1 00:00:05,280 --> 00:00:06,780 Hello everyone. 2 00:00:06,780 --> 00:00:08,070 My name's Joshua Benes. 3 00:00:08,070 --> 00:00:10,560 I'm the assistant Director for the 4 00:00:10,560 --> 00:00:13,950 proposed Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center. 5 00:00:13,950 --> 00:00:18,240 I started in my role about a year ago planning a biological 6 00:00:18,240 --> 00:00:19,590 field station on Mount Mansfield 7 00:00:19,590 --> 00:00:21,420 in the abandoned telecommunications building 8 00:00:21,420 --> 00:00:22,500 that's on the mountain. 9 00:00:22,500 --> 00:00:24,840 It's something that's been kind of in the planning stages 10 00:00:24,840 --> 00:00:26,787 for about a decade now, 11 00:00:26,787 --> 00:00:30,300 and I'm hopefully gonna have some more traction 12 00:00:30,300 --> 00:00:31,770 and more updates about that soon. 13 00:00:31,770 --> 00:00:33,300 If you wanna talk to me about 14 00:00:33,300 --> 00:00:34,770 the Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center, 15 00:00:34,770 --> 00:00:37,980 I do have a poster in the poster session right after this. 16 00:00:37,980 --> 00:00:41,310 I'm happy to give you more details about my work 17 00:00:41,310 --> 00:00:43,200 and what I'm planning. 18 00:00:43,200 --> 00:00:46,350 This session is a lot more bigger picture thinking about 19 00:00:46,350 --> 00:00:48,690 the whole region and mountain science 20 00:00:48,690 --> 00:00:51,393 and stewardship networks throughout the Northeast, 21 00:00:53,681 --> 00:00:55,770 and I have been kind of thinking about 22 00:00:55,770 --> 00:00:57,570 this idea since I started my role 23 00:00:57,570 --> 00:01:00,150 of forming a regional group of mountain observatories 24 00:01:00,150 --> 00:01:02,760 for climate change monitoring and research. 25 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:07,760 And in October, I had the privilege of connecting 26 00:01:07,770 --> 00:01:10,890 with Nat Scrimshaw at 27 00:01:10,890 --> 00:01:13,050 this Northeast Alpine Stewardship Gathering 28 00:01:13,050 --> 00:01:15,450 that was in Crass Ferry, Vermont. 29 00:01:15,450 --> 00:01:17,280 And Nat has kind of been visioning 30 00:01:17,280 --> 00:01:20,040 this regional stewardship network 31 00:01:20,040 --> 00:01:21,780 that would focus on alpine areas called 32 00:01:21,780 --> 00:01:24,540 the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Center. 33 00:01:24,540 --> 00:01:29,430 And so Nat is in the virtual realm and I am here in person. 34 00:01:29,430 --> 00:01:31,860 And so I wanted to give Nat just a brief opportunity 35 00:01:31,860 --> 00:01:36,300 to introduce himself before we move forward. 36 00:01:36,300 --> 00:01:37,413 So, Nat, go ahead. 37 00:01:39,810 --> 00:01:41,250 Sure. 38 00:01:41,250 --> 00:01:43,710 Well, I tend to wear a number of hats. 39 00:01:43,710 --> 00:01:46,143 You can see I have my long trail hat on now. 40 00:01:47,340 --> 00:01:51,000 I'm also very locally in the White Mountains. 41 00:01:51,000 --> 00:01:55,260 I've been the trail adopter on Franconia Ridge 42 00:01:55,260 --> 00:01:56,790 for the last 18 years, 43 00:01:56,790 --> 00:01:58,830 part of the Appalachian Mountain Club, 44 00:01:58,830 --> 00:02:00,333 Adopt a Trail program. 45 00:02:01,410 --> 00:02:03,540 In my work, 46 00:02:03,540 --> 00:02:07,440 I work with the World Trails Network Hub for the Americas. 47 00:02:07,440 --> 00:02:10,890 And just to give a brief introduction as to what that is, 48 00:02:10,890 --> 00:02:15,480 the World Trails Network is an international organization 49 00:02:15,480 --> 00:02:19,260 that represents trail locations 50 00:02:19,260 --> 00:02:21,420 and organizations around the world. 51 00:02:21,420 --> 00:02:24,660 It has its offices in Geneva, Switzerland, 52 00:02:24,660 --> 00:02:27,900 and the hub for the Americas is a regional affiliate 53 00:02:27,900 --> 00:02:31,230 that works in South Central and North America 54 00:02:31,230 --> 00:02:32,850 and the Caribbean, 55 00:02:32,850 --> 00:02:35,310 and we have our offices in Campton, New Hampshire, 56 00:02:35,310 --> 00:02:38,670 and we have programs in the White Mountains. 57 00:02:38,670 --> 00:02:42,600 So as Josh was mentioning, 58 00:02:42,600 --> 00:02:44,850 one of the projects that we have, 59 00:02:44,850 --> 00:02:48,540 we're partnership builders, network builders, 60 00:02:48,540 --> 00:02:50,700 and for the last year, 61 00:02:50,700 --> 00:02:55,700 we've been discussing creating a Alpine Stewardship Center, 62 00:02:56,430 --> 00:02:59,850 which really is a network, 63 00:02:59,850 --> 00:03:00,683 and that's part of 64 00:03:00,683 --> 00:03:02,760 what I'll be talking about a little later. 65 00:03:04,860 --> 00:03:06,720 Awesome, Thanks Nat. 66 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:10,680 So this session will be interactive 67 00:03:10,680 --> 00:03:11,880 and this is the first time 68 00:03:11,880 --> 00:03:16,880 I'm have kind of this interactive brainstorming software 69 00:03:16,980 --> 00:03:17,813 that I'm using. 70 00:03:17,813 --> 00:03:19,110 So I'm hoping that you all will bear with me 71 00:03:19,110 --> 00:03:21,150 and hopefully this works for all of us. 72 00:03:21,150 --> 00:03:24,540 But I do have QR codes around the room here in person. 73 00:03:24,540 --> 00:03:26,550 And for those of you in the virtual environment, 74 00:03:26,550 --> 00:03:28,530 you should be able to scan this QR code 75 00:03:28,530 --> 00:03:33,530 or go to ahaslides.com/FEMC, 76 00:03:34,110 --> 00:03:38,280 and you should be able to get to this poll. 77 00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:42,780 So just start things moving 78 00:03:42,780 --> 00:03:46,740 and some kind of ice breakers here. 79 00:03:46,740 --> 00:03:51,090 Just kind of curious what mountain range people 80 00:03:51,090 --> 00:03:55,851 do research, monitoring, or stewardship activities on. 81 00:03:55,851 --> 00:03:57,840 I have the QR code off here to the side as well, 82 00:03:57,840 --> 00:03:59,430 if you need that. 83 00:03:59,430 --> 00:04:02,430 But you should be able to interact 84 00:04:02,430 --> 00:04:06,690 and add your mountain range, 85 00:04:06,690 --> 00:04:10,170 or if you don't do research on mountains, 86 00:04:10,170 --> 00:04:12,970 or monitoring or stewardship, you can put none or other. 87 00:04:22,750 --> 00:04:25,380 And you should be able to select multiple mountain ranges 88 00:04:25,380 --> 00:04:27,633 if you do work in multiple mountain ranges. 89 00:04:30,510 --> 00:04:32,673 Just give another few seconds here. 90 00:04:35,160 --> 00:04:36,750 Okay, very interesting. 91 00:04:36,750 --> 00:04:37,890 So it looks like we have, 92 00:04:37,890 --> 00:04:39,270 most of the participants are involved 93 00:04:39,270 --> 00:04:42,030 in some type of monitoring, researchers, stewardship 94 00:04:42,030 --> 00:04:43,590 in the Green Mountains, 95 00:04:43,590 --> 00:04:45,640 White Mountains are not too far behind 96 00:04:47,610 --> 00:04:50,220 and Adirondacks looks like it's in third place. 97 00:04:50,220 --> 00:04:55,088 So interesting to see our audience here. 98 00:04:55,088 --> 00:04:58,407 Next question I have for everyone is... 99 00:04:58,407 --> 00:04:59,550 And this can be, you know, 100 00:04:59,550 --> 00:05:03,240 just a place that you recreate or you hike. 101 00:05:03,240 --> 00:05:05,196 It doesn't need to be, you know, 102 00:05:05,196 --> 00:05:07,890 a place that you necessarily do research, but it could be. 103 00:05:07,890 --> 00:05:09,870 But what's your favorite mountain in the Northeast? 104 00:05:09,870 --> 00:05:12,960 And if you see your mountain already pop up, 105 00:05:12,960 --> 00:05:14,640 you don't necessarily have to add it up again, 106 00:05:14,640 --> 00:05:17,940 because we're gonna do a vote and then a result at the end. 107 00:05:17,940 --> 00:05:22,473 So just kind of seeing how this software works for everyone. 108 00:05:28,260 --> 00:05:30,180 I see some participants are still typing, 109 00:05:30,180 --> 00:05:32,403 so we'll give just a little bit more time. 110 00:05:38,640 --> 00:05:39,990 I see a second Camel's Hump, 111 00:05:39,990 --> 00:05:43,173 so I'm just gonna x out one of the Camel's Humps. 112 00:05:51,300 --> 00:05:54,570 Okay, we're gonna move on to voting now. 113 00:05:54,570 --> 00:05:57,993 So please vote for your favorite mountain. 114 00:06:03,453 --> 00:06:06,333 Okay and we'll hit next result. 115 00:06:07,620 --> 00:06:10,440 So Camel's Hump gets number one, 116 00:06:10,440 --> 00:06:13,590 White Face in Mount Washington shortly behind, 117 00:06:13,590 --> 00:06:16,260 so, well that's exciting. 118 00:06:16,260 --> 00:06:17,487 So it seems like the software is working well. 119 00:06:17,487 --> 00:06:19,350 And so this last question before we kind of 120 00:06:19,350 --> 00:06:20,970 go onto the main presentation, 121 00:06:20,970 --> 00:06:23,790 what area are you most interested in? 122 00:06:23,790 --> 00:06:25,680 Just kind of gauging the group, 123 00:06:25,680 --> 00:06:27,630 if you're more interested in research and monitoring 124 00:06:27,630 --> 00:06:30,153 or stewardship, outreach and education. 125 00:06:35,550 --> 00:06:37,110 Based off of the nature of the conference, 126 00:06:37,110 --> 00:06:38,460 I was thinking that we'd have more 127 00:06:38,460 --> 00:06:43,460 of a research and monitoring community here, 128 00:06:43,830 --> 00:06:48,480 but it's about 75, 25 or so, 129 00:06:48,480 --> 00:06:52,143 so very interesting. 130 00:06:54,660 --> 00:06:55,493 Great. 131 00:06:56,490 --> 00:06:57,930 Well there we go. 132 00:06:57,930 --> 00:07:01,950 So we'll kind of work with this interactive polling 133 00:07:01,950 --> 00:07:04,320 a little bit more toward the later part of the presentation. 134 00:07:04,320 --> 00:07:07,020 We'll also have one short breakout, 135 00:07:07,020 --> 00:07:11,073 but great to see that that's working well for all of us. 136 00:07:12,180 --> 00:07:14,520 So today's working session, 137 00:07:14,520 --> 00:07:16,650 I'm gonna begin kind of giving 138 00:07:16,650 --> 00:07:19,320 some summarizing opportunities for developing 139 00:07:19,320 --> 00:07:22,830 a regional mountain and research network in the Northeast. 140 00:07:22,830 --> 00:07:26,880 I will then turn it over to Nat and he will discuss 141 00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:29,370 the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Center 142 00:07:29,370 --> 00:07:30,480 and some of the networking 143 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:32,190 that he's trying to build around stewardship 144 00:07:32,190 --> 00:07:33,450 in the northeast. 145 00:07:33,450 --> 00:07:35,820 And then we'll kind of break out into dialogue 146 00:07:35,820 --> 00:07:38,340 and idea sharing here in the group. 147 00:07:38,340 --> 00:07:40,260 We'll kind of break out in to small groups. 148 00:07:40,260 --> 00:07:42,930 The online group will break out separately. 149 00:07:42,930 --> 00:07:46,500 Nat we'll facilitate that and then we'll kind of come back 150 00:07:46,500 --> 00:07:48,390 in the end and I'll have using 151 00:07:48,390 --> 00:07:49,620 the interactive software again 152 00:07:49,620 --> 00:07:51,870 to kind of explore some of the questions 153 00:07:51,870 --> 00:07:55,083 that I asked during the breakout sessions. 