Cross Country Canopy Climbing

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let everyone know about a new blog that I'll be starting called Cross Country Canopy Climbing. I invite everyone to comment and get involved. Please read the manifesto below;

Cross Country Canopy Climbing

This is a manifesto of what will, I’m sure, take shape over the coming months. In its most embryonic state the concept is to use cross country canopy climbing to demonstrate the importance of contiguous habitat as well as spatial canopy architecture for movement within a canopial ecosystem. The inspiration came to me, in part, by someone in my local community, Patrick Hickey http://uscnews.sc.edu/2007/NURS022.html . Patrick is a professor of nursing at the University of South Carolina who has brought awareness to the nursing profession by climbing the highest peaks of all seven continents.
I’m adamant that positive social change comes through action. In a time when humanity’s insatiable need for progress is resulting in untold loss in life supporting capital, we need actively engaged, critical thinking citizens. There is an urgent need for emancipatory science, one that is democratic and engages all citizens. In March, 2013, I was lucky enough, as a teacher, to be involved in outreach education at the Nature Research Centre in Raleigh, NC. There I worked under Dr Meg Lowman (AKA “Canopy Meg) who is a world renowned canopy researcher. In one of her books, “It’s a jungle up there” she writes about a career changing epiphany. She realized long ago that while all the research data was being collected, coalesced, and lining the walls of ivory towers thousands upon thousands of species were being lost forever!!
Another point that I found savory in “Its a jungle up there” was Dr. Lowman’s involvement in Biosphere 1 and 2, which tried to replicate planetary biomes within a dome located in the Arizona desert. Even though systems failed, Dr. Lowman put an interesting spin on the experiment. The fact that it cost tens of millions of dollars to fund, gives us some idea what it would cost if we were to commodify the life sustaining capital of our planet. Oddly enough, we’ve already started doing exactly that with bottled water and oxygen bars. To what extent are we willing to pay for sustaining life? Sadly some only take notice when it starts coming out of our pockets.
I’m reminded that not every experiment in science needs to be a successful one in order for it to be a learning experience. Some of the greatest discoveries were revealed by “an apple dropping on our heads”. The extent to which cross country canopy climbing can be done is limited I’m sure. Depending on the type of canopy, the contiguity of the forest and the climbing community base, traverses may be one or two trees in a day or kilometers over several days. I’m optimistic given the fact that a sustained traverse has already been carried out by “Treeverse” http://ascendingthegiants.com/homepage/treeverse.html. The experience gained from this I hope will be a valuable resource for anyone who is involved in Cross Country Canopy Climbing. Rather than a one off event I hope that Cross Country Canopy Climbing can enlist the climbing community to become engaged citizen scientists. Like any citizen science project the goal should be to make science democratic and palpable to everyone. Tracking individual progress at various sites will be available to everyone and is just one more tool for teachers in educational settings. In combination with GIS mapping the information gives a more intimate look at canopies than one would get with just satellite images. Over time I hope the drive to expand canopy climbing may provide the impetus to protect and promote canopy corridors.

Thank you.

Do you have an address for the blog yet? Did not see a link in the announcement.

Thanks,

Tony

Hi Tony,

My apologies for not responding earlier. I've been without internet access for a couple of weeks. I've been building a timber frame house in a remote area and tried using my cell phone as a hot spot to no avail.
I'll have a blog spot up and running this weekend. It will have more details about Cross Country Canopy Climbing and share a little bit more information about moi.
I hope to work with other people in the tree climbing community who are already engaged in citizen science projects and people who have carried out sustained traverses. If I was able press fast forward, I envision a place where canopy climbers can log and keep track of canopy traverses across the continent on a daily basis, in addition to organized tree climbing events.

Ian

Ian,
No worries and sounds good!

Tony

Rather than creating a blog for XCountry Canopy Climbing I thought there would be more dialogue by creating a Facebook group. It would extend beyond the tree climbing community. I have many teaching colleagues that jump at the opportunity to use citizen science project in their classroom. As students do the tracking they feel involved and science is more tangible.

The link to the FB group is https://www.facebook.com/groups/535960789803021/
or just search XCountry Canopy Climbing and friend request.
Or just put your name here and I will add you to the group. I know we have a lot of work to do here but please keep the discussion going on the FB group because I feel interested people outside the tree climbing community would like to be involved.

Tony are you on FB?

Ian

Ian,

I am on Facebook. Seems to be requirement to be able to communicate with the nieces and nephews, not to mention a few friends, who ironically I see fairly often!

Please add me to the FB page.

Thanx,

Tony

Hey Tony. How do I find you on Face Book?

Can anyone help put me in touch with the people who created Treeverse?

Sorry I haven't had much news about Xcountry Canopy Climbing. I've been swamped with timber frame work.


I hope everyone is having a great summer!

Ian

I want to be clear that in creating the Face Book group Xcountry Canopy Climbing the intention is not to invite everyone into the canopy and carry out technical rigging. Traversing in the canopy let alone ascending into the canopy should only be carried out by experienced and competent tree climbers. The intent is to create dialog surrounding a citizen science project where experienced climbers can personally log there arbonautical treks. Alternatively, people, students, engaged citizens can track climbers from the ground and post the information to an online database.
I'm fairly novice when it comes to creating a website, but the idea is to partner with some GISers so that spatial data can be correlated and mapped. Anyone out there with GIS experience?



For anyone who has read "The Wild Trees" by R. Preston I find enormous inspiration in the following quote... "Sillett understood what he was seeing. It was full, three dimensional movement of the human body through tree space, movement across and through the high canopy- pure magic in the canopy, and it took his breath away. "

Check out this website called Rink Watch (http://www.rinkwatch.org/). I've contacted the people who created this site for advice on how to proceed with spatially recording canopy climbing via a website. This citizen science project is very much how I envision treating XCountry Canopy Climbing. I'm not sure how Rink Watch is using their data, however, after a period of time I also envision mining the data to look for relationships between trends in land use as well as climate change.