Most of our lab remains shut down due to health reasons and university policy, but a small part of our team is out in the mountains collecting data. We are under an exemption for critical time-sensitive work, which applies to some of our long-term demography datasets in the Rocky Mountains. We have one team out working on aspen forests and another looking at alpine plants. If we miss a year of data we effectively miss three, as we are not able to calculate annual growth and mortality rates with a missing year.

It is a strange year to be working – hiking up mountains in masks is challenging, as is calling out measurements to the people recording data on the team. We are taking many precautions to remain safe, and so far, we have been able to keep up this critical monitoring work. On the ecological side, it looks like a year of dramatic change – high mortality in many places. Above you can see lab student Courtenay examining a plot for evidence of seedling germination – we’ve found many, but nearly all have already died back.

The coming weeks are hard to foresee, and we hope to remain out here as long as it is safe to do so.