This is the Pepperwood Podcast, a production
of Pepperwood, a nonprofit conservation organization
based at a 3 ,200 -acre nature reserve near Santa
Rosa, California, in the heart of the traditional
homeland of the Wappo people. At Pepperwood,
we aim to inspire conservation through science.
And on this show, we talk to scientists, stewards,
and environmental educators about what they do
and how they do it. We hope to give you a glimpse
into the real experiences of folks who devote
their lives to taking care of local ecosystems
and sharing them with others. Welcome back to
the Pepperwood Podcast. This is Season 2, Episode
2, and we're going to dive into some science.
We do an immense amount of data collection and
analysis here at Pepperwood, creating long -term
data sets that help us monitor what is happening
on the landscape to better understand how things
are changing through time. That can ultimately
help us determine what kind of stewardship work
might be the most effective in preserving the
rich biodiversity that we so value in our local
ecosystems. Today we're going to highlight the
monitoring of abiotic elements, non -living components
of the ecosystems. These can be crucial influences
on the biotic or living components like the plants,
animals, fungi, you get it. Tracking abiotic
conditions helps us understand what might drive
changes in plants and animal populations. Spearheading
much of Pepperwood's abiotic data collection
is today's guest, Ryan Farrell. Ryan grew up
in Santa Rosa, and he went to UC Davis as both
an undergrad and a graduate student. He got his
master's in science in soils and biogeochemistry,
so an abiotic guy from way back. Ryan is now
our Sentinel site manager, and I started off
by asking him what exactly that means. The short
history is I started out as a research technician
and then a research scientist. And today they
call me the Sentinel Site Manager up here. I
still feel like it's a big title that like, what
does that really mean? And I always tell everybody,
like, it's a whole lot of things, which is more
the nature of Pepperwood. Related to the science,
I often consider myself the abiotic guy, like
think sensors and telemetry networks are like
radios and there's different kinds of radios.
How do we get the data back? So hydrology, soils
and arguments can be made throughout all those
disciplines that like, oh, there's biology involved
as well. And that's the case with the natural
world. You can't really focus on one discipline
and just live in that silo because there's so
many things that interact across that divide.
But in a nutshell, that's. That's most of my
science job up here is keeping all that data
flowing. And certainly, as Michelle Halber has
said, we wear a lot of hats up here at Pepperwood.
So I'm always getting tapped to get in on the
ecology and the biological side of things. And
then stewardship as well. And that's science,
too. We try to implement that adaptive management
plan. So I tell people it's my job to put the
numbers to the management. And so we make. essentially
data informed management decisions and complete
that loop. Like, hey, we're trying to do this.
Did we accomplish this? No. Why not? How would
we change that? And so it's my job, at least
I tell myself and everybody else, to gather those
numbers so that we can then, you know, make informed
decisions about our stewardship moving forward.
What are some of the actual parameters? What
are some of the data points that you're catching?
All right, so the big one, and maybe there's
a bias in here, but the soils and hydrology,
and they interact together because so often the
water is within the soils, and that's the medium
that the roots are tapped into, so our plant
life is tapped into, that the biology and the
wildlife feed on. But the hydrology metric, you
know, I like to think of things at the watershed
scale and landscape level because, you know,
it's so dynamic. I often say you could throw
a rock in any direction up here and be in a completely
different micro ecosystem or environment. But
if you integrate all that chaos and heterogeneity
and opportunity together at the bottom end of
that watershed, as defined by one thing, topography,
you get... a value of flow how much water is
exiting that system and that value has to do
with all the interactions of what's going on
up above so so you're not sort of lost in the
weeds you can like zoom way out and like okay
what does all of this produce and that's that
hydrologic flow measurement how do we measure
that stream flow um we use fixed geometry weirs
it's like weirs or flumes in this case it's a
90 degree v -notch weir that has a bunch of empirical
data behind it and rating curves like hey if
the water is you know x inches high four inches
high going through this geometry and you meet
these conditions laminar flow then we know the
flow is this um and then all the way up through
those heights of water going over the equation
matches it so can i just pause and say what a
weir looks like. If you stumbled upon it, what
would it look like in the wild? You'd be rock
hopping down the creek, probably looking down,
looking for dicampidons and other cool stuff
in the creek bed. And all of a sudden, you'd
walk into a huge concrete wall and be like, oh
my God, where did this come from? Who put this
here? What is this? And it's a, yeah, it can
be a little alarming, I suppose, but I promise
we got the permits from California Department
of Fish and Wildlife, the Lake and Stream Med
Alteration Agreements, and the Water Quality
Control Board. they were all thrilled with the
idea. Because, you know, up here in the mountaintops,
this is where floods are born. It's where you
get most of the precipitation. And lower in the
Santa Rosa Plain, when you get flooding and this
and that, it's important to know, well, what's
going on up there? Because that determines what
happens down here. So anyways, putting these
structures in. It's kind of a wall, but it's
a partial wall that has like a very geometric
gap that allows water to pass through. And then
using that gap, you can use that to sort of triangulate
the amount of flow. Is that accurate? Yes, there's
a pressure transducer. It's a sensor. It measures
the height of water. Based on the high water,
you know how much water is going over the structure,
the weir. And from there, you just apply the
equation and that converts that stage or depth
of water into a flow. So do you have to go manually
check that or is that transducer sort of automatically?
