WMRS Field Stations:Barcroft / Crooked Creek / Owens Valley

This complementary set of facilities comprise one of North America’s premier high-altitude field stations as well as an important regional support facility for earth and environmental science!

Going over Sheep Pass (11870’/3620m) on the way to Barcroft June 2006

Barcroft station in winter. Over 8000 square feet of high-altitude facilities, located well above treeline in alpine habitat.

Crooked Creek station. Located in the ancient bristlecone pine forest and also a comfortable lodging facility for Barcroft users who haven’t

acclimated to the high altitude.Barcroft Observatory, currently in use for measuring polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background

The Summit Lab, located on one of California’s highest peaks

•Aerosol monitoring at Barcroft – Anthony Fry (Mark Thiemens, physics)•Correlates of Acute Mt. Sickness public survey Nic Kanaan (Frank Powell, physiology)•"Locative Media in the Wild for Students". (Brett Stalbaum, art) Conceptual art performed in this class at Crooked Creek has been featured in National Geographic’s JourneyStreams on-line journal.•Earthscope and US Array Survey, installations at Crooked Creek and Barcroft . IGPP/SIO

Acute Mountain Sickness Survey

T-REX

Aerosol monitoring

Earthscope GPS receiver site (by Barcroft dome)

US Array seismometer unit at Crooked Creek

UC San Diego

How are the high-altitude stations used?

•White Mountain Energy Project: bringing 21st century energy technology to Barcroft and creating a test bed for high elevation fuel cells. (Scott Samuelsen. Advanced Power and Energy Program) NSF funding

•Large volume air sample, used as standard in analysis of atmospheric gases around the world. Collected at Crooked Creek every summer. Kevin Gervais, Angela Baker (Don Blake, Chemistry) NSF, NASA, California Air Resources Board funding

Installing monitoring equipment

Collecting large volume air sample at Crooked Creek

UC Irvine

Pumping and flushing air sample canisters and standard cylinder

•Adaptation to high elevation in deermiceGreg Russell, Matt van Sant, Sonia Ortiz (Kim Hammond, Mark Chappell, Biology) NSF funding

•Adaptation to high elevation in chipmunks and ground squirrels: Voluntary Running Speed. Mark Chappell and Elizabeth Dlugosz.

•Precambrian-Cambrian transition and the origin of complex life. (Mary Droser and Martin Kennedy, Earth Sciences). NASA funding.

•Granite weathering processes and microbes Ann Rossi (Robert Graham, Soil Sciences). Also soils course field trip spring 2008.

Physiology lab set-up at Barcroft

UC Riverside

Deermouse treadmill measures performance

•Center for Embedded Network Sensing (CENS) project: robotic ground monitoring apparatus field testing. (Phil Rundel, Biology & Computer Science) NSF funding•Effects of hypoxia on fetal lambs. (Yuangsheng Gao, Neonatology) NIH funding•Social evolution in Marmots. Thea Wang (Peter Nonacs, Biology)•Advanced remote sensing class field trip. (ESS 162-262 ). Gilles Peltzer

Field testing of robotic shuttle at Barcroft

UCLA

Capturing Barcroft Marmots…

and then watching them interact in different social situations

Polarization of the Cosmic Background Radiation. Brian Williams, Alan Levy, NateStebor, Jeff Childers, Hugh Oneill, Rodrigo Leonardi, Josh Marvil, Doron Halevi (Peter Meinhold and Phil Lubin, Physics). Winner of 2006 Gruber cosmology prize. NSF funding.

Summer Geology Field School (some years at Crooked Creek). (Cathy Busby, Geology)

Barcroft observatory

BEAST telescope

MPOL telescope

UC Santa Barbara

•Geology summer field school HildeSchwartz (Earth Sciences) now camp at Westgard Pass, but could use WMRS•Demography and longevity of Bristlecone Pines. Adelia Barber (Dan Doak, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology; also Univ. Wyoming)•Advanced photography workshops at Crooked Creek. Stuart Scofield, UC Extension Art and Design.

UC Santa Cruz

Abundant dead wood like this leaves precise records of how trees responded to past climates and where they lived.

Rod Bale, a colleague from the Univ. of Wales, sampling a tree for isotopic reconstruction of climate over the last 1000 years Adelia and Dan looking over

snowy sites in May of 2006.

•Ultrasound and echo doppler imaging of human subjects with/without acute mountain sickness. Gerald Dubowitz (Anesthesiology)

•fMRI imaging of brain function under hypoxia (Gerald Dubowitz (Anesthesiology). (NIH funding pending)

•Planning for full-scale fMRI imaging project based at Barcroft. Gerald Dubowitz, Frank Powell, Philip Bickler, Richard Buxton, UCSF and UCSD. (NIH)

Ultrasound imaging at 4000’ elevation (OVL)

In summit lab at 14,250’ elevation

UC San Francisco

Normal brain (left) during response to a simple question, time series response under hypoxia (right 3 images) to same question.

At 14,250’ (summit lab)

Resurvey of “Grinnell sites” in the White Mountains. Jim Patton, Craig Moritz, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology. NSF funding.

