I passed

Well, I passed my thesis defense!

Now, to get to work on edits :(

Another step done...

I passed my comps this week. Now all I have to do is write the actual thesis...... doh.

Last round of thesis photographs

As if you hadn't seen enough streams and pieces of woods, I bring you my last set of thesis field work photographs. Pretty self explanatory. The last image is two ~13 ft CBH Yellow Buckeyes (Aesculus flava) only a few feet apart. I mentioned the amazing Yellow Buckeyes along Dunn Creek in another post.

Thesis photographs take 4

Time for another round of thesis photographs. These are from upper Dunn Creek, a quite amazing area. Although it is fall (and leaves are starting to change), there are still a few wildflowers. A found a very localized grouping of Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). In the streams there was tons of woody debris. The third image is a panorama that turned out pretty well.

The streams have more fish and salamanders than I ever saw in any other site while doing my field work. However, this may have to do with the weather. It was cool and rainy that day while all other days I was out were warm and dry.

However, the most amazing features were the trees. I had to hike through Albright Grove to get to the stream, but the huge trees didn't end there. Although there were numerous large Hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) and Tulip Populars (Liriodendron tulipifera), the Yellow Buckeyes (Aesculus flava) were what stood out. Not only were their sizes amazing, but there were many of them (outnumbering the Hemlocks).

A large Yellow Buckeye is a beautiful site. The bark takes on an attractive and distinct shaggy quality. The trunk itself is massive and I would guess perhaps 3rd in wood volume of GSMNP species (after Hemlock and Tulip Popular?). Despite the trunk size, it is quite graceful looking.

The first image is a Tulip Popular with a nice looking symmetric buttress. The other two are Yellow Buckeyes. I measured the CBH (circumference at breast height) of the last one as 14 ft 9 in!

Even more thesis photographs

Here are some more photographs from doing my thesis work I forgot to post before. The first few are images of the streams I worked in and more examples of large woody debris (the last one is really good).

I found (almost stepped on) a really nice looking Indian Pipe and a Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) while getting to a stream

Finally, one day I followed a very steep stream several hundred meters and found no suitable location to do a measurement. Instead of going down the way I came, I climbed a nearby ridge and followed it down. It had been a while since I had not been in a cove forest but instead in a nice, open oak-pine forest. This ridge was mostly Chestnut Oak (Quercus montana) and Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus).

Even more photographs from thesis work

This batch of photographs are going to show some of the artifacts/remains of logging I have found while doing my field work. This is by no means comprehensive of what I have seen, just some of the nice looking ones.

First, I have several old rail road track pieces, now mostly covered by vegetation. The first image is from the floodplain of Big Creek, but the second image is from far up Mouse Creek (you will see the slopes in another image).

Also far up Mouse Creek I found this chain. It was on the side of the stream. It is possible it was stretched across the creek to hold the logs back until they were all ready to be "floated" down to the sawmills. The second image shows, to my best guess, some sort of heater for warmth or cooking food (it is about 2.5 ft tall, 1 ft across).

Finally, up along the slope there are several old logging skids. Notice the extreme slope (> 30 degrees) in the lower left and upper right it was built into.

More photographs from thesis work

I thought I would share a few more photographs I have taken while doing my thesis work. First the ugly. Often getting to sites requires going through "rhododendron hells". These are thickets of rhododendrons that make it near impossible to walk without getting caught on something. The first image is taken be me in one, and the second is looking into one (I had to go through it).

The next two images were taken a old growth regions of the park. The first one is a tree in a stream that was approximately 3.5 ft in diameter and 30 ft long. This was only a small part of the tree, as most was not in the stream, but on the hillside above it. The next is the base on a long dead tree (perhaps American Chestnut... the bark is long gone) that was still roughly 15 ft in diameter. To get an idea of how the tree could have look, see this rather famous image (I have seen it many times).

Lastly, a huge Tulip Popular and Black Bear scat, both in Albright Grove.