, and now serves as program director. "There hasn'tbeen a whole lot of meat-and-potatoes work yet.... We're

Operating from the crane's gondola, researchers can return repeatedlyto their study sites to monitor the forest's physiology.

The initial work at the site will concentrate on gatheringbaseline data about the 1,200-acre study area, officially des-ignated the Thornton T. Munger Research Natural Area,after a pioneering silviculturist who worked in the WindRiver valley. "We're sailing into new waters, so the first thingyou do is describe the coarse terrain," explains Smithsonianforest ecologist Geoffrey Parker, a veteran of the Panamacrane who studies the relationship between structure andprocess in the canopy. Unlike the dense, rooflike outer sur-faces of tropical hardwood forests, coniferous forests in thePacific Northwest have a complex landscape of spikes, gaps,and canyons. The greater a forest's "rumple factor," as Parkerterms it, the greater its capacity to harvest gases, moisture,and particulates from the atmosphere, he believes. As a firststep in his investigations, he is making a topographic map ofthe canopy with the help of a digital laser range finder. Thedatabase of measurements will eventually be so sophisticatedthat Parker foresees a computer-animated simulation of theupper canopy as a bird might experience it.

A team from the University of Washington's remote-sensing laboratory had the crane after us. They arrived witha battery of imaging equipment to analyze the spectrum oflight being reflected by the canopy, since reflected light isone "signature" that can reveal much about a forest, from itsage to its timber productivity. The aim of their study, fund-ed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, isto permit scientists and resource managers to better inter-pret satellite images of the region's late-successional forests."Right now, it's difficult to tell by remote sensing the dif-ference between a 250-year-old forest and a 500-year-oldone," says project coordinator Jan Zukin, a University ofWashington geophysicist who has used sonar to map under-sea ridges off Easter Island. "Eventually, we want to helpecologists who come to us and say, 'I need a map of such-and-such old-growth forest, because a particular species ofanimal lives there.'"

Later studies will begin to fill in blanks about the intricateweb of life in the canopy. With the crane in place, biologistswho have never climbed a tree in their lives can look at

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Pacific dogwood (C) Grand fir (B) Pacific yew (C) Western hemlock (A) Pacific silver fir (C) Douglas fir (A) Vine maple (D)

Win CANOPY (A)Trees: Western hemlock, Douglas firEpiphytes: Old-man's beard, tube lichenBirds: Hermit warbler, Vaux's swift,

evening grosbeak, red crossbillMammals: Northern flying squirrel, Douglas

squirrel

MIDDLE CANOPY (B)Western red cedar, grand firOld-man's beard, cyanolichenBrown creeper, red-breastednuthatch, chestnut-backedchickadee, Hammond's flycatcher,golden-crowned kinglet

Trees:Epiphytes:Birds: 220 ft

200 ft

LOWER CANOPY (C)Trees:

Epiphytes:

Birds:

Mammals:

Pacific silver fir, Pacific yew,Pacific dogwoodMoss (Dicranum tauricum andfuscescens)American robin, brown creeper,winter wrenMarten, weasel

175 ft

150 ft

UNDERSTORY (D)Vine maple, salal, dwarf Oregongrape

Subshrubs: Vanilla leaf, inside-out flowerEpiphytes: Moss (Dicranum tauricum and

fuscescens)Birds: Swainson's thrush, rufous-sided

towhee, hermit thrush, dark-eyedjunco

Mammals: Black bear, elk, bobcat, black-tailed deer, coyote, mountain lion,deer mouse, Townsend's chipmunk,shrew mole

Big brown bat, long-legged myotis,silver-haired bat, weasel, marten,northern flying squirrel

—Research by Amanda Onion and Joanna Samuels

(B) Western red cedar

Shrubs:

CAVITYMammals:

100 ft

50 ft

25 ft

0 ft

300 ft

285 ft

250 ft

ELOW US,

BOUGHS FORMED LACY

WHORLS, LIKE THE

PATTERNS OF A COR-

AL REEF. DOUGLAS

FIRS JUTTED LIKE

STEEPLES ABOVE THE

OTHER TREES.

just getting to the point where we can do some real research,and that's what this crane is all about."

The crane, in short, is the long-envisioned "skyhook" thatcan whisk a team and monitoring equipment into the tree-tops, giving them tremendous mobility. Once airborne,researchers can travel anywhere within a cylinder of spacewhose base could accommodate two football fields laid endto end. With a reach of 279 feet, the crane's horizontalboom, or jib, swings through an arc encompassing 5.6 acres.