Automatic, collecting in. real time every 15
minutes um so we yeah we get pretty solid the
amount of water that's moving through this creek
is being monitored every 15 minutes every 15
minutes and up here you know given the atmospheric
rivers and even the slow base flows this dynamic
place like yeah the point measurements would
be one off in time would be so difficult that
would have nothing have no relationship to the
way water moves through so you can see with that
15 minute data on those uh, sensors and loggers.
Yeah. You get the perfect curve of like, here
comes the rain. You see it jump up real quick.
And then you see that long tail off as our, as
everything drains off the landscape, which those
response times, um, are critical and understanding
like how the watershed responds and what flood
generation looks like downstream. I'd love to
talk gadgets. Like what are some of the variety
of gadgets you use? Like, let's just say just
for soils and water or the confluence of those
two. all right let's start with the soils um
our like bread and butter is your standard soil
sensor uh campbell scientific makes them but
a lot of manufacturers do we use a lot of campbell
scientific gear it's the cs655 it's a tdr sensor
uses time domain reflectimetry, tometry. Anyways,
it sends a pulse down these rods, and the rate
at which that pulse returns, and I might be getting
this a little wrong, but it's my understanding,
the rate at which that pulse returns is correlated
to the water content. And these sensors are widely
used and have gone through multiple iterations
through Campbell through the years. But we have,
I think, about 175 of those in the ground around
Pepperwood. The vast majority of those are these
water content sensors, those CS655s by Campbell
Scientific. And for that many sensors, I think
they're in 42 locations across the preserve.
I should know. I put them all out there, but
it's been many years and many holes. And they're
in stacked arrays. So it's not just like put
a sensor in at 15 centimeters and call it good.
They're at 15, 30, 50, and 100 centimeters. So
having them like that, you can say a whole lot
about how is water. So hydrology, how is water
moving through the profile? What's the infiltration
rate? And certainly you can look at things like
porosity and saturation. It's kind of a proxy.
But ultimately, at the landscape scale, the watershed
scale, you can say, hey, how much water are we
storing in this sponge, the soil here in this
watershed? So it's an important term. as far
as the water balance goes. So most of your soil
sensors are also moisture sensors. It's really
the moisture of the soil that you're the most
concerned about. Are there other elements of
the soil or other aspects of the soil that you're
also gathering data on? Yes. So we have a few
of these out there, and I've gone through the
calibrations to make them work, but I'm not an
expert. They're called heat dissipation probes.
So, all right, I'm going to try to do my best
to explain this one. These heat dissipation probes...
measure with the calibration the matrix potential
of the soil. That is, how tightly is the soil
holding on to the water? Because things are competing
for that water. The soil is holding on to it,
but also the trees are trying to extract it with
their roots. And if you can visualize the analogy
here, you have a sponge in your hand and it's
sopping wet. Well, at first, you can wring out
the water in the sponge. It drips, drips, drips,
drips. You wringing that out, that's a lot like
the roots pulling on that water. Yeah, utilizing
that water. But eventually, no matter how hard
you wring that thing out, you can't get another
drop to come out. But you can still feel that
it's wet. You know there is still moisture there.
And so these heat dissipation probes tell you...
the matrix potential or how tightly the water
is being held by the soil. And so this will tell
you things like the permanent wilting point or
field capacity, these thresholds that have been
determined where plants can no longer uptake
water, which is a really important thing for
phenology and just response in the ecosystem.