154 00:07:56,340 --> 00:07:59,760 One thing that I wanted to note here as well is that 155 00:07:59,760 --> 00:08:01,830 I'm fairly new to my role here. 156 00:08:01,830 --> 00:08:05,070 I've been planning this field station Mount Mansfield 157 00:08:05,070 --> 00:08:06,180 for about a year. 158 00:08:06,180 --> 00:08:08,700 And so I'm really excited to connect with 159 00:08:08,700 --> 00:08:10,350 the broader community here as well 160 00:08:10,350 --> 00:08:13,530 and learn about some of the in-depth experience 161 00:08:13,530 --> 00:08:16,260 all of you have with science and monitoring 162 00:08:16,260 --> 00:08:19,233 and research and stewardship on Mountain peaks, 163 00:08:20,850 --> 00:08:24,780 and I'm interested to learn a lot from all of you. 164 00:08:24,780 --> 00:08:28,470 We do kind of have this hybrid environment 165 00:08:28,470 --> 00:08:29,940 that we're working in now, 166 00:08:29,940 --> 00:08:33,240 so I hope that it's gonna be a good experience for everyone. 167 00:08:33,240 --> 00:08:35,040 You know, I'm kind of approaching things 168 00:08:35,040 --> 00:08:36,927 from more science and monitoring end of things, 169 00:08:36,927 --> 00:08:38,820 and I'm here in person here, 170 00:08:38,820 --> 00:08:41,280 Nat is in the virtual environment. 171 00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:46,170 And so during the dialogue and idea sharing phase, 172 00:08:46,170 --> 00:08:48,450 he comes from things from the stewardship side. 173 00:08:48,450 --> 00:08:50,850 But I hope that there's enough people with the monitoring 174 00:08:50,850 --> 00:08:53,880 and research interests that are in the virtual environment 175 00:08:53,880 --> 00:08:55,380 that can kind of help pick up 176 00:08:55,380 --> 00:08:57,630 that piece of the conversation, 177 00:08:57,630 --> 00:09:00,000 and we can all have a good dialogue 178 00:09:00,000 --> 00:09:02,220 and get some great ideas from all of you 179 00:09:02,220 --> 00:09:04,653 about ideas to move forward. 180 00:09:05,520 --> 00:09:08,853 So I'm really thrilled to have this opportunity, 181 00:09:10,093 --> 00:09:11,610 at the FEMC conference. 182 00:09:11,610 --> 00:09:14,490 FEMC's number one goal is to contribute 183 00:09:14,490 --> 00:09:16,500 to the efficient coordination, 184 00:09:16,500 --> 00:09:18,900 of multi-disciplinary environmental monitoring 185 00:09:18,900 --> 00:09:21,990 and research activities among existing efforts, 186 00:09:21,990 --> 00:09:23,880 and institutions with common interests, 187 00:09:23,880 --> 00:09:26,190 and long-term understanding management 188 00:09:26,190 --> 00:09:28,560 or protection of force ecosystems. 189 00:09:28,560 --> 00:09:31,470 And I think building these types of networks 190 00:09:31,470 --> 00:09:35,771 that engage researchers and engage the public 191 00:09:35,771 --> 00:09:39,870 are kind of at the core of building the infrastructure 192 00:09:39,870 --> 00:09:44,820 that really ensures that the research and monitoring 193 00:09:44,820 --> 00:09:45,870 and stewardship that we're doing, 194 00:09:45,870 --> 00:09:48,900 that it can maximize the impact that it really has 195 00:09:48,900 --> 00:09:52,653 on our land and in this case on our mountain systems. 196 00:09:53,700 --> 00:09:57,480 And so this is not the first time, 197 00:09:57,480 --> 00:10:01,680 this idea of forming a regional network 198 00:10:01,680 --> 00:10:04,650 around alpine environments has been explored. 199 00:10:04,650 --> 00:10:09,450 A 2013 paper by Papers At All summarized the results 200 00:10:09,450 --> 00:10:14,000 of a workshop that was held in April, 2011. 201 00:10:14,000 --> 00:10:18,120 39 researchers from all around the region were involved 202 00:10:18,120 --> 00:10:20,670 in alpine research, attended this workshop, 203 00:10:20,670 --> 00:10:23,910 and a survey was later sent to the researchers. 204 00:10:23,910 --> 00:10:25,710 25 of them responded, 205 00:10:25,710 --> 00:10:28,590 and researchers showed strong support for the creation 206 00:10:28,590 --> 00:10:32,580 of a network of long-term alpine monitoring sites, 207 00:10:32,580 --> 00:10:36,360 where a standardized protocol would be used to collect data 208 00:10:36,360 --> 00:10:40,080 on biotic and abiotic parameters. 209 00:10:40,080 --> 00:10:42,780 Out of the workshop and this follow up survey, 210 00:10:42,780 --> 00:10:46,080 there were six priority areas of research 211 00:10:46,080 --> 00:10:47,730 that were identified. 212 00:10:47,730 --> 00:10:49,680 The first was focusing on snow cover 213 00:10:49,680 --> 00:10:51,420 and timing of snow melt. 214 00:10:51,420 --> 00:10:53,490 Second was monitoring tree lines. 215 00:10:53,490 --> 00:10:58,050 Three was change in woody species, four plant surveys, 216 00:10:58,050 --> 00:11:02,790 five, variation in weather and six was changes in phonology. 217 00:11:02,790 --> 00:11:06,930 And so, you know, this group, you know, 218 00:11:06,930 --> 00:11:10,410 kind of outlined a lot of priorities for research 219 00:11:10,410 --> 00:11:12,480 in alpine areas throughout the region 220 00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:14,070 and really expressed interest 221 00:11:14,070 --> 00:11:16,023 in forming some type of network. 222 00:11:16,890 --> 00:11:19,920 Then flash forward to 2016, 223 00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:21,870 there was planning associated with the field station 224 00:11:21,870 --> 00:11:23,040 that I'm planning, 225 00:11:23,040 --> 00:11:25,050 the Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center 226 00:11:25,050 --> 00:11:27,300 out of the grant that was awarded through 227 00:11:27,300 --> 00:11:29,460 the National Science Foundation. 228 00:11:29,460 --> 00:11:30,690 The University of Vermont held 229 00:11:30,690 --> 00:11:32,690 a Northeast Mountain Science conference 230 00:11:32,690 --> 00:11:35,700 that was in 2016, that had a number 231 00:11:35,700 --> 00:11:39,420 of different goals associated with the conference. 232 00:11:39,420 --> 00:11:41,670 Researchers from all around the region came together 233 00:11:41,670 --> 00:11:44,160 and were talking about ideas related 234 00:11:44,160 --> 00:11:46,890 to forming collaborative networks 235 00:11:46,890 --> 00:11:50,100 and working together for research throughout the Northeast. 236 00:11:50,100 --> 00:11:52,200 And it concluded with a organization 237 00:11:52,200 --> 00:11:54,660 of biological field station site visit 238 00:11:54,660 --> 00:11:58,523 for the Mountain Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center. 239 00:11:58,523 --> 00:12:02,773 And the kind of foundation and the ideas of forming 240 00:12:04,896 --> 00:12:06,960 the Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center 241 00:12:06,960 --> 00:12:10,680 were all kind of put together back 2015, 2016 range, 242 00:12:10,680 --> 00:12:12,780 but the funding for the field station 243 00:12:12,780 --> 00:12:15,445 didn't really come until 2020. 244 00:12:15,445 --> 00:12:16,710 And so there was kind of this period 245 00:12:16,710 --> 00:12:18,087 of lag time where, you know, 246 00:12:18,087 --> 00:12:21,270 the University of Vermont kind of brought up these ideas 247 00:12:21,270 --> 00:12:23,940 and started engaging with a larger community 248 00:12:23,940 --> 00:12:26,850 about forming a regional network. 249 00:12:26,850 --> 00:12:29,250 But the funding wasn't there until 250 00:12:29,250 --> 00:12:30,750 a few years later down the line. 251 00:12:30,750 --> 00:12:33,090 So I'm kind of now in the role of wanting 252 00:12:33,090 --> 00:12:35,160 to pick up this conversation again 253 00:12:35,160 --> 00:12:38,250 and bring it forward and really kind of connect 254 00:12:38,250 --> 00:12:41,220 with the broader community and think about the needs 255 00:12:41,220 --> 00:12:46,220 for a regional network for mountain monitoring and research. 256 00:12:48,180 --> 00:12:50,640 And so where I've personally picked it up 257 00:12:50,640 --> 00:12:52,380 inside some of the planning documents 258 00:12:52,380 --> 00:12:54,270 for the Mount Mansfield Science and Search of Center 259 00:12:54,270 --> 00:12:56,670 was to develop a network between 260 00:12:56,670 --> 00:12:58,770 the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center 261 00:12:58,770 --> 00:13:00,600 on Whiteface Mountain New York, 262 00:13:00,600 --> 00:13:03,480 and the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire. 263 00:13:03,480 --> 00:13:06,660 And the idea was to form a network of mountain observatories 264 00:13:06,660 --> 00:13:10,950 for climate change monitoring and research in the Northeast. 265 00:13:10,950 --> 00:13:13,560 So earlier this year, back in January, 266 00:13:13,560 --> 00:13:15,270 I established connections with staff 267 00:13:15,270 --> 00:13:16,787 at the Mount Washington Observatory 268 00:13:16,787 --> 00:13:19,200 in the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, 269 00:13:19,200 --> 00:13:22,050 and we started meeting monthly over Microsoft teams 270 00:13:22,050 --> 00:13:24,720 and just sharing ideas and thinking about strategies 271 00:13:24,720 --> 00:13:28,110 of where we could collaborate and work with one another. 272 00:13:28,110 --> 00:13:30,630 We met with the National Weather Service that kind 273 00:13:30,630 --> 00:13:32,640 of encouraged us to look at this idea 274 00:13:32,640 --> 00:13:34,440 of having different weather stations 275 00:13:34,440 --> 00:13:36,090 at different elevational gradients 276 00:13:36,090 --> 00:13:37,830 on each of our mountains and have some type 277 00:13:37,830 --> 00:13:40,560 of collaborative network where we would work together 278 00:13:40,560 --> 00:13:44,250 for monitoring on the three of our different mountains. 279 00:13:44,250 --> 00:13:46,830 And this discussion made me think about 280 00:13:46,830 --> 00:13:48,420 the work that Jamie Shaley does 281 00:13:48,420 --> 00:13:50,100 at the US Geological Survey over 282 00:13:50,100 --> 00:13:52,500 at Sleepers River Research watershed. 283 00:13:52,500 --> 00:13:55,140 He has a much smaller mountain, it's the hills, 284 00:13:55,140 --> 00:13:59,250 it's the Kittridge Hills, but his kind of experience 285 00:13:59,250 --> 00:14:00,660 and having monitoring stations 286 00:14:00,660 --> 00:14:03,780 at different elevations inside this watershed, 287 00:14:03,780 --> 00:14:06,300 kind of our group decided to invite him 288 00:14:06,300 --> 00:14:08,850 into this conversation and think about 289 00:14:08,850 --> 00:14:10,620 how we could kind of participate 290 00:14:10,620 --> 00:14:12,933 and work together at a regional level. 291 00:14:13,830 --> 00:14:18,030 And so I just wanted to kind of dig in briefly 292 00:14:18,030 --> 00:14:19,800 to each of our individual stations 293 00:14:19,800 --> 00:14:24,030 and kind of the overarching work 294 00:14:24,030 --> 00:14:26,370 that each of these stations does. 295 00:14:26,370 --> 00:14:29,520 Paul Casson with a ASRC is here today. 296 00:14:29,520 --> 00:14:30,970 So Paul, feel free to step up 297 00:14:32,520 --> 00:14:35,580 and give a brief introduction about yourself. 298 00:14:35,580 --> 00:14:38,310 And you can either go through a brief overview of this 299 00:14:38,310 --> 00:14:39,630 or I can go through it as well, 300 00:14:39,630 --> 00:14:44,040 so please introduce yourself. 301 00:14:44,040 --> 00:14:45,450 [Paul] So I'm Paul Casson, 302 00:14:45,450 --> 00:14:47,910 I'm the operations manager at Whiteface Mountain. 303 00:14:47,910 --> 00:14:49,800 I work for SUNY Albany. 304 00:14:49,800 --> 00:14:52,740 So we've been there since 1961, 305 00:14:52,740 --> 00:14:56,100 Summit Observatory has been there since 1970. 306 00:14:56,100 --> 00:14:57,870 So Josh reached out to me, 307 00:14:57,870 --> 00:15:00,030 I actually went to that meeting in 2016. 308 00:15:01,620 --> 00:15:03,900 I thought the idea had kind of perished (Paul laughing) 309 00:15:03,900 --> 00:15:07,500 in the interim. I didn't realize that it was still a alive, 310 00:15:07,500 --> 00:15:12,090 but there's a lot of parallels to to our missions here, 311 00:15:12,090 --> 00:15:14,220 and I'm really on board with the idea 312 00:15:14,220 --> 00:15:18,360 of standardized sensor networks between 313 00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:19,770 these mountain top observatories. 