California's New Experimental Forest

Aug. 14 - KGO (KGO) -- The U.S. Forest Service has just dedicated the first new experimental forest in California in 40 years. That means science and research will get priority over all other activities in the area. The Sagehen Forest is in the Lake Tahoe Basin, eight miles outside of Truckee. In this Assignment 7 report we take you there for a look at what it is all about.

This is bug boot camp. A right of passage for UC students studying insects. Students spend five weeks, from early in the morning until late at night, collecting and examining bugs in one of the most diverse habitats in the world.

Prof. Phil Ward, UC Davis: "There are about 600 families of insects in North America and we have recorded about 340 of them just within the Sagehen Creek Basin, so that's more than half of all the families of insects in North America are found just within this one basin."

That kind of diversity has drawn scientists to the Sagehen Forest for decades. The area includes stunning meadows, rich marsh land, mountain creeks and a huge expanse of forest.

Jeff Brown, Sagehen Creek Field Station Manager: "This place is a little slice of heaven. It's a great spot, but it was actually designed in the late 1940s to set aside a place to do research and education over the long term."

The original Sagehen reserve was about 400 acres. The forest service is now increasing that to 8,000 acres. Sagehen has been designated as an experimental forest which will preserve the land as a living laboratory for future generations.

Jeff Brown: "We need places that we can leave alone to study."

Now that the Sagehen Forest is permanently designated for research, it's quickly on its way to becoming the most heavily instrumented forest in the world.

Jeff Brown: "Each one of these black pipes is like a little shallow well that goes into the ground."

This network of pipes and temperature sensors indicates what's happening to water underground.

Jeff Brown: "By looking at it every 15 minutes, you can actually see when the vegetation is drinking the water and when the vegetation is not drinking the water, which is pretty cool."

Other instruments give detailed information about climate changes and air pollution. A sap sensor measures how the sap flow inside the tree is affected by solar radiation.

Jeff Brown: "These are the two probes and at the end of those is the needle that goes into the tree."

There are a few small buildings used as classrooms and sleeping quarters. The only other structure is the fish house, built right next to a stream. Inside there are underground windows into the water, so researchers can study fish behavior in a natural environment.

Jon Stead: "They set up dominance hierarchies and we are looking at that."

The focus of this fish research is to bring back the Lahontan cutthroat trout.

Jon Stead, UC Davis ecologist: "It's the native fish here and used to be the only trout in the creek, but as a result of various activities, over-fishing, logging and introduction of non-native trout, they've disappeared from this creek."

The only cutthroat trout here now came from hatcheries. They're living in this temporary pen where they're fed fish food pellets. Researchers are building net barricades across the creek so when they release the trout they'll stay in this area.

Jeff Brown: "To see if they can actually be converted from hatchery fish to real fish. I mean that's the big challenge."

The Sagehen Forest is operated by UC Berkeley, but scientists and students come here from all over the world. Every project has to be approved by a team of experts, and every researcher has to come up with their own funding.

And there's a new challenge as well...

Jeff Brown: "To take what we are learning and try to convert that into a format that can be understood by a much broader audience."

For more information on the research projects at the Sagehen Experimental Forest, visit http://sagehen.ucnrs.org/.

Written and produced by Jennifer Olney.

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