Canopy Access Advancements

While almost every adult has a memory of climbing a tree when they were a kid, few will ever climb as high or study branches as closely as canopy biologists.

In working with them I’ve learned so much about how much a canopy can offer, as well as how much we still have to learn. (adblocker off to view embedded videos)

(Hint: move your mouse to control what direction video looks towards)

Much like a scuba diver in a coral reef, but without the ability to balance your buoyancy with weights, the giant trees I’ve assisted canopy researchers do studies in is a world unto itself. With thick moss mats on every branch and a huge range of epiphytes (air plants) growing on everything other than the green leaves, these high canopy landscapes not only create essential habitat for many species, but they fertilize the rain that flows through them.


Long ago when biologists were first wondering what was going on up there they’d work with tree fallers who would cut down the trees so they could study the branches. But this method was more like reconstructing an unseen world after a massive explosion.

That’s when Nalini Nadkarni and other researchers decided they needed a less destructive method to do their research:

Nalini Nadkarni is an American ecologist who pioneered the study of Costa Rican rain forest canopies. Using mountain climbing equipment to make her ascent, Nadkarni first took an inventory of the canopy in 1981, followed by two more inventories in 1984.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nalini_Nadkarni

One of her many discoveries was that there was a unique soil ecology under the thick moss mats and that many varieties of trees were able to sprout adventitious roots from their trunks to take advantage of the moisture and nutrients that were offered.

Other canopy access methods includes building scaffolding around trees, erecting giant canopy cranes, as well as landing inflatable rafts on top of the canopy via various dirigibles and other aircraft.

For decades my views from the tops of the these ancients trees convinced me that we could generate way more support for forest protection by letting people experience it for themselves, which in the late 1990’s is what led to a passion for training hundreds of people to climb up long ropes to live in tree villages in the tops of threatened forests so they could not be cut down until the treesitters were removed.


Then, as drone technology advanced, not only were way more people experiencing these extraordinary views of the forests in video form, but the drones helped people to realize that seeing an ancient forest in the sphere below them was much more stimulating than the harder to see view at ground level in the sphere above them.

Then drones themselves were specially designed to help support canopy researchers:

Ecologists are increasingly using traces of genetic material left behind by living organisms in the environment, called environmental DNA (eDNA), to catalogue and monitor biodiversity. Based on these DNA traces, researchers can determine which species are present in a certain area.

Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats—such as the forest canopy—are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas.

Researchers at ETH Zurich; the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL; and the company SPYGEN partnered to develop the special drone, which is equipped with adhesive strips. When the aircraft lands on a branch, material from the branch sticks to these strips. Researchers can then extract DNA in the lab, analyze it, and assign it to genetic matches of the various organisms using database comparisons.” https://www.futurity.org/drone-trees-biodiversity-2866292/

These canopy access advancements are not just for scientific study, they are also being developed to help protect forests by removing deadwood and low hanging live branches, which can often be a dangerous ladder fuel that allows wildfire on the forest floor to climb up into the canopy, which can kill a whole forest if there’s enough wind, high temperatures and low humidity:

The ability to efficiently prune branches in a forest canopy is a great passion and practice of this writer because this method has the ability to eliminate the need for cutting down whole trees to ensure the understory, or next generation of forest, doesn’t get shaded out so much that mortality rates get too high.

These pruning methods have also helped me to realize that too often a forest that seems crowded and in need of thinning at ground level is actually quite open and healthy higher up where it only needs minor branch pruning to prevent understory trees from being shaded out.

The dream is to prove that canopy sculpting is far more effective than logging when it comes to growing an abundance of healthy trees that can sequester and store carbon emissions for centuries to come.

Five years ago I wrote a science fiction version of what this work would look like after it starts to thrive: http://deanetr.com/2018/05/08/windfall-eco-restoration-forestry/

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