August 2010 Archives
My wife recently walked in on a bear ransacking our refrigerator. Jennie and the bear survived the incident just fine, though Jennie got an adrenaline rush and I fear for the bear. The bear has cost RMBL thousands of dollars and been in numerous cabins. John McPhee’s “Coming Into the Country” quotes Alaskans talk about living in bear country. They all have different responses, from shooting a threatening bear to accepting the threat as an inevitable part of cohabitation with the wild. Regardless of the strategy, however, it is clear that by living in bear country we are affecting them. Wild bears simply don’t learn how to open door handles and know how to grab a beer from a refrigerator (though they still struggle with twist-offs— but hey, so do I).
Many people think of Gothic as being wild. Compared to many places, it is. However, the area is still recovering from when it was clear cut in the mining days. And there are people, and associated impacts (many of which derive from the presence of RMBL), throughout the valley. It is many things, including untamed and beautiful. But it isn’t free of human impact.
I often get asked how scientists can study an ecosystem that is disturbed. It’s a great question and there is no single answer. Some scientists explicitly study disturbance. Others need to work in areas that are not disturbed and they go elsewhere— such as the Mexican Cut (a private reserve dedicated to research). There is no single answer to how disturbance affects research— we have many pollination biologists because the introduced honeybee doesn’t come up this high in elevation— other disturbances just don’t matter that much.
At the end of the day, there is no place on earth that is completely undisturbed by human impacts. But, it is good to have valleys like the one around Gothic where it is still possible for scientists to ask a range of questions in which the level of disturbance is small. And, RMBL has a responsibility, which we take very seriously, to limit our own impacts on the valley. Hopefully we can manage our presence to avoid putting too many bears in harm’s way.
It was very exciting to see the marmot research end up on the cover of Nature. The mark-recapture program, started by Ken Armitage in 1961 and carried on more recently by Dan Blumstein, has seen a substantial increase in marmot numbers over the last 10 years. Numerous studies have documented that the world is changing. The marmot study is unique in that the scientists had sufficient data to document why the marmot populations have been changing. Marmots have been emerging from their dens earlier. Their growing season is longer and they are larger when they go back into their dens. More of them survive overwinter, leading to a larger population. Understanding why the population is changing will help scientists make predictions about how populations of other species might change in the future.
The marmot research also helps tell the story of why RMBL research is unique. For one, the study is long-term. If we want to document and understand change, we have to watch things for extended periods of time. RMBL has one of the largest collections of long-term studies and the marmot research captures that. Also, the marmot research also involves what I call “cross-generational collaboration”. In order to do research on timeframes longer than scientific careers, scientists have to be willing to share research projects. Not only was Ken Armitage willing to hand the research off, but Dan Blumstein was willing to pick it up. That may sound like a simple thing, but it is not. Dan Blumstein deserves kudos for continuing the long-term research.
Building an understanding of how a rich and subtle world works will require teams of scientists working intensively on the same ecosystems over generations. The marmot research demonstrates the power of such an approach.