Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 8, 1993 TAG: 9308080017
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BIG ISLAND LENGTH: Long
They duck under thorny branches and scramble over fallen, decaying trees on the steep mountainside where no trail is laid. They swat at the swarms of gnats attacking their eyes, ears and mouths.
Suddenly they stop. This is exactly where they want to be.
They set to work. One starts digging a hole. Another begins climbing a tree. One clips leaves from plants. Another hugs a chestnut oak - with tape measure in hand.
Another boots up his computer. Yes, this patch of woods, this one-sixth of an acre, is plot number 3707954.
For the next few hours, these men will attempt the impossible - make order out of chaos, translate the wild and mysterious ways of nature into logical, mathematical formulas.
It's not a smooth process. The team, which came up from Knoxville, Tenn., got lost a couple of times - first on U.S. 501, then on the road leading into the George Washington National Forest.
Then there's the equipment, which doesn't always cooperate.
"It beeps at you a lot when you punch in the wrong number," says Darrell Cuthburton of the notebook-size computer that emits an occasional synthesized chirp. Cuthburton is a forester with the Tennessee Valley Authority and team leader for the group.
The team includes two foresters, a botanist, geologist, soil scientist - and a tree climber, or "hired ape," as he's called.
They measure soil chemistry and moisture, how much sunlight penetrates the canopy of the forest, the size of trees and the rings from the bark to core, the number and species of plants, signs of pollution such as ozone or acid rain, and their exact location on the planet according to latitude and longitude.
Then, every year, scientists will come back and take the same measurements on the same trees on this very same plot.
The information will eventually be fed into the national Forest Health Monitoring program, with similar measurements from other plots in all 50 states.
"Trying to incorporate [the data] all together is what is really going to give us a better idea of what the ecosystem is doing," says Betsy Smith, an ecologist with TVA.
The national program, a result of federal legislation in 1988 and 1990, is a joint effort by the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Forest Service.
TVA is taking a lead role - and kicking in $500,000 - in conducting the initial field work in the Southern Appalachian region - one of the most biologically diverse in the world, Smith says.
"We are going to lose species. There's no question about that . . . so we want to track as much of that as we can," she says. And TVA is in it for the long haul.
Plot number 3707954 is one of about 100 on a randomly designed grid covering six Southern states - Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas, and Alabama - that the TVA team will monitor.
Most plots fall on private property, Smith says, so the team has to first get permission from the owner before setting out. They've only been turned down a couple of times.
Some owners are concerned that if endangered or threatened species are found, federal law may prohibit them from using their land as they want. But that's not the case, Smith says, because the exact locations of the study plots are strictly confidential.
So far, after two years of field work, they haven't found any protected species, she says.
Some plots may one day be logged or developed. But rather than dropping them from the program, those influences on the ecosystem will be monitored just like snowstorms, or bug infestations, or fires or pollution will be monitored, she says.
One team member sticks a red-and-white pole in the ground. On top is a sophisticated instrument which picks up signals from satellites. The information will add to our understanding of global climate change.
Another team member, Johnny Yother, holds a $2,000 ceptometer - or light meter - waist high and turns slowly in circles. For each rotation, the 3-foot-long wand picks up 1,600 pieces of information about the amount of sunlight getting through the forest canopy. That, in turn, will eventually show whether the trees are healthy and producing thick foliage.
Jimmy Griggs uses a can of Lysol and a long pole with clippers at the end for his job. He is the tree climber for the group.
"This is called the palm tree technique," he says, spitting in his hands and rubbing them together. Then he grabs the 10-inch trunk of the chestnut oak and begins walking up. Like a monkey.
Soil scientist Rick Livingston has watched his colleague do this all summer, but still can't quite believe it. "It's really something," he says, gazing up as Griggs, hand over hand, foot over foot, reaches 15 feet, 20 feet, 25 feet.
The top of the tree begins to sway. Griggs, a skinny guy about 5 feet 8 inches tall, stands on a few thin limbs and with the long pole clips off two 3-foot-long branches.
He climbs up - and down - four trees a day. "I fell one time and broke my wrist," he says, shouting down from the treetop. "That was just fooling around, and under the influence."
He goes through a pair of cheap sneakers every couple of months. When he gets back to Chattanooga, he's thinking about putting an ad in the yellow pages as a free-lance cat rescuer.
All this he relates as he negotiates the trip back down the oak.
Back on the ground, Griggs reflects on the importance of his work. "We need the forest. Look in your house, look at all the wood, all the furniture," he says.
"When we're dead, they'll be coming back to this tree . . . " he says, slapping the side of the oak he just ascended like it's a good friend.
And the Lysol? Griggs practices "safe pruning" - he cleans the clippers after each tree to prevent the possible spread of disease.
At the end of each day, the team mails lichen scrapings, leaf clippings and soil samples, along with Griggs' branches, via Federal Express to an EPA lab in Las Vegas for analysis.
Then Cuthburton downloads the information from the four field computers onto a personal computer. Once back at the office in Knoxville, it's all copied onto a floppy disk, he says.
It's valuable information, and it took a lot of planning and organizing and money and sweat to get it.
by CNB