314 00:15:19,770 --> 00:15:23,310 We all are collecting data often in different ways. 315 00:15:23,310 --> 00:15:26,850 Max men, hourly averages, one minute averages, 316 00:15:26,850 --> 00:15:27,683 what have you. 317 00:15:27,683 --> 00:15:30,510 So just having that kind of SLP 318 00:15:30,510 --> 00:15:31,950 that brings us all together 319 00:15:31,950 --> 00:15:35,460 and makes these data sets comparable over time, 320 00:15:35,460 --> 00:15:38,040 I think would be a great asset. 321 00:15:38,040 --> 00:15:39,810 A lot of what we've done has been based 322 00:15:39,810 --> 00:15:43,890 on asset deposition research that is kind of fading 323 00:15:43,890 --> 00:15:45,190 into the rear view mirror. 324 00:15:46,275 --> 00:15:49,413 Now we're focusing more on aerosols in clouds, 325 00:15:50,880 --> 00:15:52,800 organic acids in clouds, 326 00:15:52,800 --> 00:15:55,893 PFAS measurements and precipitation in cloud water, 327 00:15:57,090 --> 00:16:01,050 so there's a lot of future work to do. 328 00:16:01,050 --> 00:16:02,280 We just gotta find the money 329 00:16:02,280 --> 00:16:05,280 and I think we're stronger together than separately. 330 00:16:05,280 --> 00:16:07,410 So I appreciate the opportunity. 331 00:16:07,410 --> 00:16:08,243 -Thanks- -Awesome 332 00:16:08,243 --> 00:16:09,076 -Guys. -Thank you so much, Paul. 333 00:16:09,076 --> 00:16:11,790 so yeah, so ASRC is involved in, you know, 334 00:16:11,790 --> 00:16:12,623 all this variety of research. 335 00:16:12,623 --> 00:16:16,620 I had the pleasure of having a site visit back in October. 336 00:16:16,620 --> 00:16:18,200 It's really great to learn about all 337 00:16:18,200 --> 00:16:19,830 of their atmospheric science work 338 00:16:19,830 --> 00:16:21,900 that's really, really their strength. 339 00:16:21,900 --> 00:16:23,010 But they also, you know, 340 00:16:23,010 --> 00:16:24,230 kind of are working in some 341 00:16:24,230 --> 00:16:26,430 of the biological research sciences as well, 342 00:16:26,430 --> 00:16:29,550 and they've also added this new stream flow monitoring site 343 00:16:29,550 --> 00:16:32,580 on the mountain, which I think is very exciting. 344 00:16:32,580 --> 00:16:34,140 The Mount Mansfield Science and Stewardship Center, 345 00:16:34,140 --> 00:16:35,550 it's not built yet, 346 00:16:35,550 --> 00:16:40,140 we're still kind of working on the infrastructure component, 347 00:16:40,140 --> 00:16:42,600 and there's final pieces that need to happen 348 00:16:42,600 --> 00:16:44,430 before that moves forward. 349 00:16:44,430 --> 00:16:47,820 But we have a long term record of monitoring 350 00:16:47,820 --> 00:16:49,710 the research on Mount Mansfield. 351 00:16:49,710 --> 00:16:52,800 So the idea is that when this field station is built, 352 00:16:52,800 --> 00:16:57,090 there'll be this hub for research monitoring 353 00:16:57,090 --> 00:16:59,370 and stewardship on Mount Mansfield. 354 00:16:59,370 --> 00:17:03,180 And the FDMC has been kind of a central hub 355 00:17:03,180 --> 00:17:07,530 to the monitoring infrastructure on Mount Mansfield. 356 00:17:07,530 --> 00:17:08,640 You can see on this map right here, 357 00:17:08,640 --> 00:17:10,890 there's three key watersheds on the mountain, 358 00:17:11,820 --> 00:17:12,870 Star is where 359 00:17:12,870 --> 00:17:14,910 the proposed Mount Mansfield Sciences Stewardship Center 360 00:17:14,910 --> 00:17:15,990 would be located. 361 00:17:15,990 --> 00:17:20,430 And FDMC is already engaged in a variety 362 00:17:20,430 --> 00:17:22,230 of different monitoring and research 363 00:17:22,230 --> 00:17:24,993 on the mountain and has been for decades already. 364 00:17:26,738 --> 00:17:28,890 And the Vermont Center for Eco Studies 365 00:17:28,890 --> 00:17:33,360 is involved with alpine bird monitoring on the mountains 366 00:17:33,360 --> 00:17:35,790 kind of Mount Mansfield is a central location 367 00:17:35,790 --> 00:17:38,760 for their monitoring and research, 368 00:17:38,760 --> 00:17:42,630 namely on the Bicknell Thrush on Mount Mansfield 369 00:17:42,630 --> 00:17:45,540 and also Mount Mansfield's new place 370 00:17:45,540 --> 00:17:47,630 for this new Summit to Shore project 371 00:17:47,630 --> 00:17:49,263 at the University of Vermont. 372 00:17:50,100 --> 00:17:54,060 This project is called the Cold Weather Summit to Shore 373 00:17:54,060 --> 00:17:55,980 Environmental Observation Network. 374 00:17:55,980 --> 00:18:00,150 Dr. Arne Bomblies is the PI of this project, 375 00:18:00,150 --> 00:18:02,730 and Dr. Beverley Wemple is the co-pi. 376 00:18:02,730 --> 00:18:05,070 And there's all of these new weather stations 377 00:18:05,070 --> 00:18:07,830 that are added on Mount Mansfield 378 00:18:07,830 --> 00:18:11,040 as a result of this project, which is really exciting. 379 00:18:11,040 --> 00:18:14,160 Each station has three solar radiation sensors, 380 00:18:14,160 --> 00:18:17,640 short wave and long wave apogee, 381 00:18:17,640 --> 00:18:21,120 two sonic snow depth sensors, meteorological platform 382 00:18:21,120 --> 00:18:23,430 that includes temperature, relative humidity, 383 00:18:23,430 --> 00:18:26,400 wind speed and direction precipitation, 384 00:18:26,400 --> 00:18:30,750 two snow pack temperature ladders, a soil heat flux plate, 385 00:18:30,750 --> 00:18:32,670 and soil moisture and temperature sensors 386 00:18:32,670 --> 00:18:35,250 at 5, 10 and 30 centimeters. 387 00:18:35,250 --> 00:18:37,830 And on top of the mountain as well, 388 00:18:37,830 --> 00:18:41,490 they have a snow scale and snow pack analyzer 389 00:18:41,490 --> 00:18:42,600 that's not too far away 390 00:18:42,600 --> 00:18:46,510 from a very long-term snow record 391 00:18:49,271 --> 00:18:52,950 that has been recorded for decades. 392 00:18:52,950 --> 00:18:56,760 So a really exciting project and a lot of new infrastructure 393 00:18:56,760 --> 00:18:59,100 going in on Mount Mansfield. 394 00:18:59,100 --> 00:19:02,793 Kittredge Hills, Jamie Chanley is at a conference, 395 00:19:04,350 --> 00:19:06,090 so another conference elsewhere, 396 00:19:06,090 --> 00:19:08,220 so he wasn't able to attend today, 397 00:19:08,220 --> 00:19:11,190 but they do long-term hydrology research 398 00:19:11,190 --> 00:19:12,480 is what they're really well known for. 399 00:19:12,480 --> 00:19:14,580 They've been doing it since 1959. 400 00:19:14,580 --> 00:19:16,680 They work on stream system research, 401 00:19:16,680 --> 00:19:19,470 dissolved organic matter, nutrient fluxes. 402 00:19:19,470 --> 00:19:22,200 They are also part of this new Summit to Shore project, 403 00:19:22,200 --> 00:19:27,200 so they're kind of part of this research project 404 00:19:27,390 --> 00:19:28,980 at the University of Vermont, 405 00:19:28,980 --> 00:19:33,033 and they also have long-term forest research plots. 406 00:19:34,080 --> 00:19:36,330 Next we have the Mount Washington Observatory. 407 00:19:36,330 --> 00:19:38,550 We do have Jay Broccolo 408 00:19:38,550 --> 00:19:41,190 from Mount Washington Observatory attending virtually. 409 00:19:41,190 --> 00:19:44,100 And Jay, if you cannot mute yourself, 410 00:19:44,100 --> 00:19:46,470 please introduce yourself and feel free 411 00:19:46,470 --> 00:19:49,620 to give a high level overview about 412 00:19:49,620 --> 00:19:51,600 your work at Mount Washington. 413 00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:52,980 Hi thanks Josh, 414 00:19:52,980 --> 00:19:56,280 I really appreciate you having me here and so forth. 415 00:19:56,280 --> 00:19:59,670 But yeah, I'm the director of weather operations 416 00:19:59,670 --> 00:20:01,890 for the Mount Washington Observatory. 417 00:20:01,890 --> 00:20:05,640 I've been there for about four years as an observer 418 00:20:05,640 --> 00:20:08,610 for a period of time and now in this role. 419 00:20:08,610 --> 00:20:10,920 But the observatory has been in operation 420 00:20:10,920 --> 00:20:14,640 on the summit of Mount Washington since 1932, 421 00:20:14,640 --> 00:20:17,400 taking hourly observations, 422 00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:20,430 which started at six hour intervals 423 00:20:20,430 --> 00:20:22,440 and then increased to three hour intervals 424 00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:24,303 and now is done hourly. 425 00:20:25,500 --> 00:20:27,750 And all of that data is fed 426 00:20:27,750 --> 00:20:32,220 to National Weather Service, Gray in Maine, 427 00:20:32,220 --> 00:20:34,260 and we worked with them pretty much 428 00:20:34,260 --> 00:20:36,690 from an observational standpoint. 429 00:20:36,690 --> 00:20:39,780 We also started introducing a Mesonet system 430 00:20:39,780 --> 00:20:42,663 throughout the White Mountains in the early 2000's, 431 00:20:43,530 --> 00:20:47,880 so that has really been progressing. 432 00:20:47,880 --> 00:20:49,260 Actually in the next couple of years, 433 00:20:49,260 --> 00:20:52,590 we plan on adding 5 to 10 and increasing 434 00:20:52,590 --> 00:20:55,113 the sensors on the ones that we do have. 435 00:20:56,430 --> 00:20:58,680 So on different ski mountains, 436 00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:03,510 different state level organizations 437 00:21:03,510 --> 00:21:05,100 like New Hampshire State Parks 438 00:21:05,100 --> 00:21:08,673 who operates Canon and the summit of Mount Washington. 439 00:21:10,740 --> 00:21:14,700 But also we're doing our due diligence with our data. 440 00:21:14,700 --> 00:21:18,480 Currently we're in contract with the University of Delaware, 441 00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:21,090 really making our data more accessible. 442 00:21:21,090 --> 00:21:24,360 Currently we use a SQL system, which is really great, 443 00:21:24,360 --> 00:21:29,190 but we have close to a billion records going back to 1932. 444 00:21:29,190 --> 00:21:30,900 And just to put that into perspective, 445 00:21:30,900 --> 00:21:33,720 University of Delaware operates the Delaware 446 00:21:33,720 --> 00:21:35,280 and they have 2 billion, 447 00:21:35,280 --> 00:21:37,623 so we have a comparable to an entire state. 448 00:21:39,030 --> 00:21:41,370 So it's a lot of data to work with, 449 00:21:41,370 --> 00:21:43,140 but they will be working with us 450 00:21:43,140 --> 00:21:45,630 to make our data shovel ready. 451 00:21:45,630 --> 00:21:49,620 And this is really great opportunity for the observatory 452 00:21:49,620 --> 00:21:51,450 and hopefully for this entire community 453 00:21:51,450 --> 00:21:53,880 because it's been hard for us 454 00:21:53,880 --> 00:21:56,160 to get our data out and usable. 455 00:21:56,160 --> 00:21:58,110 We do do some work with the AMC, 456 00:21:58,110 --> 00:22:02,400 so Sarah it's great to see you here, hi, (Jay laughing) 457 00:22:02,400 --> 00:22:06,960 and that is also a relationship that we're hoping to build, 458 00:22:06,960 --> 00:22:09,300 but also we're really hoping to build a relationship 459 00:22:09,300 --> 00:22:12,480 with everyone here and really have our data accessible 460 00:22:12,480 --> 00:22:17,340 and usable by all these organizations represented here today 461 00:22:17,340 --> 00:22:19,353 and elsewhere and in the future. 462 00:22:20,580 --> 00:22:23,970 But yeah, so the main point of our resonate is really 463 00:22:23,970 --> 00:22:27,750 to operate within the different structures 464 00:22:27,750 --> 00:22:30,210 that operate within the White Mountains 465 00:22:30,210 --> 00:22:34,350 for different forecasts or businesses. 