September 2016

Post date: Aug 6, 2017 7:18:21 PM

Douglas has finished a successful summer of field research measuring conifer recruitment on the Muddy River Lahar at Mount St. Helens. The team included Adrien, an intern visiting the Lab from France, and PSU students Ryan, and Sebastian, both hired as field assistants. The team sampled 197 plots over two months of work. The data gathered will be used for Douglas’s master’s thesis: Biophysical facilitators of conifer encroachment on the Muddy River Lahar, Mount St. Helens, WA.

The deep channels caused by lahars and flooding events on the SE slope of Mt St. Helens.

A juvenile Douglas fir growing in a safe regeneration site (between large rocks) away from the wind--common in the middle of the lahars.

In August 2016, the team also met with the Mount St. Helens Institute http://www.mshinstitute.org/ and a group of high school students for a day learning about conifer identification, taking measurements, and putting a research question together.

Adrien showing an example of a tree core to high school students.