It certainly gets onto fire danger because now
the trees are really stressed because they don't
have enough water. They can't get to it. So we
have a few sets of those out there. But like
I said, they take a big calibration process and
I've gone through it. Part of that calibration
process requires some pretty fancy equipment,
which I didn't have. So I worked with tech support
to, hey, how do I make this work? So I kind of
did the low -budget version of that, but I really
wanted to go through the process and learn. So
anyways, that's a pretty cool data set we have
out here. Well, and that paints a picture for
me a little bit of what your job entails. It's
not just putting sensors out. I mean, I'm sure
that the installation process is substantial,
but once you've installed them, You're collecting
data and you're analyzing it. But in between
that, there's an incredible amount of maintenance
and recalibration that goes into it, right? So
the ongoing maintenance is a big part of what
you do. Mm -hmm. Honestly, the installation process,
I love because it's brand new. It's clean. You
can take your time, like get it perfect. And
like, yes, you have to dig the hole, but you
know, that's okay. I like working hard and breaking
a sweat at work. But the ongoing maintenance,
especially when you start to add up 42 locations
all over the preserve, 175 sensors, and they're
all buried. So like if something goes wrong,
now you get to evaluate, do I dig this up? Do
I just dig a new hole and put a new sensor in
at that depth? And so, you know, I often say
like it could be a full time job just to watch
these data streams. Yes, it comes back in real
time most of the time, but you still have to
see it and look at it and go, oops, that doesn't
make any sense or that sensor is not responding
correctly. And then dive deeper to evaluate that
problem. So if you scale that up by 175 sensors,
yeah, the maintenance required and the like.
the dedication to watching the data, looking
at the data. And certainly we've made lots of
efforts. Like, you know, can we set up thresholds
within our databases that would then alert us
or notify us? There's only so much you can automate.
Yeah, and sometimes there's seasonal thresholds
in soil moisture, right? You could certainly
have like 60 % volumetric water content soil
moisture in the wintertime. And so if you set
your threshold there... But in the summertime,
you would never expect to see that around here.
And so it gets pretty complicated. How do you,
you know, pre -process and filter that data coming
in and have, you know, flags thrown your way
or email alerts or something like something's
weird about this sensor. So we work on that,
but it's still, yeah, the maintenance is a huge
part. Hydrology and the availability of moisture
for plants and animals is such a crucial element
in an ecosystem. We could have gone on discussing
it all day. But I didn't want to forget about
the other equally important environmental metrics
that Ryan monitors, so we branched out to discuss
some of those. There's a whole lot of physical
characteristics of soil like bulk density or
particle size that soils kind of in the young
range are 10 ,000 years old all the way through
a million years old. But certainly I often think
hundreds of thousands of years old to develop
and become what they are today. I feel confident
in like measuring both density, especially in
our forest environments where we're not grazing
or there's not a whole lot of impact. You know,
there's fire on the surface, but you're unlikely
to change bulk density or porosity or particle
size. You're not going to change. In the course
of a year or 10 years or a thousand years. We
have those data sets. I've done it for like 90
locations across the preserve, things like bulk
density and particle size. We have the equipment
to do it. But I feel pretty confident like you
could do that once. That's not an ongoing process.
The way that water and hydrology is maybe more
of a dynamic system that needs you to keep your
eyes open, so to speak, your sensor eyes. Great.
Let me throw in one thing there. The soil carbon
question. We have long been after the carbon
question. And because we graze and we do a lot
of restoration planning with... native perennial
grasses with deep roots and we even use fire
you may be able to change carbon in the shorter
term but you know it's such in small concentrations
that it's brutally hard to measure and you need
like super precise equipment like we're not going
to have that but you could partner with with
different agencies perhaps the universities like
davis have some cool instruments um So that's
some fessing up the gap in our knowledge. That
carbon question has been on the top of my mind
for seven years, and people have brought it up
like, oh, we should do this, we should do this,
especially with respect to our paired grazing.
Getting above the soil, what are some climate
elements that you're measuring? Sure. All right.
So weather stations. There's not exactly one
definition, like what all goes into a weather
station, because there's... all kinds of different
sensors that you could add on there you know
the standard stuff like temperature relative
humidity wind speed precipitation like those
are always top of mind and everyone can kind
of figure out what those are but things like
barometric pressure or incoming radiation and
partitioning that radiation into into different
spectrums like the photosynthetically active
your par radiometer So, you know, what really
defines a weather station? What defines our weather
station? Our weather station? So I like to tell
people we have five full weather stations out
there. And they're your classic weather station.
They're out in the open, so they're not obstructed
by tree canopy, which is important. So things
like... wind speed and direction and precipitation
you can't have a tree over top you because it's
going to obstruct that and you're going to get
these weird turbulent values that aren't really
showing the dominant wind patterns or the true
rainfall amounts so we have five of those and
they're stratified across the preserve and sort
of in these different regions but But what they
do is they get at different topographies, different
aspect and different elevations, which is nice
because we've seen through all those rain gauges
in those five different locations, we have vastly
different amounts of rainfall even over short
spatial distances. Given the topography here,
you know, the top of the preserve is kind of
the mountaintop. So we have this rain shadow
effect where on the leading edge of the preserve,
you may get as much as... 30 % more rainfall
than you do right over here at the Dwight Center
behind the mountain. We've cited a lot of those
measurements to represent, first, certainly at
the watershed scale, you know, we want to represent
the whole watershed, and a lot of times watersheds
are split between aspects because they have hydrology,
a creek running right down the middle, so this
canyon that might be north and south facing.