Jim Patton in the field

George Smoot receives Nobel Prize in Physics

2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, for measurements of cosmic microwave

background radiation. George Smoot worked at WMRS for over 10 years 1981-92,

measuring the longest wavelengths of the CMB spectrum and field testing instruments.

NSF funding

UC Berkeley

Above: range of Tamias alpinus in Yosemite

Jim Bishop

The WMRS-GLORIA Master Site: Monitoring effects of climate change in the

White Mountains

The Global Observation Research Initiative in Alpine Environments (GLORIA) is a worldwide program to monitor climate change effects on alpine vegetation. (CIRMOUNT, USFS, CalFlora, CNPS, WMRS)

Century- and Millennial-scale Response of Limber Pine to Historic Climate Change. Connie Millar, Bob Westfall, Diane Delany, John King, USFS Pacific Southwest Research Station

Recruitment of Subalpine Conifers in Response to Changing Climates. (see right)

Right: Limber Pine expanding above upper Bristlecone Pine treeline, on dolomitic soils in the

upper Cottonwood drainage

WMRS

Lung development in guinea pigs and dogs at low vs. high altitude. Connie Hsia, Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. NIH funding

Effects of hypoxia on neonatal sheep. Lawrence Longo and Charles Ducsay, Loma Linda Univ. NIH funding

Hibernation physiology of ground squirrels. Craig Frank, Fordham University. NSF funding

Physiology of C4 grasses at high elevation. Archie Meyer (John Skillman), California State University San Bernardino Guinea pigs running on treadmill, for

measurements of aerobic capacity at high altitude. Remote sensing and plant responses to climate change. Gary

Ernst, Stanford University, Stuart Weiss, consulting ecologist and Chris Vandeven, Albion College

Effect of bosentan on human subjects during exercise. Roger Seheult, Loma Linda University. NIH funding

Intracranial pressure (ICP) changes and extravascular lung water in high altitude illness. Peter Fagenholz, Harvard General Hospital

Origins of Reed Dolomite brecchia. Nathaniel Lowrentz, Univ. Southern California NASA funding

Selected other high-altitude projects:

Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel

The WMRS Owens Valley LaboratoriesActively supporting University Research and Teaching in the Eastern

Sierra – Western Great basin region

WMRS GIS facility includes computer lab, large format plotter, scannerand ESRI GIS software.

The WMRS Owens Valley Laboratories (OVL) are base facilities operated year-round and include lab

and classroom space as well as living and dining accommodations for 50.

The Transient Rotor Experiment (T-REX) was an interdisciplinary field expedition to study transient weather phenomena originating over the Sierra Nevada. The field expedition took place in spring 2006 and involved multiple institutions including Univ. of Nevada, Reno, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the UC San Diego, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO). NSF, other funding.T-REX Flight operations center at OVL

HIAPER aircraft lands in Bishop

Real time flight display showing HIAPER flight path (R) and dropsondes (L).

T-REX field expedition

Carbon cycling in Owens Valley soils. Mariah Carbone (Susan Trumbore)*

CO2 flux measurement apparatus

Isotopic tracer containment

Understanding the influence of climate and depth to groundwater on plant water use. Christine Goedhart(Diane Pataki, Earth Systems Science and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Funded by UC Center for Water Resources*

UC IrvineEarth Systems Science

Also: Deep Springs Valley Fault motions Roi Granot (Lisa Touxe, geosciences)) UCSD

New course “Global Climate and Environmental Change” to be held at WMRS fall quarter 2009 (Mary Droser and Martin Kennedy, Earth Sciences).

Global and environmental change field trip 2007

Delamination of the Sierra Nevadan Lithosphere. Steven Park Department of Geology, UCR with Laboratory at OVL. NSF-funding

(L) Magnetotelluric Lab at WMRS Owens Valley Labs

Above: cool mantle slab peeling away and falling into the lithosphere, as imaged by seismic and magnetotelluric techniques. Transect crosses the High Sierra from W to E.

UC Riverside

•Terrain-induced rotor experiment (T-REX); fluid dynamics Tina Katapodes,* Environmental Engineering (spring 2006 field season)

•Jepson Herbarium Workshops held at WMRS every year. Cynthia Perrine

•Rural physician retention survey. Christine Hancock (Alan Steinbach, Public Health)

HIAPER aircraft sampling atmospheric turbulence

The “sense of place” and its role in rural physician retention in the Owens Valley

UC Berkeley

Graduate students taking core samples and downloading data

T-REX

Radiosondelaunching

•Geological field methods Summer geology field school (Jim McClain, Geology)

•Pre-course field trip (Charles Lesher, Geology)

•Alpine community ecology and terrestrial-aquatic trophiclinks. Pete Epanchin (Sharon Lawler, Entomology)

•Principles of Ecology all-student orientation field trip. every September (Sylvia Hillyer, Graduate Program in Ecology )

Geology field school at OVL

Grey-crowned Rosy Finches eat aquatic

insects that emerge from alpine lakes.

UC Davis

Ecology graduate group looks at endemic fish habitat

Aquatic insect emergence traps are used to sample the timing and abundance of the mayflies and midge hatch.

