Science, suspended from a crane

I keep a mental list of the unexpected and memorable experiences that I've had as a biologist, mostly as a tool to survive the boring tedium that is a part of science. I've netted bats at night in a tropical rain forest, accidentally set expensive electronics on fire, blasted tree leaves out of a forest canopy with a shotgun, been held at gunpoint by the police for shooting trees with a shotgun, given presentations to hundreds of people at international conferences, and traveled to places of incredible beauty.

I added to my list last week.

I had the opportunity to cruise around a forest canopy, suspended 20-30 meters off the ground in a crane bucket, and measure the photosynthetic rates of some Eucalyptus trees.

There are three scientists in the yellow bucket suspended from the crane.

We are exposing plots of a eucalypt forest to elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, in an attempt to understand how these forests will respond to the continuing increase in global CO2 concentrations caused by human activities. The large pipe structures are the infrastructure used to deliver the additional CO2 into the forest canopy. You can read more about the experiment here.




These are tall and mature trees, so it's challenging to actually get to the leaves. Here's how we do it:

First, one of the site engineers uses a remote control to drive the crane and sets up a bucket to hold the scientists.

Then, we harness up, load the bucket with instruments and sampling equipment, and get inside. the engineer gets inside with us and moves the crane by remote control. The crane picks up the bucket and takes us for a ride into the canopy.

Top-down view of the relatively sparse Eucalypt canopy.
The central structure is a walk-up tower- an alternative way to get into the canopy.

There are six experimental rings, each with its own crane.

We go up and over the ring infrastructure, and then down into the canopy to find some leaves to measure.

Vinod and Kristine

Once we arrived at our target tree, I had to put my camera away to do some actual work. Crane time is expensive and limited, so we had to make the most of it. 

Measuring leaf  photosynthesis from a canopy crane

Science is awesome.