So we try to represent the landscape with our
weather stations. So we have five of those. And
then we have what I call these micro MET, MET
short for meteorology or weather station. Sounds
fancier. We have 15 of those deployed in these
long -term vegetation plots. Now they're vegetation
plots. So they're under canopy. So it doesn't
really make sense to do things like precipitation,
although through fall is important. It's just
really difficult to measure. Wind speed and direction
is not there, and solar radiation, which once
again, you could make an argument like, well,
it is kind of important for the herbaceous understory,
how much sun makes it through the canopy. We
don't do that, but there's an opportunity there.
So we do measure temperature, relative humidity,
leaf wetness, an indicator perhaps of fog or
dew generation. And at all those locations, we
also measure soil moisture. And this time, that
soil moisture is right there in the root zone
of the forest. Yeah, pretty critical piece to
our network of soil moisture sensors out there.
Excellent. So you got those weather stations,
big and small. Can you tell me about the flux
towers? Yes. All right. Yeah, I knew you were
going to go there. Those, in the simplest of
terms, I tell people, especially if it comes
to permitting them, because it's a tower, right?
I tell them like, no, it's just a tall weather
station. Play it down a little bit. And when
I say tall, as you know, they're 75 feet tall,
which is way up there. But a lot of it. is similar
stuff temperature relative humidity wind speed
and direction we also measure solar radiation
there we use a net radiometer so that's your
different components your incoming short wave
your incoming long wave and your outgoing short
wave and long wave and so you get a balance of
like where's the energy going into the system
or out of the system but the flux part all right
and this is this is what really sets these apart
and makes them more than that weather station
for the permitting office um there's two sensors
up there paired together that give the flux tower
its name. They're measuring the flux. In this
case, it's water vapor and CO2. So there's an
infrared gas analyzer that shoots an infrared
laser between two mirrors, and it measures the
density or concentration they get at both of
them of water vapor and CO2 in the air. If you
pair that with a three -dimensional anemometer,
so this device measures wind speed and direction,
so every velocity possible. So you pair the concentration
of gas. with the velocity the air is moving and
you do that 60 times a second 60 hertz um you
can then calculate how much water in this case
for this pair study we're looking at water vapor
as a product of evapotranspiration so we can
talk more about that but we're looking at how
much water is exiting the system or coming out
of the system and that's a critical part of the
water balance so on pause so let me explain this
one evapotranspiration essentially the uptake
of water by trees and plants, the forest, they're
using water. So they're an important part of
the water balance. Byproduct of evapotranspiration,
when plants open their stomata to take in CO2,
they release H2O, water vapor, into the atmosphere.
And that's directly correlated to their water
use. And so that water vapor moving through...
These turbulent eddies, eddy covariance flux
tower, passes our sensor and we measure it. And
so that's how it gives us an idea of this biological
component of the water balance. Hopefully that
sticks. It's even... No, it's incredible. I'll
probably sit with it for a little while. I love
it. No, no, but that's a beautiful description.
Thank you. Wow. Okay. Thank you for giving us
a little bit of a tour through your gadgetry.
I know that we, I'm sure we didn't catch everything,
but that's a pretty good representation. How
do you think that having this data is going to
impact the kind of work we do in the long term?
All right. So it's my dream, and we talk about
this, specific to how it impacts our work. So
back to that adaptive management plan. Those
stream gauges and the flux towers and a lot of
those soil sensors are part of this paired watershed
study. One of the watersheds we treated that
was a lot of thinning work and then followed
up with prescribed fire like a broadcast burn
to clean it all up and The other watershed was
a control which is relative like it has a fire
history. It's seen raising But for the term of
this five -year project, we didn't touch it.
We just left it alone. So it's our control finger
quotes Like I said trying to put the numbers
to the management The hypothesis is here that
if you get in there and you thin out a bunch
of these trees in this over -encroached forest
full of more dug fir than you would have had
historically because we've suppressed fire for
hundreds of years, right? Those trees all represent
straws in the bucket. They're utilizing more
water within the water balance. Our input is
precipitation. It's fixed. Whatever rainfall
we got into the system, that's our input. And
then from there, it gets partitioned into stream
flow, soil moisture storage. or deep recharge
if it gets below the root zone and certainly
forest water use evapotranspiration and so by
removing some of those trees you reduce evapotranspiration
and you shift the water balance away from forest
use and back into stream flow and that's you
know it's very important for our riparian areas
which are these like critical refuges of like
cool moist things when we get into you know late
summer when it's hot and dry and so We know exactly
how many trees, what biomass we took out, what
prescriptions we used in implementing that stewardship.