Rising into the sunny canopy or descending into the shadeof the forest floor evokes sensations I've felt diving on coralreefs: the shifts in light, the three-dimensional mobility, thesense of buoyancy, of floating. One moment we could beskimming the top of the tallest tree, the next stepping offthe gondola to examine the smallest seedling.

After about 30 minutes aloft, something caught Franklin'seye in the crown of a grand fir, and he wanted a closer look.Shaw radioed Franklin's request to the crane operator.Silently, as if by levitation, the gondola eased down severalfeet, then moved in toward the fir.

We were hovering in space within arm's reach of the tree'ssummit, a perspective no climber could have attained. WhileFranklin busily photographed the cluster of resiny conesthat had drawn his attention, I let my eyes wander. Below us,boughs formed lacy whorls resembling the patterns of acoral reef Gigantic Douglas firs jutted like steeples above thewestern hemlocks and western red cedars. Their brancheswere festooned with lichens, notably a leafy green speciescalled Lobaria oregana, which fixes atmospheric nitrogen andgrows only on mature trees. These cyanolichens—symbioticorganisms composed of blue-green algae and fungus—show-er onto the forest floor, where they serve both as fertilizerfor plants and as food for deer, elk, and other animals.

Beyond the boundary of the natural area, the low, volcanichills of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest rolled away in apatchwork of clearcuts and second-growth stands. This islogging country, but it is also the Pacific Northwest's cradle

of forest research. The WindRiver tree nursery dates to1909, and an arboretumwith 125 species of nativeand exotic conifers was start-ed in 1912. Over the years,more than 250 tree specieshave been tested here, butnone have done as well asthe native Douglas fir, oneof the area's most importantcommercial species.That the crane ended up in

a fir forest with such aresearch tradition was not bydesign. The first choice wasa site on the westernOlympic Peninsula, in anold-growth rainforest ofgiant Sitka spruce and hem-lock. But when the planswere unveiled, irate local cit-izens, fearing that the cranewould supply ammunitionto justify further loggingcutbacks, petitioned to blockit. Sabotage was threat-ened—and worse.

"More than once, peoplethreatened to blow my headoff," says Franklin. "Therewere WANTED posters withmy face on them in Forks,Washington." The rancorcame as a shock to him. "Iwas dumbfounded thatpeople did not want thiscrane. I saw it as a flagshipthat would have brought alot of science to the penin-sula." Some of the opposi-tion may have been personal,a result of Franklin's tenurewith the so-called Gang ofFour, a federally appointedteam that suggested alterna-tives to clear-cutting.

Ironically, the shift in siteshas benefited both scienceand commerce. The Douglasfir—hemlock forest at WindRiver is representative of amuch larger area than is thecoastal rainforest, so man-agement techniques growingout of the crane studies willbe more generally applicable.And in time this crane maynot be the region's only one.

After just three months, Franklin was musing about two oth-ers: one to study the dry ponderosa pine ecosystem east of theCascades, another for the temperate rainforests on the coast.

Franklin leaned closer to the fir he was photographing."See, the cones just die," he said. Indeed, some were greenand healthy, while others had turned brown. Shaw explained

3zt that a moth had probablylaid her eggs in the cones;the larvae that hatched outhad devoured the insides.But that was only part of thefood web. Jays and wood-peckers would feed on thelarvae; parasitic wasps wouldlay eggs on them.

2 Just then, a wasp no biggerthan a straight pin appeared,flitting from cone to cone,

2' prospecting for a larva tohost its eggs. A hush fellover us as we watched, ourn

•

oses inches from the in-s

•

ect-175 feet up in space.The wasp flitted away.

t- Our allotted half hour hadstretched to 45 minutes.

2 "Okay," said Franklin."Time to go back to work."

gWhen the gondola began itsd descent, the shift in perspec-

Scenes from the gondola (top left): Awestern hemlock, grand fir, and wes

tive felt like coming down from rapture of the deep.That consciousness-expanding quality may be the key to

the secrets of the forest. "Most of what we've gained here isa new perspective," Shaw said. "The crane changes the wayyou think. After fifteen years of running around on the for-est floor, my mind's eye is now in the upper canopy." 30-

bird's-eye view of the canopy at Wind River (bottom left); Douglas fir,tern red cedar (above); close-up of grand fir in the middle canopy (below).

A U D B 0 68 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1995 AUDUBON 69 NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1995