Willow beetle food web networks and analysis. (Eric Berlow, UC Merced Sierra Nevada Research Institute) NSF funding

Counting beetle larvae and predators:Sonja Otto, Darmstadt University, Germany

Elevational Range of Chrysomela aeneicollis , North Fork Big Pine Creek

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1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007

year

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upper elevation limit water year % of normal x10 lower elevation limit

Chrysomela aeneicollis adults (A) and larvae (B)

Hover fly larva Hole-nesting wasp

Ecological and evolutionary responses to climate change in Sierra Nevada populations of a montane willow beetle. John Smiley (WMRS), Nathan Rank (Sonoma State University), and Elizabeth Dahlhoff (Santa Clara University). NSF funding

WMRS/SSU/SCU/UC Merced

Genetics and conservation of Bighorn Sheep. John Wehausen, WMRS. CDFG funding

Sampling meadow insect communities (photo Lance Iverson)

Insect communities in mountain meadows. Jeff Holmquist, WMRS. NPS funding

WMRS projects based at OVL

•Rates and processes of granite emplacement in the Sierra Nevada. Allan Glazner and Drew Coleman, Univ. of North Carolina, and John Bartley, Univ. of Utah. NSF funding.

Rock saw cutting block of soil (frozen at -70 degrees F), into 1 cm slices for isotopic analysis of radiogenic fallout.

•Collaborative Research: Quantifying feedbacks between groundwater decline, wind erosion, and ecological change in desert vegetation Andrew Elmore, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. NSF funding

•History and emplacement style of the Morgan Creek pluton and effects on formation of the Pine Creek Tungsten skarn. John Porter, Univ. Utah.•New Criteria for Identifying Increments and Pluon Anatomy in the Field, McDoogle Pluton, Sierra Nevada, CA. Michael Sterns, Univ. Utah.•Rate of movement of the Big Pine volcanic field using GPS techniques. Michael Strickler, Univ. Arizona•Reconciling Geologic and Geodetic Rates of Deformation: The Role of Distributed Strain in the Upper Crust. David Greene, Penn. State Univ.•Thermochronology and cooling histories of plutons: implications for incremental pluton assembly. Jesse Davis, Univ. of N. Carolina.

Other current Geosciences Research

•Environmental and ecomorphological effects on phenotypes of ectotherms in Western Fence Lizards. Christine Buckley, Univ. Of Massachusetts, Amherst.

•The physiology and performance of the Western Fence Lizard. David McMillan (Duncan Irschick), Univ. Of Massachusetts, Amherst

•Contact/Precontact Evolution of Native American Subsistence Strategies in the Eastern Sierra. Bridget Wall, Cal. State Univ. Sacramento.

•Mating behavior in praying mantids. Michael Maxwell, National University. NSF funding

Selected other research at OVL:

What ties the Stations together?Comparative human and animal physiology in high vs low altitude conditions

Crooked Creek and OVL function in support of Barcroft at beginning and end of seasons, and as housing for Barcroft researchers

Lung development in guinea pigs and dogs. Connie Hsia, Robert Johnson, Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. NIH funding

Early-snowfall transfer of dogs in 2004

Mountain Climate Monitoring NetworkDan Cayan and Douglas Alden,Scripps Institution of Oceanography*

Elevation transect analyses:

A long-term study of plant-animal interactions and the relationships between

climate change, non-native plant distribution, and fire regimes, in arid and

montane ecosystems of the Western United States. Rob Klinger, Western

Ecological Research Center, USGS (NSF and USGS funding)

USGS field staff at work in the office at OVL

Impact of climate change and tectonics on the land surface of the Eastern Sierra Region of the Southwestern Great basin.Angela Jayko, USGS field office located at OVL. USGS funding.

Broad-scale Multi-habitat ResearchIn addition to conducting research out of the Owens Valley Laboratories, USGS and WERC staff work with other WMRS students and researchers on a variety of topics and in multiple habitats.

(left) White Mountain Research Station will host the 26th annual Physiological Ecology Meeting at the Owens Valley Lab (OVL). As always, the meeting format emphasizes an enjoyably informal exchange of ideas and research, and a comfortable venue to discuss topics of interest, for students to gain experience presenting their work in a friendly setting, and for veteran researchers to try out new ideas.

Regional conferences and meetings bring researchers from multiple disciplines and habitats together.

(right) Announcing a regional research conference:

•plenary sessions•keynote speakers

•concurrent thematic sessions •invited talks

•contributed talks •poster session

•field trips

Our dedicated, experienced staff run all three stations. Over the years they have supported the publication of approximately 2000 articles in scientific journals, 1000 student and faculty research projects, 1000 field classes, and over 100 PhD and Masters thesis projects. We’re still going strong!

Back row: Dori Cann, Ryan Kitts, Tim Forsell, Gary Milender, John Smiley, Denise Waterbury, Barbara Fager, Lisa Bedient. Front row: Scott Cole, Dave Stockton, Daniel Pritchett, Elizabeth Sally, Sarah Rankin. Hayden Jones and Frank Powell not present.