And the hope and the idea is that we can actually
see what that means in the numbers. Did we increase
flow this year by X thousands of gallons or acre
feet, whatever unit you want. And so because
we have these things set up for the long term,
you can see that impact year one. And then you
can see year two and three and four. And as the
forestry grows in theory, all of a sudden you
start to lose those. We'll call them benefits,
but it's all a natural cycle. You see the water
balance start to shift back towards the forest
as it regrows, and you see depleted stream flows.
And so perhaps in five, six, seven years, you
can look and be like, hey, our stream flows are
right back to those low levels, and our evapotranspiration
is way up high again. It's time to implement
this management again. So you have really this
data -informed management for hydrologic benefit.
From another lens here, another angle, we talked
about benefits to the riparian area and stream
flow. But in all that thinning work, by reducing
the number of essentially trees in the forest
and the water demand of the forest, now there's
more water for less trees. So those trees are
not competing with each other as heavily. They're
not stressed. They're not as susceptible to fire
or pathogen like a beetle infestation. And so
you... It's one of those things where like the
benefit is in having mitigated the chance of
wildfires. So you don't, it's like, we don't
actually see it because it didn't happen, which
is a good thing. Or if fire does come through,
which is totally fine, it doesn't, you know,
explode into this huge bonfire of an overstocked
forest. It might stay on the ground level and
you get this healthy, low intensity burn that
just sort of cleans things up. And here's an
interesting question too. And I'm not sure I
know the answer, but there's a thought too that.
fewer and doesn't mean a few there's still lots
of trees but fewer larger trees um are more efficient
at carbon storage than having a whole bunch of
little ones okay i don't know that for sure but
i've heard that thrown out there and certainly
that's what pepperwood's management would sort
of like lead to is hey we're taking out a lot
of these small encroached furs we're lifting
up ladder fuels and trying to just reduce the
density of stems within these units. So all of
your data collection together is described as
a Sentinel site. Is that correct? Your position
is the Sentinel site manager. So then all the
accumulation of all the data streams that you
are managing and producing and analyzing is what
we call a Sentinel site. Is that accurate? It's
what we call a Sentinel site. And for anyone
listening, I'm not stepping on any toes here.
It's all an evolving field and definition, but
Pepper would sort of help define a sentinel site
and early on said, hey, we're going to set ourselves
up for long -term monitoring to watch impacts
from a warming climate or changing hydrologic
inputs, more severe storms, and certainly fire
that follows those changes. I kind of love it
as a term because it makes you picture, you know,
a sentinel is like a guard or somebody who's
out there on a watchtower. So we're kind of setting
ourselves up as a watchtower by watching all
of these different elements of the landscape.
We're watching what's going on even as we are
impacting it and as impacts that we can't control
are happening to it. So we're one sentinel and
we can... We can collect what we want to collect.
But I think there is some partnership coming
together where we are one of many Sentinels.
Is that accurate? Yes. So CDFW, California Department
of Fish and Wildlife, has been actively working
on defining what is a Sentinel site. Because
although I've rambled on here for 30 minutes
or whatever about everything we're doing at Pepperwood,
we are just a drop in the bucket. It's 3 ,200
acres, but even if you zoom out to the county
level, that's a drop in the bucket. And if you
zoom out to the state, you don't even see it.
There's a need, and CDFW recognizes this, to
like, hey, we need to expand these monitoring
efforts across the state because it's so dynamic.
You have, you know, the crest of the Sierras
all the way to the ocean, Northern California,
Southern California, different species and ecosystems
and challenges and opportunities all over the
state. And so you really want to understand what
all those different areas look like, how they're
responding to climate change. and what species
are there and what opportunities are there. And
so CEFW has tried to come up with a standard
definition, because it's important if you have
all these different areas and people doing this,
if they're doing things differently, it makes
a comparison or a regional analysis really difficult.
And so, you know, it's like from the ground up,
like, okay. What metrics do we actually collect?
At what time interval? With what instruments?
There is so much gained in standardizing those
protocols. And one of the challenges I, and I
think they would readily, I don't know if admits
the right word, but they recognize it as well.
One of the challenges here is like, we need participation.
But so how do we make protocols and standards?
accessible enough that we don't create a barrier
to entry so we get the right amount of participation.