466 00:22:34,350 --> 00:22:36,550 We have one on the east side of the mountain 467 00:22:37,530 --> 00:22:39,420 that Josh has put in this slide, 468 00:22:39,420 --> 00:22:42,660 and then there's a map of the Auto Road 469 00:22:42,660 --> 00:22:45,060 and then some of the local stations, 470 00:22:45,060 --> 00:22:47,823 for example, the wild one is Wildcat Mountain, 471 00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:51,420 which is a relay for a lot of communications 472 00:22:51,420 --> 00:22:53,250 throughout the White Mountain. 473 00:22:53,250 --> 00:22:54,900 But yeah, you can check out our homepage, 474 00:22:54,900 --> 00:22:57,390 you can always see what the weather's doing, 475 00:22:57,390 --> 00:22:58,950 but you know, it's a lot. 476 00:22:58,950 --> 00:23:02,580 We take ten second samples and then they all get averaged 477 00:23:02,580 --> 00:23:04,680 to a one minute and hourly average. 478 00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:09,680 So listening to congruent data mechanisms 479 00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:13,500 would be fantastic, especially in a region. 480 00:23:13,500 --> 00:23:15,060 So very happy to hear that, 481 00:23:15,060 --> 00:23:17,790 and Josh, I'll pass it back to you now. 482 00:23:17,790 --> 00:23:20,640 Awesome, fantastic, thank you so much Jay. 483 00:23:20,640 --> 00:23:23,910 And so overall, you know, our group, you know, 484 00:23:23,910 --> 00:23:25,110 has been meeting monthly. 485 00:23:25,110 --> 00:23:27,390 One of the things that we did was kind of inventory 486 00:23:27,390 --> 00:23:31,470 our different monitoring stations and Mount Washington 487 00:23:31,470 --> 00:23:33,120 is kind of thinking about this idea 488 00:23:33,120 --> 00:23:36,660 of adding instrumentation along the cog railway side, 489 00:23:36,660 --> 00:23:40,092 of their mountain to kind of have an elevational profile 490 00:23:40,092 --> 00:23:43,440 on both the western and eastern side 491 00:23:43,440 --> 00:23:45,930 of their mountain. 492 00:23:45,930 --> 00:23:47,460 Mount Mansfield, you know, with 493 00:23:47,460 --> 00:23:50,850 this new Summit to Shore project we're really well covered. 494 00:23:50,850 --> 00:23:53,790 FDMC also had two weather stations, 495 00:23:53,790 --> 00:23:56,100 they're about 2,900 feet 496 00:23:56,100 --> 00:23:58,020 on the east and west side of Mount Mansfield 497 00:23:58,020 --> 00:24:00,300 that have a long history as well. 498 00:24:00,300 --> 00:24:05,130 And Whiteface Mountain is starting to add new stations 499 00:24:05,130 --> 00:24:09,000 on the Whiteface ski area side of the mountain. 500 00:24:09,000 --> 00:24:14,000 So overall starting to kind of think about 501 00:24:14,520 --> 00:24:16,110 all of our different monitoring stations 502 00:24:16,110 --> 00:24:18,030 and opportunities that we may have 503 00:24:18,030 --> 00:24:19,560 to be able to work together. 504 00:24:19,560 --> 00:24:22,500 All stations have temperature and relative humidity. 505 00:24:22,500 --> 00:24:24,630 Most have wind speed and wind direction 506 00:24:24,630 --> 00:24:26,850 and some have precipitation gauges, 507 00:24:26,850 --> 00:24:30,513 snow depth monitoring and solar radiation. 508 00:24:31,740 --> 00:24:34,770 And you know our group has been kind of thinking 509 00:24:34,770 --> 00:24:37,590 about this idea of a possible coordinated network 510 00:24:37,590 --> 00:24:41,040 of some way and thinking about what that would look like. 511 00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,500 And, you know, what comes to mind for me, you know, 512 00:24:43,500 --> 00:24:47,640 probably because of FDMC's regional involvement 513 00:24:47,640 --> 00:24:51,480 and some of the current networks that currently exist 514 00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:55,800 in the FDMC are being developed within the FDMC. 515 00:24:55,800 --> 00:24:58,260 This includes DEN, the Dendroecological network 516 00:24:58,260 --> 00:25:02,670 that mostly focuses on Dendro, Dendrology 517 00:25:02,670 --> 00:25:04,560 throughout the region. 518 00:25:04,560 --> 00:25:07,470 Northeastern Forest Inventory Network 519 00:25:07,470 --> 00:25:11,190 that Jonna gave a presentation about earlier today. 520 00:25:11,190 --> 00:25:16,050 And FDMC also has this portal of live weather station data 521 00:25:16,050 --> 00:25:17,610 for five different weather stations, 522 00:25:17,610 --> 00:25:21,750 two of which are on Mount Mansfield that's already in place. 523 00:25:21,750 --> 00:25:24,300 So there may be this opportunity to be able 524 00:25:24,300 --> 00:25:26,160 to integrate with FDMC 525 00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:28,740 with some of our monitoring infrastructure, 526 00:25:28,740 --> 00:25:29,573 and it's something that 527 00:25:29,573 --> 00:25:34,410 we're just starting to think about and explore. 528 00:25:35,280 --> 00:25:36,750 This is kind of a loaded figure 529 00:25:36,750 --> 00:25:41,750 and I just kind of wanted to think about the broader picture 530 00:25:42,540 --> 00:25:45,330 of how all these different disciplines 531 00:25:45,330 --> 00:25:47,340 may be able to feed into 532 00:25:47,340 --> 00:25:51,330 a larger observatory network in some way. 533 00:25:51,330 --> 00:25:53,970 What I've been discussing so far has been kinda 534 00:25:53,970 --> 00:25:56,550 this elevation dependent climate change column 535 00:25:56,550 --> 00:25:58,800 where Whiteface, Mount Mansfield, Kittridge 536 00:25:58,800 --> 00:26:00,920 and Mount Washington may be working together 537 00:26:00,920 --> 00:26:04,380 in some capacity to better understand changes 538 00:26:04,380 --> 00:26:06,090 of temperature at different elevations 539 00:26:06,090 --> 00:26:09,870 on each of our mountains and other types of research. 540 00:26:09,870 --> 00:26:11,670 And I'll kind of discuss this idea 541 00:26:11,670 --> 00:26:14,880 of the unified high elevation platform in a moment. 542 00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:17,310 But overall, what I want you to get out 543 00:26:17,310 --> 00:26:18,390 of this figure right now, 544 00:26:18,390 --> 00:26:19,380 and I'll kind of show it again 545 00:26:19,380 --> 00:26:21,140 after I kind of go through some 546 00:26:21,140 --> 00:26:23,910 of these different topics is that, 547 00:26:23,910 --> 00:26:26,040 there's all of these different disciplines, 548 00:26:26,040 --> 00:26:27,570 and all of these different types of research, 549 00:26:27,570 --> 00:26:29,400 that are going on our mountain peaks. 550 00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:33,150 And there may be an opportunity to be able to coordinate, 551 00:26:33,150 --> 00:26:36,180 you know, research that's going on certain topics, 552 00:26:36,180 --> 00:26:39,570 make them more regionally relevant and also 553 00:26:39,570 --> 00:26:41,880 through in coordination be able to make 554 00:26:41,880 --> 00:26:45,723 our research more relevant at a global level as well. 555 00:26:46,651 --> 00:26:49,200 And so the first thing I wanted to explore with all of you 556 00:26:49,200 --> 00:26:50,847 is this initiative that's called 557 00:26:50,847 --> 00:26:54,120 the Mountain Research Initiative out of Switzerland. 558 00:26:54,120 --> 00:26:57,720 And this is an organization committed to forming 559 00:26:57,720 --> 00:27:00,870 an international research coordination network focused 560 00:27:00,870 --> 00:27:04,260 on mountain environments around the world. 561 00:27:04,260 --> 00:27:08,490 And one of their initiatives is called Geo Mountains. 562 00:27:08,490 --> 00:27:10,800 And Geo Mountains contains a number 563 00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:12,990 of different working groups. 564 00:27:12,990 --> 00:27:13,920 One is focused 565 00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:17,910 on elevation dependent climate change or EDCC. 566 00:27:17,910 --> 00:27:20,340 This group is led by Dr. Nick Peppin 567 00:27:20,340 --> 00:27:23,130 with the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom. 568 00:27:23,130 --> 00:27:25,830 And I've been in communications with Dr. Peppin 569 00:27:25,830 --> 00:27:27,480 and virtually participated in a workshop 570 00:27:27,480 --> 00:27:30,030 that he held in Austria in September. 571 00:27:30,030 --> 00:27:32,830 And the group has been working to understand changes 572 00:27:33,705 --> 00:27:36,150 in mountain environments at different elevations 573 00:27:36,150 --> 00:27:38,220 and has been working with collaborators 574 00:27:38,220 --> 00:27:42,600 to develop a unified high elevation platform or UHOP 575 00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:44,760 so that multiple mountain observatories 576 00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:49,170 can conduct monitoring of alpine areas in a consistent way. 577 00:27:49,170 --> 00:27:50,250 This would allow researchers 578 00:27:50,250 --> 00:27:51,720 to better understand climate change 579 00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,540 and mountainous environments at an international scale. 580 00:27:54,540 --> 00:27:57,000 And you can see from their worldwide map so far 581 00:27:57,000 --> 00:27:58,500 the yellow points are the ones 582 00:27:58,500 --> 00:28:00,560 that are functional UHOP transects. 583 00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,750 And the one that's in the northeast that they have 584 00:28:03,750 --> 00:28:07,203 is the Mount Washington's Observatories Auto Road. 585 00:28:08,850 --> 00:28:11,430 Another working group through Geo Mountains is called 586 00:28:11,430 --> 00:28:14,700 the Mountain Observatories Working Group. 587 00:28:14,700 --> 00:28:17,010 They define mountain observatories 588 00:28:17,010 --> 00:28:22,010 as sites, networks of sites or data rich regions 589 00:28:22,260 --> 00:28:26,220 where multidisciplinary integrated observations 590 00:28:26,220 --> 00:28:29,160 of biophysical and human environments 591 00:28:29,160 --> 00:28:32,250 are conducted over a lengthy period of time 592 00:28:32,250 --> 00:28:36,030 in consistent ways according to established protocols, 593 00:28:36,030 --> 00:28:40,320 using both in SIT2 and remote observations, 594 00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:43,410 and the group's current focus is developing regional groups 595 00:28:43,410 --> 00:28:46,500 of mountain observatories throughout the world. 596 00:28:46,500 --> 00:28:50,700 Current groups is the virtual Alpine Observatory, 597 00:28:50,700 --> 00:28:52,560 which is in Europe. 598 00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:56,190 They are a network of 16 European 599 00:28:56,190 --> 00:28:58,680 high altitude research stations. 600 00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:02,790 On their website you can find a list 601 00:29:02,790 --> 00:29:05,310 of the different mountain observatories in their network 602 00:29:05,310 --> 00:29:08,040 that include both research stations, so you know, 603 00:29:08,040 --> 00:29:09,330 thinking research stations like 604 00:29:09,330 --> 00:29:11,397 the Mount Washington Observatory, 605 00:29:11,397 --> 00:29:13,170 the Mount Mansfield Sciences Stewardship Center, 606 00:29:13,170 --> 00:29:15,480 and the Atmospheric Sciences Research Center 607 00:29:15,480 --> 00:29:17,760 and research infrastructures as well. 608 00:29:17,760 --> 00:29:19,980 So thinking beyond, you know, 609 00:29:19,980 --> 00:29:23,700 our current environment of research stations 610 00:29:23,700 --> 00:29:26,310 and all the different research infrastructure 611 00:29:26,310 --> 00:29:29,820 that we have in mountain environments across the northeast 612 00:29:29,820 --> 00:29:32,100 so the Mount virtual Alpine Observatory 613 00:29:32,100 --> 00:29:34,740 in Europe kind of brings them all together. 