The woods at Wytham are do not look very ordinary. They are cut through by roads and instrumentation, because this forest has been a home for ecological research at Oxford for over sixty years. This week I had the chance to make the short cycle trip from the city center to the top of the…

The New Forest is not very new any longer. King William I established it in 1079 C.E. and it has persisted in southern England through the present day. I had the pleasure of walking through some of it last week on an ecological tour with Jonathan Spencer and Jane Smith (land managers and very good…

I recently escaped from the heat of Tucson to the Catalina Mountains, five thousand feet above, and ecologically a world away. Our lab installed a set of new forest plots near the summit of Mt. Bigelow, and I was glad to help with the fieldwork. Here we are carrying 100-meter measuring tapes up the slope.…

Canyon lands guard well their secrets. Canyons themselves are not difficult to find – they form where water would run – but entrances and exits are more difficult to come by. And once inside a canyon, the world changes. This canyon is hard to notice at first, cut into the base of some otherwise unremarkable…