But we don't want to lower them so much or, you
know, put them so low that we're not getting
what we need and the quality and the data we
need. And so I recognized that early on. And
they did as well. And Laura Ward, our conservation
science director now, is part of the board with
CDFW and Gary Bucciarelli, who's the chair of
the Sentinel Site for Nature Network, working
with CDFW. Anyway, so she's tapped in pretty
well and has been able to bring a lot of Pepperwood's
thoughts and ideas into that process, which has
been fantastic. So as one of the original Sentinel
sites, how we define ourselves, we now get to
play a pretty important role in helping put together
this new definition. um the sentinel sites for
nature all right well you're very generous in
putting you put very strong quotation marks uh
with your body around uh the original sentinels
but as somebody who's been at this for a while
um you have tried a few things and you figured
out some things that work and don't work so is
that something that we're hopefully you know
through laura through collaboration with other
people are you able to sort of offer that as
you know offer what you've learned to other places
that are setting up these sentinel sites yes
certainly and um the sentinel site for nature
network is leveraging the fact that we're able
to do things here at pepper when we have been
doing things we've learned a lot of these lessons
um and a lot of their interest is in the biodiversity
so They have a lot of things like cameras and
drift fences, and I'll talk about that a bit
more. But they kind of want to know what's there,
which is a fine question to start. It's a good
place. You got to know what's there. And I do
know that's part of Pepperwood. You know, Michael
Gloagley back in his previous episode mentioned
the fact that Pepperwood as a piece of land is
really well studied in terms of like which plants
and animals are here. Right. What is our biodiversity?
Would you say that the other sites are also interested
in some of the abiotic data that you are that
you've been shepherding for a while? Yes, I think
everyone recognizes it's critically important.
But, you know, things like sensors and weather
stations and data loggers come with a bigger
price tag and a certain knowledge set to like
pull that off and then telemeter it as in get
it back in real time. And also, if you see it
coming back in real time, that takes care of
most of the maintenance. It's like, oh, it's
working. I don't have to go out there as opposed
to like, you don't know. And then you go out
there a month later and like, oh, it's not working.
That's bad. Well, something you've already described
is the fact that like as these data streams come
in, you can't just. trust them entirely like
because of the maintenance that's required so
you have to be a little bit constantly skeptical
of your data as it comes in and make sure that
the sensors are working properly and that takes
that takes you know not to embarrass you but
that takes having a ryan farrell on staff paying
attention to these things and having the expertise
to be able to flag these things when they come
in so that that is a tough ask you know manpower
is almost always limiting factor yeah right for
for any organization right you need to have not
only a person but a person with expertise yeah
I do my best trying of course very generous so
yes CDFW the Sentinel site for nature Group and
protocol would like to implement some of these
abiotic things They're just at the moment They're
they're just starting real baseline base level
so they can get a lot of people involved But
they have meetings at least once a month if not
every other week to discuss. Hey, what could
we add here? And then they bring in experts to
talk about it I've presented to them before and
other people have presented on on certain dna
analysis all about like hey discovering what's
here um but at the moment you know they their
protocol is pretty simple it's a traditional
game camera um you know for your medium size
to larger mammals it's a drift fence with a downward
facing camera so you know think mice wood rats
a lot of reptiles snakes and lizards things like
that i've even seen a few skunks poke their heads
in there As these critters encounter this drift
fence, they walk along this little plastic fence
line and they go through this, call it a camera
trap, but it doesn't trap them. Well, like a
photo booth. Yeah, a photo booth, exactly. They
walk through and then this camera within the
box, downward facing, takes their picture. And
so you get that sort of size class of critter.
And then acoustic monitoring. There's a critical
one because, you know, there's so many birds
and bats flying around that you, well, you hardly
ever see the bats because you're not out here
in the dark. And the birds, you know, it can
be tucked away and so small, but you do a better
job of identifying them through listening for
their different calls. And so, uh, in the springtime
during like peak breeding bird time, um, when
they're really vocal, um, that protocol has you
put out these audio recorders, their audio moths,
that's the brand, um, and listen for seven consecutive
days, a time period of each morning. Um, and
then The bottleneck there is now you need experts
or AI to listen to those bird calls. And it's
a whole chorus, right? There's so many birds
layered on top of each other, a little white
noise, some other thing running by. And so you
have to have the expertise or the right AI algorithms.
I'm not exactly sure to process all that. So
anyways, there's a lot of work on the back end
of the data collection and even identifying images.
You know, Pepperwood might generate a million
images a year with our cameras. And we have a
small army of interns and dedicated staff to
like deal with that. And so trying to figure
out how do we deal with this if we do this all
over the state, even if just for a subset of
10 weeks. And once again, you need expertise
to like, what critter is that? Or I see the back
of this thing. What is that? So a lot of work
within the Sentinel Site Network is determining.