614 00:29:34,740 --> 00:29:38,460 Their network allows efficient access to and visualization 615 00:29:38,460 --> 00:29:41,580 of institute data generated by the network 616 00:29:41,580 --> 00:29:45,150 and relevant remote sensing and modeling data 617 00:29:45,150 --> 00:29:47,010 for the member institutions, 618 00:29:47,010 --> 00:29:50,040 wider research community and stakeholders. 619 00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:52,560 I couldn't find on their website 620 00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,440 if they were officially a non-profit organization, 621 00:29:55,440 --> 00:29:56,790 but I kind of sense that they were, 622 00:29:56,790 --> 00:29:58,380 because they have their own staff 623 00:29:58,380 --> 00:30:00,900 and they have their own steering committee. 624 00:30:00,900 --> 00:30:04,560 There's another active network in the Western United States 625 00:30:04,560 --> 00:30:06,420 that's called Surmount, 626 00:30:06,420 --> 00:30:09,870 and it is a collaborative open science consortium, 627 00:30:09,870 --> 00:30:12,960 comprising agency of university scientists, 628 00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:17,340 natural resource specialists and program managers dedicated 629 00:30:17,340 --> 00:30:21,120 to improving understanding of climate variability and change 630 00:30:21,120 --> 00:30:22,710 and to enhancing the capacity 631 00:30:22,710 --> 00:30:26,520 to sustain Western North American society. 632 00:30:26,520 --> 00:30:29,880 The network is solely a grassroots initiative 633 00:30:29,880 --> 00:30:33,960 with no central program staff or support. 634 00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:35,700 They have their website, 635 00:30:35,700 --> 00:30:38,280 which is under the US Forest Service 636 00:30:38,280 --> 00:30:41,340 and there's not much recent content on their website, 637 00:30:41,340 --> 00:30:44,070 or on their social media profile. 638 00:30:44,070 --> 00:30:47,820 Their latest strategic plan was from the year 2007, 639 00:30:47,820 --> 00:30:52,170 but they still seem to be having conferences and meetings 640 00:30:52,170 --> 00:30:55,110 and they seem to be kind of a coordinated network, 641 00:30:55,110 --> 00:30:56,460 just kind of connecting 642 00:30:56,460 --> 00:30:58,440 and understanding the various research 643 00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:01,383 that's going on across the Western United States. 644 00:31:02,940 --> 00:31:07,940 And so the Mountain Observatory working group 645 00:31:08,730 --> 00:31:11,190 in Geo Mountains has been working on fostering 646 00:31:11,190 --> 00:31:14,220 and facilitating the development of other regional networks 647 00:31:14,220 --> 00:31:15,570 of mountain observatories through 648 00:31:15,570 --> 00:31:17,520 bringing together regional researchers, 649 00:31:17,520 --> 00:31:20,610 practitioners and international experts experience 650 00:31:20,610 --> 00:31:22,740 and running successful mountain observatories 651 00:31:22,740 --> 00:31:25,470 in a series of regional workshops. 652 00:31:25,470 --> 00:31:28,110 And they recently hosted all of these workshops 653 00:31:28,110 --> 00:31:31,260 in the last few years in these data poor regions 654 00:31:31,260 --> 00:31:34,050 that are throughout the world that I haven't read. 655 00:31:34,050 --> 00:31:36,480 And they've been working on 656 00:31:36,480 --> 00:31:38,550 all of the different research infrastructures 657 00:31:38,550 --> 00:31:40,170 that are in those areas to develop 658 00:31:40,170 --> 00:31:42,570 a regional groups of mountain observatories. 659 00:31:42,570 --> 00:31:45,750 And so I've been in correspondence with Carolina Adler 660 00:31:45,750 --> 00:31:47,400 and Marie Shahgedanova 661 00:31:47,400 --> 00:31:50,370 which the Geo Mountains Mount Observatory working group, 662 00:31:50,370 --> 00:31:53,175 and they invited me to develop a regional group 663 00:31:53,175 --> 00:31:56,130 of mountain observatories in the northeast region 664 00:31:56,130 --> 00:31:59,340 that would participate in their international efforts. 665 00:31:59,340 --> 00:32:00,990 They were also said that they would be willing 666 00:32:00,990 --> 00:32:03,120 to host a web presence for our group, 667 00:32:03,120 --> 00:32:05,040 as that is something that they are doing 668 00:32:05,040 --> 00:32:08,310 for the other regional groups around observatory soon. 669 00:32:08,310 --> 00:32:12,090 They also encourage me to think a little bit more about 670 00:32:12,090 --> 00:32:14,850 taking over the entire Appalachian Mountain range because 671 00:32:14,850 --> 00:32:16,800 they kind of think about these big pictures. 672 00:32:16,800 --> 00:32:20,190 I was thinking that it might be a little too much to chew 673 00:32:20,190 --> 00:32:22,890 and think about the entire region, 674 00:32:22,890 --> 00:32:26,457 but that's what they were encouraging me to think about. 675 00:32:26,457 --> 00:32:29,670 And another interesting thing to note is that Geo Mountains 676 00:32:29,670 --> 00:32:31,260 also has this inventory 677 00:32:31,260 --> 00:32:33,970 of institute observational infrastructure 678 00:32:35,298 --> 00:32:36,210 that they've been developing, 679 00:32:36,210 --> 00:32:39,240 and I've been adding the FDMC monitoring stations 680 00:32:39,240 --> 00:32:42,990 on Mount Mansfield to this inventory network. 681 00:32:42,990 --> 00:32:46,710 And so briefly now I just wanted to go over 682 00:32:46,710 --> 00:32:49,530 some other international mountain monitoring initiatives 683 00:32:49,530 --> 00:32:51,300 that are good to know about. 684 00:32:51,300 --> 00:32:53,220 There's this initiative called GLORIA, 685 00:32:53,220 --> 00:32:56,580 which is the Global Observation Research Initiative 686 00:32:56,580 --> 00:32:58,590 in Alpine environments. 687 00:32:58,590 --> 00:33:00,870 And this program aims to develop 688 00:33:00,870 --> 00:33:04,020 a worldwide long-term observation network 689 00:33:04,020 --> 00:33:06,300 on vegetation and temperature data 690 00:33:06,300 --> 00:33:08,250 and mountain environments around the world. 691 00:33:08,250 --> 00:33:10,320 And they have specific methods to collect data 692 00:33:10,320 --> 00:33:12,870 about alpine plants and soil temperature 693 00:33:12,870 --> 00:33:15,870 that can be recollected every five to 10 years. 694 00:33:15,870 --> 00:33:19,860 There isn't any in the Eastern United States right now, 695 00:33:19,860 --> 00:33:22,340 but this might be an opportunity for some 696 00:33:22,340 --> 00:33:25,410 of our mountain areas to be able to kind of 697 00:33:25,410 --> 00:33:29,100 join and participate in an international network. 698 00:33:29,100 --> 00:33:31,650 There is also a mountain ponds and lakes, 699 00:33:31,650 --> 00:33:34,830 Sarah Nelson, who's here virtually with us today 700 00:33:34,830 --> 00:33:37,020 with the Appalachian Mountain Club, 701 00:33:37,020 --> 00:33:39,330 has been starting to reach out to researchers 702 00:33:39,330 --> 00:33:42,123 about the potential for monitoring Mountain Ponds 703 00:33:42,123 --> 00:33:43,980 in a more coordinated way. 704 00:33:43,980 --> 00:33:46,170 And she's begun pulling together existing data 705 00:33:46,170 --> 00:33:48,480 with colleagues at Humane Farmington 706 00:33:48,480 --> 00:33:52,020 and published a paper about Mountain Ponds last year. 707 00:33:52,020 --> 00:33:55,140 It's also interesting to note that an international survey 708 00:33:55,140 --> 00:33:58,950 of Mountain Lakes, which is Moser et al 2019, 709 00:33:58,950 --> 00:34:01,620 showed that the Northeast US Appalachians 710 00:34:01,620 --> 00:34:06,620 is currently a whole in their current global data set. 711 00:34:07,080 --> 00:34:08,040 Sarah, is there anything else 712 00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:10,020 that you wanted to kind of quickly mention 713 00:34:10,020 --> 00:34:12,543 about mountain ponds and lakes? 714 00:34:14,280 --> 00:34:15,390 Yeah, I think you covered it. 715 00:34:15,390 --> 00:34:19,320 They're unique ecosystems and originally, you know, 716 00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,860 as you mentioned for Whiteface we were doing 717 00:34:22,860 --> 00:34:26,040 a lot of mountain pond research as kind of sentinels 718 00:34:26,040 --> 00:34:28,920 or the canary in the coal mine for acid rain. 719 00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:32,820 But we have recently been thinking of them in this paper 720 00:34:32,820 --> 00:34:36,750 and some previous work as now sentinels for climate change. 721 00:34:36,750 --> 00:34:40,590 They are exhibiting some stronger and different signals 722 00:34:40,590 --> 00:34:42,300 than lower elevation lakes 723 00:34:42,300 --> 00:34:45,570 that we've been monitoring over the same time period. 724 00:34:45,570 --> 00:34:48,630 So it is, you know, similar to what you all 725 00:34:48,630 --> 00:34:52,080 are thinking about in terms of weather and climate, 726 00:34:52,080 --> 00:34:55,500 the lakes and other fresh waters at elevation 727 00:34:55,500 --> 00:34:57,900 are behaving differently and really interesting 728 00:34:57,900 --> 00:35:00,663 to study and telling an interesting story. 729 00:35:01,590 --> 00:35:03,183 Awesome, thank you so much. 730 00:35:04,890 --> 00:35:06,630 And yeah, so in the last piece 731 00:35:06,630 --> 00:35:10,320 I just quickly wanted to cover is Dr. John Pomeroy, 732 00:35:10,320 --> 00:35:12,090 the University of Saskatchewan, 733 00:35:12,090 --> 00:35:14,340 has been developing an international collaborative network 734 00:35:14,340 --> 00:35:16,320 around alpine catchments. 735 00:35:16,320 --> 00:35:18,320 These catchments focus on specific watersheds 736 00:35:18,320 --> 00:35:19,920 of mountains worldwide 737 00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:24,360 that have heavy monitoring associated with hydrology, 738 00:35:24,360 --> 00:35:27,240 snow pack, weather and other features. 739 00:35:27,240 --> 00:35:28,620 There isn't any sites 740 00:35:28,620 --> 00:35:30,630 in the Eastern United States right now, 741 00:35:30,630 --> 00:35:32,490 so there may be this opportunity 742 00:35:32,490 --> 00:35:36,000 for some of our watersheds 743 00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:38,070 that are coming off of alpine areas, 744 00:35:38,070 --> 00:35:42,030 to integrate into this international effort. 745 00:35:42,030 --> 00:35:43,800 And so kind of stepping back again 746 00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:45,030 and looking at this big figure 747 00:35:45,030 --> 00:35:46,770 that I showed all of you before, 748 00:35:46,770 --> 00:35:49,440 I didn't dig into every single one of these topics, 749 00:35:49,440 --> 00:35:51,480 but just kinda wanted to paint this idea 750 00:35:51,480 --> 00:35:54,360 that at least the way that my brain is thinking, 751 00:35:54,360 --> 00:35:55,920 that there's all of these various topics, 752 00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:58,230 I don't have all the topics here, 753 00:35:58,230 --> 00:36:02,700 but there's ways that each one of these research areas 754 00:36:02,700 --> 00:36:05,520 can integrate at a regional level 755 00:36:05,520 --> 00:36:08,760 and then also at a international level 756 00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:11,970 and being able to tie in to 757 00:36:11,970 --> 00:36:13,830 a potential mountain observatory working group 758 00:36:13,830 --> 00:36:15,150 through Geo Mountains, 759 00:36:15,150 --> 00:36:17,370 maybe a good kind of umbrella way 760 00:36:17,370 --> 00:36:19,800 to tie all of these initiatives together 761 00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:24,690 in some capacity and move our research forward, 762 00:36:24,690 --> 00:36:28,890 and make our research in our region more globally relevant 763 00:36:28,890 --> 00:36:31,170 in our mountain environments. 