Tuesday, April 15: Day 2 - Team 2 2008

Stuart Brightbill
I arrived excited and eager to start my learning on how the climate affects our environment, and I met 11 of my peers equally excited and eager. The scientists here seem very pleased to be teaching us what we need to learn and are anxious to put us to work. With all of the overviews we have been receiving here this first day, I look forward to a lot of intense learning, studying and field work.

If I could give one tip to you, it is to ask questions about sustaining our Earth to any of my fellow HSBC Climate Champions who have already gone through the field program. I have been incredibly impressed with what I hear they have been doing and continue to do at their homes and communities. I know if you talk with these folks just a little bit, you will be equally impressed. Hopefully on my next posting, I will be able to pass on a bit of what I have learned.

Linda Markott
After our arrival and room assignment, we spent the evening learning a bit about our surroundings and our colleagues. Sharing ideas with this group is a joy. There are so many different backgrounds and points of view. On Tuesday our training began. We can now identify poison ivy and ticks. Hopefully, the only ones we see were the ones in the lab. We now understand why we are studying trees and the impact HSBC has on this study by supplying support. The amount of data that can be acquired by 12 bodies speaks volumes. We were taught how to measure trees, which will be one of our tasks during our stay. We had a little extra free time before dinner so I took an exploratory hike. I discovered a trail that followed a small lake. I surprised a hawk which showed its displeasure by swooping at me, about 10 feet over my head. This evening we had another brainstorming session. These sessions are intended to ultimately provide us with the tools we will need for our project upon our return. Tomorrow will be a full day out in the woods. Time to start earning our keep.

Doug Peters
We all arrived safely to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and were assigned to our digs. I was lucky to receive my own room; however, the single rooms do not have Internet access. It’s a fair trade-off. Everyone has been friendly and accommodating, and is certainly helping us feel right at home. This place is beautiful--we’re perched on the edge of an inlet/branch of Chesapeake Bay with a sloped, wooded topography. A wide, shallow river drains freshwater into the saltwater, adding to the brackish bay, edged with saltwater marshes. The woods are a nice mixture of new, intermediate and mature growth, and exhibit a rich history. The research center sits in the middle and provides direct access to the “field” for the plethora of scientists and research projects going on here. Laboratories abound, and in the summer, there can be as many as 300 people working here.

The trails are amazing. On the first night I took a sunset bike ride to a small inland lake, visited with a red-tailed hawk, and surprised four nimble deer. The project we’re contributing to is fascinating (more later). Looking forward to getting into the woods tomorrow and putting today’s tree measurement practice to work!

Seth Ruden
I suspect that the reason they are called “Tree Huggers” is for the measuring tape that is used for documenting a trees circumference. One has to literally wrap both arms around to grasp the tape and get a good read on the total width of a 100-year-old tree.

We spent the second day here receiving our primary education, practicing the evaluation of trees and wrapping our minds around the objective of the mission here: Facilitating the raw data collection that will provide necessary understanding of sustainable forest management. With the support provided by HSBC Climate Champions, there will be a valuable amount of data that will be collected and utilized. I understand the findings of this study will be provided to the greater scientific community, reinforcing the contributions that are being made.

The work will be hard and consuming. We will walk some distance to the site we are surveying and once there, we’re on our feet hugging tree to tree. I will do my best to convey this with distances traveled in measures of my own footsteps on my GPS and pedometer.