Or is working on the data processing pipeline
and then where you put that data. So when it
comes to like sort of the current definition
of sentinel sites and the way that the network
is working, some of that abiotic data is still
in development, it sounds like. Yes. The first
question, and it's a fine question, is like,
what do we have here? What's out here as far
as biodiversity in our fauna, our animals? But
I always go, wait a sec. If after a year or a
couple years you go, hey, we have less bears
this year. Why? And you don't have the pieces
in place like, did you measure anything about
the vegetation? Did you measure anything about
climatic conditions, your weather? What changed
that is possibly influencing the behavior of
our animals? And CDFW knows it's a glaring gap.
They're like, oh, we need to address this because,
you know, it just would. Sort of kills me. Like
you would see the like, hey, where'd all our
bears go? And have no ability to even start to
look at that and like answer. You might have
anecdotes of like, oh, it felt warmer this year.
But until you really have the data there, it's
hard to say for certain. And so they're working
on that. Like they initially they're like, oh,
yeah, we're all going to have weather stations.
Well, maybe not in this first round. So they
recognize it. They're working on it. And they're
looking to Pepperwood to help inform that because
for better or worse, we tend to do everything
out here. You know, we have our vegetation stuff
that Michelle heads and we have the A -bike stuff,
the weather station stuff that I head. And we
actually had, they hired three folks recently
out of college, some of them graduate degrees,
postdoc type of folks, to go all over the state
in the next couple of years and put like 30,
set up 30 of these Sentinel site for nature sites.
And they came to Pepperwood last Friday to see
what our setup looks like because we've already.
tweaked things just a little bit so that we align
with this protocol and like yeah we want to see
what does it look like when you set this up for
the long term and um and i always lead with like
hey i've made enough mistakes that i tend to
come out a little close to my little closer on
my first try than others so you've learned how
to dodge some pitfalls yeah yeah some of them
and i used to i still find new ones but anyway
so they came out and that was fantastic and i
think that relationship will continue And yeah.
That's really cool. Well, you say we study everything.
Is there anything on your wish list of things
that you wish you could add? Well, the soil carbon
one would be cool. Right. Especially with respect
to our grazing and our paired grassland transects.
I also have this dream about experimenting the
other watersheds with stream flow because our
management goes around in these circles like
every five years. Oh, we're going to. We're going
to thin and treat the forest over here, and then
we're going to move over here and here and here.
So every year we're doing something. It'd be
really cool. Because we have five sub -watersheds
here, right? Yeah. So two of them are currently
streamflow instrumented. So it'd be nice to expand
that. I can see that. There's another one I can't
quite remember. There's a tower that Laura has
talked about. Oh, the Motus Tower? The Motus
Tower. Yeah, okay, okay. That's part of the Sentinel
site for nature protocol. But it's kind of like
if someone else has a Motus Tower close enough
in your region, you don't really need one. Anyways,
they put these little, maybe they're pit tags,
but anyways, they're little tags. And they put
them on birds and bats and sometimes even bugs,
believe it or not. And this tower is just a receiver.
So if that migratory songbird flies by, it doesn't
have to be a songbird, whatever, it flies by.
it pings the tower and says hey it's here and
so you can track the migration of these species
or the holdover spots or yeah any of that wow
so that'd be a a different set of instrumentation
that would help us with those sort of with the
fauna that are moving through here yes and um
we are a gap up here like they the nearest one
is down in the napa sonoma marsh there above
san pablo bay but this north bay region for whatever
reason there's a hole right here and so we're
like hey we can see clear to the horizon east
west and north perhaps even south like we have
worked on that for several years and now with
our participation in developing this new sentinel
site for nature network i think it might come
true it's coming closer all right we put it in
a grant so perhaps so a modus tower for pepperwood
it could happen With every project, or in Ryan's
case, the complex collection of many projects
that makes up the Sentinel site, which is his
purview, I'm always curious about what supports
the work. So I asked Ryan, what makes the work
he does possible? You know, as a nonprofit, we
have very little overhead. So things, money goes
towards action more than, you know, everything
else. And we don't have a lot of red tape up
here. Like I just talked with... with a university
yesterday hey we want to put fire on the ground
how do we do that and they're like they won't
let us because all the red tape and liability
and i get it we live in that world where you
just sue everybody um And so the fact that we
don't have that here at Pepperwood and we have
all these people that are honestly so good at
their jobs, like all our coworkers, Devin's a
burn boss. Michael knows the landscape so well.