764 00:36:31,170 --> 00:36:32,490 And so with that, 765 00:36:32,490 --> 00:36:35,800 that's the extent of my presentation 766 00:36:36,690 --> 00:36:39,390 and I'm gonna turn it over to Nat 767 00:36:39,390 --> 00:36:42,213 to talk about the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Center. 768 00:36:44,100 --> 00:36:47,850 You know, first to begin with, what I wanted to do 769 00:36:47,850 --> 00:36:50,190 is to talk a little bit about the origins 770 00:36:50,190 --> 00:36:53,370 of the Northeast Alpine Stewardship Center. 771 00:36:53,370 --> 00:36:58,053 And as you can see, it's really a network, not a center, 772 00:36:58,950 --> 00:37:02,043 which is something we can talk about what the difference is. 773 00:37:02,880 --> 00:37:06,660 But it comes from the work that we've done 774 00:37:06,660 --> 00:37:09,060 on Franconia Ridge personally, 775 00:37:09,060 --> 00:37:12,930 as I said, I've been working there for 18 years, 776 00:37:12,930 --> 00:37:15,063 but for the last five years, 777 00:37:16,890 --> 00:37:21,450 after the Forest Service pulled together a working group, 778 00:37:21,450 --> 00:37:23,910 the Franconia Ridge working group, 779 00:37:23,910 --> 00:37:27,700 to address what was really pretty severe deterioration 780 00:37:29,074 --> 00:37:32,433 of the ridge from overuse and hiking. 781 00:37:34,920 --> 00:37:37,650 We developed a pilot project 782 00:37:37,650 --> 00:37:41,100 to put Summit stewards full-time on the ridge 783 00:37:41,100 --> 00:37:42,363 during the summertime. 784 00:37:44,928 --> 00:37:47,100 This was part of a Franconia Ridge 785 00:37:47,100 --> 00:37:50,313 visitor user management planning process. 786 00:37:51,690 --> 00:37:53,610 And this photo just gives you a sense 787 00:37:53,610 --> 00:37:57,280 of what you can find on top of Mount Lafayette 788 00:37:58,350 --> 00:38:01,830 on a busy, sunny Saturday. 789 00:38:01,830 --> 00:38:05,523 You can have up to a hundred people clustered on the summit. 790 00:38:07,350 --> 00:38:09,750 Looking at the daily totals, 791 00:38:09,750 --> 00:38:13,800 this is from this summer, from May through October, 792 00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:18,453 there were about 40,000 people who traversed the ridge, 793 00:38:19,500 --> 00:38:23,250 and the spikes that you see there 794 00:38:23,250 --> 00:38:27,360 between 800 and 1,000 people a day 795 00:38:27,360 --> 00:38:30,540 are what happens on a popular weekend. 796 00:38:30,540 --> 00:38:35,540 So what we have is clustered on about 1.8 miles of trail 797 00:38:36,870 --> 00:38:41,220 a wave of people that cross the ridge. 798 00:38:41,220 --> 00:38:44,130 And that's one thing I want to emphasize is that, 799 00:38:44,130 --> 00:38:49,130 it's not so much the absolute numbers per day, 800 00:38:50,970 --> 00:38:53,520 but it's how they flow across the ridge, 801 00:38:53,520 --> 00:38:55,770 because the hikers, you know, come, 802 00:38:55,770 --> 00:38:58,410 and most of them start hiking 803 00:38:58,410 --> 00:39:01,320 at certain hours in the morning 804 00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:06,320 and this wave washes across the ridge during the day. 805 00:39:06,510 --> 00:39:09,720 And what we end up having is peaks 806 00:39:09,720 --> 00:39:12,300 of about 150 people passing per hour. 807 00:39:12,300 --> 00:39:16,680 This is based on the data loggers that are up there, 808 00:39:16,680 --> 00:39:20,710 which is a pretty highly concentrated number of people 809 00:39:21,660 --> 00:39:22,923 to be on the trail. 810 00:39:24,750 --> 00:39:29,220 So one thing just to understand the implications of this 811 00:39:29,220 --> 00:39:31,560 and why we've made such an effort 812 00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:34,833 to add to the stewardship presence on the ridge, 813 00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:41,250 to look at one of the basic tenets of recreation ecology, 814 00:39:41,250 --> 00:39:45,450 which is the asymptotic relationship between visitor use 815 00:39:45,450 --> 00:39:48,060 and environmental impact, which results in 816 00:39:48,060 --> 00:39:51,480 this sigmoidal curve that you see. 817 00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:54,753 And you know, very simply it's not that complicated. 818 00:39:55,740 --> 00:40:00,740 If you have a relatively few number of hikers or campers 819 00:40:02,160 --> 00:40:07,160 in a site over the year, you'll have very limited impact. 820 00:40:08,130 --> 00:40:11,520 And as the use increases, 821 00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:15,840 you start getting an exponential growth in the impact. 822 00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,690 Eventually it levels off because 823 00:40:18,690 --> 00:40:22,890 you've essentially trampled or destroyed the site 824 00:40:22,890 --> 00:40:25,080 and there's no more damage you can do. 825 00:40:25,080 --> 00:40:30,080 And that's basically this sigmoidal curve that you see. 826 00:40:31,290 --> 00:40:35,160 So what resource managers have developed based 827 00:40:35,160 --> 00:40:37,248 on that principle, 828 00:40:37,248 --> 00:40:39,930 this is a figure that shows camping impact, 829 00:40:39,930 --> 00:40:42,960 but you could do the same for trails, 830 00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:47,380 is that initially you could conceivably have 831 00:40:48,300 --> 00:40:51,030 an approach to management which is allowing 832 00:40:51,030 --> 00:40:52,680 for the dispersal of use. 833 00:40:52,680 --> 00:40:54,240 So if you're campers, 834 00:40:54,240 --> 00:40:57,120 you could be dispersing throughout a large area, 835 00:40:57,120 --> 00:40:59,790 or conceivably you could be bush whacking 836 00:40:59,790 --> 00:41:03,513 all over the White Mountains and have very little impact. 837 00:41:04,530 --> 00:41:07,230 But the problem is that as use increases, 838 00:41:07,230 --> 00:41:10,710 impact grows exponentially. 839 00:41:10,710 --> 00:41:15,710 So the approach of dispersal really rarely works 840 00:41:17,370 --> 00:41:20,160 and certainly doesn't work in any high use area. 841 00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:22,680 So then there's this concept of containment, you know, 842 00:41:22,680 --> 00:41:27,390 you keep people in areas that are highly impacted. 843 00:41:27,390 --> 00:41:30,000 So campsite that are high impact sites, 844 00:41:30,000 --> 00:41:32,910 and obviously keeping people on the trail 845 00:41:32,910 --> 00:41:36,990 is the way that you can contain people on a trail, 846 00:41:36,990 --> 00:41:40,203 and this is what we try to do in the alpine zone. 847 00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:45,640 One thing that I've sort of looked at is 848 00:41:45,640 --> 00:41:50,640 I've sort of used this asymptotic, you know, relationship 849 00:41:51,930 --> 00:41:55,200 and used it as an analogy for looking 850 00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:57,363 at trail impact over time. 851 00:41:58,230 --> 00:42:01,860 So if you look at a site like Franconia Ridge, 852 00:42:01,860 --> 00:42:04,502 what you'll see is that you know, 853 00:42:04,502 --> 00:42:06,840 in the early years of trail use, you know, 854 00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:11,840 late 19th century, the early 20th century 855 00:42:12,060 --> 00:42:15,870 up, you know, through until the post-war period, 856 00:42:15,870 --> 00:42:20,870 the use was relatively low and there wasn't really 857 00:42:21,540 --> 00:42:24,840 a need for containment strategies 858 00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:26,403 'cause the impact wasn't high. 859 00:42:27,720 --> 00:42:29,640 As the seventies, you know, 860 00:42:29,640 --> 00:42:32,010 you get into the sixties and seventies and eighties 861 00:42:32,010 --> 00:42:34,563 and the post-war boom and recreation, 862 00:42:35,580 --> 00:42:38,970 you started to need to do erosion control work. 863 00:42:38,970 --> 00:42:42,753 That's when the screen walls were built on Franconia Ridge. 864 00:42:43,740 --> 00:42:48,740 And that was a successful containment strategy for a while. 865 00:42:49,110 --> 00:42:53,760 It worked until the use increased so much 866 00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:58,760 that we started in the, you know, 867 00:42:59,070 --> 00:43:04,070 early two thousands, mid 2010s to really see that 868 00:43:04,770 --> 00:43:06,990 the screen walls weren't working anymore, 869 00:43:06,990 --> 00:43:11,730 the only having alpine steward weren't working anymore. 870 00:43:11,730 --> 00:43:16,320 And that's when we developed this more permanent presence 871 00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:19,050 of stewards up on Franconia Ridge, 872 00:43:19,050 --> 00:43:21,930 after the 2016 planning process 873 00:43:21,930 --> 00:43:24,453 with the visitor use management plan. 874 00:43:25,650 --> 00:43:28,680 Now, one of the things I wanna emphasize is that, 875 00:43:28,680 --> 00:43:31,890 the stewardship approach that we have 876 00:43:31,890 --> 00:43:35,760 differs a little bit from some of the, you know, 877 00:43:35,760 --> 00:43:39,870 caretaker programs or alpine steward programs 878 00:43:39,870 --> 00:43:41,223 in other locations. 879 00:43:42,870 --> 00:43:45,840 We do both what's considered level two 880 00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:48,630 or trail construction trail work, 881 00:43:48,630 --> 00:43:52,080 and we also do the education and information together. 882 00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:54,840 And this is what is called 883 00:43:54,840 --> 00:43:57,720 an integrated management approach 884 00:43:57,720 --> 00:44:01,020 where you use both direct management, 885 00:44:01,020 --> 00:44:04,410 which is interventions like screen walls 886 00:44:04,410 --> 00:44:07,230 and erosion control work, trail work, 887 00:44:07,230 --> 00:44:09,390 and you do indirect management, 888 00:44:09,390 --> 00:44:11,740 which is the education and information 889 00:44:12,630 --> 00:44:15,960 which can be signage or personal contact. 890 00:44:15,960 --> 00:44:20,960 And I'm just highlighting here this article 891 00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,830 that just came out by by Park Marion and Wimpy, 892 00:44:25,830 --> 00:44:28,440 that talks about the efficacy 893 00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,353 of this kind of integrated trail management. 894 00:44:32,550 --> 00:44:35,130 So anyway, just to give you a little sense 895 00:44:35,130 --> 00:44:38,550 of what we do and what this is all about, 896 00:44:38,550 --> 00:44:41,520 this approach that we started up on Franconia Ridge, 897 00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:43,410 is a partnership approach. 898 00:44:43,410 --> 00:44:47,340 It's based on working with lots of different groups 899 00:44:47,340 --> 00:44:48,603 that are up on the ridge. 900 00:44:49,440 --> 00:44:52,560 The AMC obviously is a big presence there 901 00:44:52,560 --> 00:44:56,940 with the caretakers that work at Liberty Springs 902 00:44:56,940 --> 00:44:59,700 and the Alpine Steward program. 903 00:44:59,700 --> 00:45:02,643 There's also research in monitoring, 904 00:45:04,151 --> 00:45:07,230 the hut crew has a hut naturalist program 905 00:45:07,230 --> 00:45:10,320 and they do education on the ridge. 