Jean Knops Visits: Sabbatical Research
Jean Knops is one of the long-term Hastings fellows. Jean did his doctoral research here and later a post-doctoral study; both on the nitrogen cycling in our oak woodlands. Jean is now a Professor at the University of Nebraska, the only state with a unicamel legislative body. (He says it does not necessarily help). Jean and Walter have been doing the annual California Acorn Count and like clockwork, they conducted the count again this year, making it something like 25 years in a row. See what I mean about "long-term"? Walt and Jean also spent a week or so looking at Keith White's 1960's blue oak sites on Hastings. They wanted to resample these woodland stands measured by White in the 1960's to see if any saplings are new. It turns out that blue oak saplings in the grass, only a couple of feet tall, are older than Walt or Jean. Thus, it takes maybe hundreds of years to see the blue oak saplings becom small trees. Frustrated by the format of the 1960's data, about all we can say is that the stands look about the same. Walt and Jean (well, mostly Jean) decided that we need to individually tag about 1,000 small oaks on Poison Oak Hill so that in 40 years or so the next generation of Hastings folks can go back and see how slowly indeed the blue oaks grow. For now, it looks like there are as many small (reproducing?) oaks in the grassy layer of the blue oak woodlands as there were in the 1960s. Without individually marked trees though, we can't really say. So, we now are in the process of trying to find the funds to hire a field assistant who would live at Hastings for a few months and do this work for future generations. Anyone out there have about $2,000 to fund such an investment into the future understanding of our blue oak forests? Contact Mark Stromberg.