Laura can communicate with anyone like she's
known them all her life. And I go, how do you
know all that? And then I pull off a few tricks
every now and then and the education staff. Anyways.
We're like a highly efficient team here at Pepperwood
where everybody like does so much and their efforts
make my efforts easier and vice versa, I like
to think. So the team, the low overhead, the
lack of red tape makes a lot of things possible.
And, you know, and just the morale around here,
like everybody's excited and genuinely interested
in what we're up to. And I think that carries
over into even the grant world when we're approaching
possible grantors. Like, you know, we're on the
map. Like, people know about Pepperwood. And
this track record of doing some very cool novel
things and some cool data sets that, you know,
aren't happening anywhere else makes it a pretty
attractive place for funders, I think. And if
it's funded, then it makes the job easy. So I
think that is incredibly helpful in making what
we do successful is that track record in our
staff. That sounds like a nice positive feedback
loop that you're describing, which is that the
more innovative things that we try, the more
capacity we have to try new innovative things
that might be beneficial. Yeah. That sounds really
cool. Well, again, thank you, Ryan, for describing
your work. I love hearing about it. And I know
we've only tapped the surface of it. So thanks
again. And yeah, have a good rest of your day.
Awesome. Thanks, Jules. Thanks again to Ryan
Farrell for the work he does at Pepperwood and
for taking time away from that work to talk to
us about it. If you'd like to hear more from
Ryan, I have great news for you. He's coming
back in our very next episode to discuss hunting
and how it relates to conservation. So stay tuned
to hear his perspectives as both a hunter and
a scientist. But this episode is not done yet.
It's time for the next installment of The Nature
Sound Guess Who Game. We play a nature sound
at the end of each episode. You have the time
in between episodes to guess which animal, vegetable,
or mineral made that sound. Please don't hesitate
to email your guesses to podcast at pepperwoodpreserve
.org or comment on the corresponding social media
posts either on Facebook, where we're Pepperwood,
Instagram, where we are Pepperwood Preserve CA,
or on Blue Sky, where we are Pepperwood Preserve.
Alright, first let's listen back to the sound
from last episode. That sound was made by the
California quail. That is specifically an alarm
call from the California quail, California's
state bird famous for its adorable black forward
curving plume feather on the crown of its head,
which is particularly large and pronounced on
adult males. I intentionally chose a vocalization
from this species that I was less familiar with.
Like me, you may be more accustomed to their
advertisement calls or maybe their rally or assembly
calls. Let's review all of these calls with some
help from the Audubon Society Field Guide to
North American Birds, Western Edition. I love
hearing how expert birders describe bird vocalizations
using human language. The alarm call that we
heard is summarized or mimicked using the word
pit, pit, or wit, wit. Let's see if we can hear
that if we listen back to the recording. California
quail advertisement calls are described using
the word ca, K -A, and sound like this. Those
advertisements are extended into rally or assembly
calls, which are described as either cacao cow,
with the second note highest, cacao cow, or memorably
as Chicago, like the city. And that is the sound
that I am most familiar with from California
quail. Listen in to that. All of those calls
were recorded by Jeffrey A. Keller and submitted
to the Cornell Lab Macaulay Library, who were
generous enough to share them with us. There's
another sound that I am accustomed to hearing
from California quail that is not a vocalization,
but which gives me a near heart attack many a
time in the shrub habitats of Pepperwood and
other Sonoma County open spaces. Have you had
this experience as well? Often when I am approaching
a covey or a bevy of quail inhabiting a bush
or a small tree, probably unknowingly, they explode
out of hiding into the air and the collective
sound of their wings beating the air is so loud.
It's like a helicopter propeller. Honestly, if
I were a predator on the lookout for a quail
dinner, the start that that noise gives me would
be more than enough to slow me down and give
those quail a moment to get away. So very adaptive
trait. Thanks again to Cornell Lab Macaulay Library
for granting us permission to use some of their
incredible bird call recordings, including, spoiler
alert, the next Nature Sound Guess Who game prompt
that you will have until next episode to guess.
Listen closely. If you recognize this, avian
neighbor, send us your guess either at podcast
at pepperwoodpreserve .org or comment on one
of our social media accounts. You can become
podcast famous because if you send in the correct
guess, I will shout you out on our next episode.
Here comes the clip to guess at in three, two,
one. Here's the second chance to listen in three,
two, one. So which bird is that? Submit your
answers, and maybe you'll hear your name on our
next episode. Thanks as always to Stephanie Antinoro,
Pepperwood's Communications Coordinator, for
her ongoing support of this podcast project,
and thanks to you for listening. Until our next
episode, keep your ears tuned into nature.