906 00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:12,210 And we introduced another element 907 00:45:12,210 --> 00:45:16,440 which were college aged summit steward interns, 908 00:45:16,440 --> 00:45:19,563 that worked on the ridge during the week. 909 00:45:22,290 --> 00:45:24,540 Let's see, now I've lost where I am. 910 00:45:24,540 --> 00:45:25,373 Here we are. 911 00:45:26,730 --> 00:45:28,770 So as I say, this is a partnership 912 00:45:28,770 --> 00:45:32,400 and this is just listing, you know, some of the partners. 913 00:45:32,400 --> 00:45:36,630 It includes working with the trailhead stewards 914 00:45:36,630 --> 00:45:38,340 that are at the base of the mountain. 915 00:45:38,340 --> 00:45:41,310 We go out with the Backcountry Rangers 916 00:45:41,310 --> 00:45:42,900 from the Pemi District. 917 00:45:42,900 --> 00:45:45,750 We've worked with the trail crew, you know, 918 00:45:45,750 --> 00:45:46,770 as I mentioned before, 919 00:45:46,770 --> 00:45:49,740 we work closely with the Alpine Stewards. 920 00:45:49,740 --> 00:45:52,560 So the whole approach is a partnership approach. 921 00:45:52,560 --> 00:45:55,890 Last year our program included 922 00:45:55,890 --> 00:46:00,890 a Chief Summit steward that worked May through October. 923 00:46:01,020 --> 00:46:04,920 We had two paid Summit Steward college interns 924 00:46:04,920 --> 00:46:07,980 that worked for 10 weeks and then one volunteer 925 00:46:07,980 --> 00:46:10,023 that worked for 10 weeks. 926 00:46:10,890 --> 00:46:14,160 We had visiting International Trail Fellows. 927 00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:17,130 These are professionals from around the world 928 00:46:17,130 --> 00:46:21,390 that come and visit and study and do research 929 00:46:21,390 --> 00:46:23,850 with us for the summer. 930 00:46:23,850 --> 00:46:26,040 And then also we have a volunteer program 931 00:46:26,040 --> 00:46:28,920 where we work with West End Trail Tenders, 932 00:46:28,920 --> 00:46:32,073 which are volunteers that do trail work. 933 00:46:33,750 --> 00:46:37,950 Won't go into a lot of detail, list all of these out. 934 00:46:37,950 --> 00:46:41,100 The main thing that I wanna point out is that 935 00:46:41,100 --> 00:46:44,937 this does involve both the direct management, 936 00:46:44,937 --> 00:46:49,020 the trail work, and also, you know, 937 00:46:49,020 --> 00:46:50,640 what's considered indirect, 938 00:46:50,640 --> 00:46:52,500 the education and information 939 00:46:52,500 --> 00:46:55,383 and where we can, we contribute to monitoring. 940 00:46:56,670 --> 00:46:59,100 And that's I think one of the opportunities 941 00:46:59,100 --> 00:47:02,043 that's really important to talk about. 942 00:47:02,910 --> 00:47:06,840 Really with the stewardship programs that we're developing, 943 00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:08,520 I'm really interested in looking at 944 00:47:08,520 --> 00:47:11,190 how the on the ground stewardship 945 00:47:11,190 --> 00:47:13,770 can be connected to education. 946 00:47:13,770 --> 00:47:17,340 We have the college internship program, 947 00:47:17,340 --> 00:47:20,070 but also how the stewards can contribute 948 00:47:20,070 --> 00:47:22,143 to research and monitoring. 949 00:47:24,540 --> 00:47:29,310 I do wanna just sort of take one step back and say, 950 00:47:29,310 --> 00:47:32,610 you know, this program has been very successful, 951 00:47:32,610 --> 00:47:37,610 it has really changed the conditions up on Franconia Ridge, 952 00:47:37,830 --> 00:47:41,730 but it's not the entire solution. 953 00:47:41,730 --> 00:47:45,870 And what ends up happening is that 954 00:47:45,870 --> 00:47:49,290 once you reach a certain threshold, a certain density, 955 00:47:49,290 --> 00:47:50,880 and it's usually seems to be 956 00:47:50,880 --> 00:47:55,880 over 150 people passing a spot per hour, 957 00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,300 the education and information doesn't work, 958 00:48:00,300 --> 00:48:02,800 the screen walls don't work, the signs don't work. 959 00:48:03,660 --> 00:48:05,160 I don't know if anybody's familiar 960 00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:10,160 with the graphic above here, 961 00:48:11,820 --> 00:48:14,400 but that's a Lorenz attractor 962 00:48:14,400 --> 00:48:17,670 part of the, you know, chaos equations. 963 00:48:17,670 --> 00:48:21,720 And that's what I see happening on Franconia Ridge is that 964 00:48:21,720 --> 00:48:25,443 you reach a moment where conditions become chaotic, 965 00:48:26,970 --> 00:48:29,970 and I consider trails to be complex systems 966 00:48:29,970 --> 00:48:33,900 that exhibit this kind of chaotic behavior, 967 00:48:33,900 --> 00:48:36,750 and it's very hard to predict and manage, 968 00:48:36,750 --> 00:48:38,310 but I think this is one of the reasons 969 00:48:38,310 --> 00:48:41,400 we really need to think about capacity 970 00:48:41,400 --> 00:48:44,283 and app and numbers in the future. 971 00:48:45,690 --> 00:48:49,530 But anyway, just to give you a few little, you know, 972 00:48:49,530 --> 00:48:52,920 pictures of what we do, sense of what we do. 973 00:48:52,920 --> 00:48:53,910 You know, obviously 974 00:48:53,910 --> 00:48:57,783 we're constantly preparing spree walls, cleaning drainage. 975 00:48:59,100 --> 00:49:03,060 We do a lot of putting a brush in areas 976 00:49:03,060 --> 00:49:04,050 that have been trampled 977 00:49:04,050 --> 00:49:06,990 and that creates lovely little micro habitats 978 00:49:06,990 --> 00:49:10,200 that help with re-vegetation. 979 00:49:10,200 --> 00:49:14,433 We're constantly cleaning off the steps and removing rubble. 980 00:49:16,560 --> 00:49:21,390 We are working to maintain certain open areas and outlooks, 981 00:49:21,390 --> 00:49:24,360 other areas that hikers can spread out 982 00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:26,103 and still contain them. 983 00:49:27,870 --> 00:49:29,580 As I say, we do do trail work. 984 00:49:29,580 --> 00:49:34,580 Here's just a example of reconstructing some steps 985 00:49:35,160 --> 00:49:39,033 so that makes it easier for people to stay on the trail. 986 00:49:40,230 --> 00:49:42,480 We install educational signage. 987 00:49:42,480 --> 00:49:45,330 We have these different size signs 988 00:49:45,330 --> 00:49:50,330 ranging from mini kiosks, to these little micro kiosks, 989 00:49:50,850 --> 00:49:55,850 to medium size kiosks that we have on the approach 990 00:49:56,250 --> 00:49:57,543 to the alpine zone. 991 00:49:59,670 --> 00:50:02,883 And here's a little mini kiosk example. 992 00:50:05,220 --> 00:50:10,220 And just to say, this has had an enormous effect, 993 00:50:10,650 --> 00:50:14,040 Little Haystack is a great example. 994 00:50:14,040 --> 00:50:15,750 It's a little hard to see in this photo, 995 00:50:15,750 --> 00:50:20,730 but the area here the summit is... 996 00:50:24,900 --> 00:50:27,904 Actually you can't see my arrows or can you? 997 00:50:27,904 --> 00:50:29,070 [Joshua] We can, we can. 998 00:50:29,070 --> 00:50:29,903 Okay. 999 00:50:29,903 --> 00:50:32,370 So this is the summit area up here 1000 00:50:32,370 --> 00:50:34,770 and where people are supposed to be, 1001 00:50:34,770 --> 00:50:36,420 this entire area here 1002 00:50:36,420 --> 00:50:39,480 where people are spread out is off trail. 1003 00:50:39,480 --> 00:50:44,040 And what we saw, you know, 1004 00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:49,020 when we first started this work in 2017-18 1005 00:50:49,020 --> 00:50:53,463 is that the area had absolutely no vegetation. 1006 00:50:55,020 --> 00:50:57,780 We put up string fencing 1007 00:50:57,780 --> 00:51:01,710 and we also added educational signage. 1008 00:51:01,710 --> 00:51:04,860 And between 2017 and 2022, 1009 00:51:04,860 --> 00:51:07,120 we saw this incredible transformation 1010 00:51:08,682 --> 00:51:12,180 of Mountain Sandwort filling in, 1011 00:51:12,180 --> 00:51:16,293 and eventually Highland Rush started coming in as well. 1012 00:51:17,250 --> 00:51:20,610 And this really we attribute to three things, 1013 00:51:20,610 --> 00:51:25,610 the additional presence of an AMC Alpine Steward, 1014 00:51:25,830 --> 00:51:29,190 the addition of the signage and then the string fencing 1015 00:51:29,190 --> 00:51:30,813 in the Summit Steward program. 1016 00:51:32,370 --> 00:51:35,530 As I mentioned, there's opportunities also 1017 00:51:36,909 --> 00:51:40,080 for stewards to participate in monitoring. 1018 00:51:40,080 --> 00:51:44,140 We are using a platform called Restore 1019 00:51:46,020 --> 00:51:49,170 to map and help monitor areas 1020 00:51:49,170 --> 00:51:51,480 that we have put string fencing up, 1021 00:51:51,480 --> 00:51:54,330 so that we can get a sense of how successful 1022 00:51:54,330 --> 00:51:55,803 our strategies are. 1023 00:52:00,090 --> 00:52:01,980 As educational part of this program, 1024 00:52:01,980 --> 00:52:04,440 we have weekly what we call fireside chats 1025 00:52:04,440 --> 00:52:08,700 June through August where the Forest Service 1026 00:52:08,700 --> 00:52:13,440 and other partners are invited and their informal seminars. 1027 00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:16,530 We had a international trails gathering 1028 00:52:16,530 --> 00:52:19,560 for our international folks 1029 00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:22,110 August 9th through 12th this year 1030 00:52:22,110 --> 00:52:25,350 on sustainable trail management. 1031 00:52:25,350 --> 00:52:27,840 A virtual summit for summit stewards, 1032 00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:31,980 caretakers, ambassadors all the way from Costa Rica, 1033 00:52:31,980 --> 00:52:36,673 Canada and Green Mountains and Adirondacks. 1034 00:52:38,370 --> 00:52:42,660 We have sponsored exchanges, field visits, 1035 00:52:42,660 --> 00:52:46,350 on the left here we were on Welch and Nicki 1036 00:52:46,350 --> 00:52:49,650 with Care Green Mountain Caretakers, 1037 00:52:49,650 --> 00:52:54,000 Green Mountain Club caretakers on the right were hiking, 1038 00:52:54,000 --> 00:52:55,720 showing the work that we do 1039 00:52:56,988 --> 00:53:00,633 on the Franconia Ridge with Mount Moosilauke stewards. 1040 00:53:03,540 --> 00:53:06,390 And here we are visiting Mount Moosilauke 1041 00:53:06,390 --> 00:53:07,650 at the end of the season, 1042 00:53:07,650 --> 00:53:11,100 seeing that they took the work, some of the ideas, 1043 00:53:11,100 --> 00:53:12,940 the string fencing and the signage 1044 00:53:13,860 --> 00:53:17,733 and used it to improve conditions on Mount Moosilauke. 1045 00:53:19,790 --> 00:53:22,600 Here's our virtual summit that we had with 1046 00:53:23,490 --> 00:53:26,820 the caretakers and alpine stewards from the region 1047 00:53:26,820 --> 00:53:28,263 and even internationally. 1048 00:53:29,730 --> 00:53:33,120 Also, and this gets with how maybe 1049 00:53:33,120 --> 00:53:35,520 we can start connecting research monitoring 1050 00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:37,350 and the summit stewardship. 1051 00:53:37,350 --> 00:53:39,120 All of our summit steward interns 1052 00:53:39,120 --> 00:53:41,160 have projects that they do, 1053 00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:43,740 and I'll just show you the three projects from this year. 1054 00:53:43,740 --> 00:53:47,760 This is an intern from University of Maine, Orono, 1055 00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:51,963 who is currently doing his honors thesis, 1056 00:53:53,250 --> 00:53:55,710 creating a structure from motion survey. 