Forestry

We reached the ridgeline after hiking up the side of the Linville Gorge east of Asheville. We had been hiking a few hundred yards to the next border of burned forest for our guide, a Forest Reseracher, to take some measurements and program the coordinates into his GPS system for later data crunching. The fires here are special because one section burned one year. Then part of it and part of a second section were burned the next year. So you have three different sections: 1) burned the first time 2) burned the second time 3) burned the first and second time...setting up a great control group for a data-based inferential research to be done on forest regeneration timelines.

I was in charge of the 6-inch ruler and photographing duff, which is the layer of needles and bark scraps that stack up around trees. Here is a good illustration of how the duff burns away in a fire:




My own research consisted of gaining purchase on the unleveled logs full of branches broken off into spear points.
 


As well as the time lag of balance determination among carbonized tree-remains.
 


And of course trying to line my's elf between both a pair of foreground burned tree-remains as well as centering among the backdrop's pair of charred remains flanked by a pair of living trees.


All in all a fascinating journey that we ended with setting up camp on the top of the ridge. We built a heck of a campfire which ended with Freeflow making fire faeries.
While I urged him on.

The next day we closed up camp after being rained on overnight. This had us hankering for more than fruit and cold tea. So we went to Famous Louise's and ate in Avery County.