1057 00:53:55,710 --> 00:53:58,890 So it's a highly detailed three-dimensional model 1058 00:53:58,890 --> 00:54:00,780 of the Franconia Ridge trail, 1059 00:54:00,780 --> 00:54:04,080 which is gonna help us with vegetation monitoring 1060 00:54:04,080 --> 00:54:08,040 as well as identifying and mapping 1061 00:54:08,040 --> 00:54:10,083 the places we wanna do trail work. 1062 00:54:11,700 --> 00:54:16,700 One of our interns did a litter survey 1063 00:54:16,770 --> 00:54:18,930 and this is a little hotspot, 1064 00:54:18,930 --> 00:54:22,200 you can see the hotspot where on Little Haystack 1065 00:54:22,200 --> 00:54:25,143 where most of the trash that we find is. 1066 00:54:26,910 --> 00:54:31,643 Another summit steward worked with our international trails 1067 00:54:32,610 --> 00:54:35,160 and sustainability task team on something called 1068 00:54:35,160 --> 00:54:37,260 a Trails and Sustainability Toolbox, 1069 00:54:37,260 --> 00:54:40,110 which is kind of a Wikipedia 1070 00:54:40,110 --> 00:54:44,493 for trails' research and trail management. 1071 00:54:45,435 --> 00:54:50,435 And she helped us enter data and do a graphic design 1072 00:54:51,750 --> 00:54:55,500 for a presentation that I did in Greece 1073 00:54:55,500 --> 00:54:57,183 at the World Trails Conference. 1074 00:54:59,100 --> 00:55:03,000 Just an example of the Visiting Trail Fellows that we have. 1075 00:55:03,000 --> 00:55:07,110 This is Andras Molnar from Hungary, 1076 00:55:07,110 --> 00:55:12,110 he's actually a mathematician and he looks at trail design 1077 00:55:12,630 --> 00:55:16,260 in terms of graph theory or network connectivity, 1078 00:55:16,260 --> 00:55:18,870 and he did an interesting analysis 1079 00:55:18,870 --> 00:55:21,659 comparing Mount Mansfield and Franconia Ridge, 1080 00:55:21,659 --> 00:55:24,990 and how the trail configurations affect 1081 00:55:24,990 --> 00:55:27,513 the flows of hikers across the ridge. 1082 00:55:28,410 --> 00:55:31,800 So that's an example of what we've done 1083 00:55:31,800 --> 00:55:33,210 over the last few years, 1084 00:55:33,210 --> 00:55:36,480 and what we are hoping to do is to turn this 1085 00:55:36,480 --> 00:55:38,910 into a more organized program 1086 00:55:38,910 --> 00:55:42,700 and incorporate the northeast 1087 00:55:43,890 --> 00:55:48,890 And very quickly what we're looking at is for next year 1088 00:55:50,070 --> 00:55:54,120 having a paid 10 week summer college internship 1089 00:55:54,120 --> 00:55:55,653 for Franconia Ridge, 1090 00:55:56,798 --> 00:55:57,840 and we're working with the Pemi District 1091 00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:00,063 to expand it to the Crawford path. 1092 00:56:01,260 --> 00:56:03,540 We also have some funding available 1093 00:56:03,540 --> 00:56:07,440 for a paid trail crew that would specialize 1094 00:56:07,440 --> 00:56:10,233 in sustainable trail construction and maintenance. 1095 00:56:11,310 --> 00:56:15,990 We have a five week academic summer semester field course, 1096 00:56:15,990 --> 00:56:17,670 which is gonna be hosted 1097 00:56:17,670 --> 00:56:20,223 by Binghamton State University of New York. 1098 00:56:21,450 --> 00:56:25,350 And that will be a field program in the White Mountains 1099 00:56:25,350 --> 00:56:28,540 and they will be working on both Franconia Ridge 1100 00:56:30,376 --> 00:56:33,210 a couple days a week and the Crawford Path. 1101 00:56:33,210 --> 00:56:36,480 And we want to continue the international fellowship program 1102 00:56:36,480 --> 00:56:41,250 to give opportunities for researchers from around the world 1103 00:56:41,250 --> 00:56:44,640 and professionals to come to the northeast 1104 00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:49,640 and have an opportunity to do research on trails here. 1105 00:56:50,730 --> 00:56:53,040 And part of what we'd like to do 1106 00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:57,540 is even though we are centered in the White Mountains, 1107 00:56:57,540 --> 00:57:00,540 we'd like to eventually have the internship potentially 1108 00:57:00,540 --> 00:57:03,273 place interns throughout the northeast, 1109 00:57:04,260 --> 00:57:06,600 have a academic summer program 1110 00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:09,540 that would actually include, you know, 1111 00:57:09,540 --> 00:57:11,370 partially a visiting field program 1112 00:57:11,370 --> 00:57:14,220 where we visit different sites in the northeast 1113 00:57:14,220 --> 00:57:16,440 and also potentially in the future, 1114 00:57:16,440 --> 00:57:20,040 have International Trails Fellows doing research 1115 00:57:20,040 --> 00:57:22,143 and studying at other locations. 1116 00:57:24,090 --> 00:57:27,990 So that's it in a nutshell. 1117 00:57:27,990 --> 00:57:30,660 What we really are hoping for next year, 1118 00:57:30,660 --> 00:57:32,610 and we're working on the funding, 1119 00:57:32,610 --> 00:57:36,693 is to have a full-time coordinator for this program, 1120 00:57:37,800 --> 00:57:41,490 at least one chief summit steward that would work 25 weeks 1121 00:57:41,490 --> 00:57:46,490 and two to four summit stewards that would work 25 weeks. 1122 00:57:49,380 --> 00:57:52,080 We'd like to have four paid summit steward interns 1123 00:57:52,080 --> 00:57:56,100 that could work on both Franconia Ridge 1124 00:57:56,100 --> 00:57:58,200 and the Crawford Path. 1125 00:57:58,200 --> 00:58:00,390 We're looking to have 8 to 10 students 1126 00:58:00,390 --> 00:58:05,390 for the semester course, two visiting trails fellows 1127 00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:10,400 and continue working with the West End Trail Tenders. 1128 00:58:11,700 --> 00:58:14,640 So that's the vision, you know, 1129 00:58:14,640 --> 00:58:16,950 that's what we're working on, 1130 00:58:16,950 --> 00:58:20,310 and it's really built on an existing network, 1131 00:58:20,310 --> 00:58:24,840 which the Waterman Fund has been nurturing and fostering, 1132 00:58:24,840 --> 00:58:28,320 you know, for more than 20 years now. 1133 00:58:28,320 --> 00:58:31,920 And actually predates that because University of Vermont 1134 00:58:31,920 --> 00:58:35,400 had mountain stewardship conferences 1135 00:58:35,400 --> 00:58:40,400 going back into the 1980s and 70s. 1136 00:58:40,560 --> 00:58:44,913 And so we really wanna build on that existing network. 1137 00:58:47,190 --> 00:58:50,370 I mentioned briefly the trails and sustainability task team 1138 00:58:50,370 --> 00:58:52,410 that I'm also the co-chair of, 1139 00:58:52,410 --> 00:58:55,830 which has representatives from all over the world. 1140 00:58:55,830 --> 00:59:00,600 There's a possibility of connecting more with that group. 1141 00:59:00,600 --> 00:59:02,790 And the other project that we have 1142 00:59:02,790 --> 00:59:06,150 is the Pan-American Trail Network, 1143 00:59:06,150 --> 00:59:07,980 which is an exciting new vision 1144 00:59:07,980 --> 00:59:11,160 to develop a trail and trail network 1145 00:59:11,160 --> 00:59:14,100 between Alaska and Patagonia. 1146 00:59:14,100 --> 00:59:18,340 And I'm just very briefly going to throw out 1147 00:59:19,829 --> 00:59:21,300 our structure for that, 1148 00:59:21,300 --> 00:59:22,530 because I think part of what 1149 00:59:22,530 --> 00:59:25,350 we want to talk about in the future is, 1150 00:59:25,350 --> 00:59:27,720 well how do we build this network? 1151 00:59:27,720 --> 00:59:29,370 And I just wanted to give you an example 1152 00:59:29,370 --> 00:59:34,140 of how we're trying to build the Pan American Trail Network. 1153 00:59:34,140 --> 00:59:39,140 So we are working with existing trail organizations, 1154 00:59:39,180 --> 00:59:40,860 national trail organizations 1155 00:59:40,860 --> 00:59:44,790 from South and Central and North America. 1156 00:59:44,790 --> 00:59:49,320 This is over here in developing a cooperative group. 1157 00:59:49,320 --> 00:59:51,090 We formed a steering committee 1158 00:59:51,090 --> 00:59:53,913 that meets once a month of this group. 1159 00:59:54,990 --> 00:59:56,940 That group overlaps. 1160 00:59:56,940 --> 00:59:59,910 We have a couple of members of our board of directors, 1161 00:59:59,910 --> 01:00:01,500 it overlaps with the hub 1162 01:00:01,500 --> 01:00:04,380 for the America's Board of Directors, 1163 01:00:04,380 --> 01:00:07,890 and we're developing programs within the hub of the Americas 1164 01:00:07,890 --> 01:00:12,540 to support this Pan-American project. 1165 01:00:12,540 --> 01:00:14,970 Now, I know this is in Spanish here, 1166 01:00:14,970 --> 01:00:18,600 but you'll see these three sort of areas of conservation 1167 01:00:18,600 --> 01:00:21,371 and connectivity, economy, 1168 01:00:21,371 --> 01:00:24,390 (speaking Spanish) is cultural heritage, 1169 01:00:24,390 --> 01:00:27,090 And this reflects the fact that the Pan-American Trail 1170 01:00:27,090 --> 01:00:29,280 is trying to work on the relationship 1171 01:00:29,280 --> 01:00:32,670 between trails and conservation and connectivity, 1172 01:00:32,670 --> 01:00:36,510 connecting protected areas through long trails, 1173 01:00:36,510 --> 01:00:41,510 economic development through trails and tourism, 1174 01:00:41,580 --> 01:00:45,933 and the role the trails play in cultural preservation. 1175 01:00:47,280 --> 01:00:50,670 And so very much a part of what we wanna do 1176 01:00:50,670 --> 01:00:54,150 is get involved in conservation and research, 1177 01:00:54,150 --> 01:00:58,830 and promote connectivity and reforestation and restoration. 1178 01:00:58,830 --> 01:01:01,290 And that gives us an opportunity to then work with 1179 01:01:01,290 --> 01:01:05,490 a whole bunch of other groups, universities, 1180 01:01:05,490 --> 01:01:07,653 NGOs from around the world, 1181 01:01:08,700 --> 01:01:13,700 and also government agencies in a larger collaboration. 1182 01:01:14,190 --> 01:01:19,140 And so we're co-creating this vision of a trail, 1183 01:01:19,140 --> 01:01:23,830 long trail together in this larger network. 1184 01:01:25,680 --> 01:01:29,300 And just a last point to think about network planning, 1185 01:01:29,300 --> 01:01:30,630 (Nat laughing), 1186 01:01:30,630 --> 01:01:32,970 you know, networks come in different forms. 1187 01:01:32,970 --> 01:01:37,200 This is a graph from an article about 1188 01:01:37,200 --> 01:01:38,400 how to build a network, 1189 01:01:38,400 --> 01:01:41,700 and the main thing I wanna just pull out from here 1190 01:01:41,700 --> 01:01:44,820 is that we're used to thinking of organizations 1191 01:01:44,820 --> 01:01:49,763 as traditional hierarchical structures like up here. 1192 01:01:53,790 --> 01:01:56,550 We could go to the other extreme and have flash mobs 1193 01:01:56,550 --> 01:02:00,270 and have completely decentralized ad hoc networks. 1194 01:02:00,270 --> 01:02:03,570 And then there's all sorts of structures in between, 1195 01:02:03,570 --> 01:02:08,570 from coalitions to, you know, membership networks, 1196 01:02:08,640 --> 01:02:10,890 and you know, networks of networks, 1197 01:02:10,890 --> 01:02:14,250 which I think is some of what I was hearing Josh talk about. 1198 01:02:14,250 --> 01:02:16,680 I mean, we were just talking about different networks 1199 01:02:16,680 --> 01:02:18,720 and maybe how we could network together. 1200 01:02:18,720 --> 01:02:23,040 And so as I think we think about structure and organization, 1201 01:02:23,040 --> 01:02:24,960 you know, to be flexible and realize 1202 01:02:24,960 --> 01:02:26,040 that what we're looking for 1203 01:02:26,040 --> 01:02:29,523 is where do we place ourselves on a spectrum. 1204 01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:32,853 And with that I will stop. 1205 01:02:35,220 --> 01:02:37,500 [Joshua] Awesome, thank you so much, Nat, 1206 01:02:37,500 --> 01:02:38,943 really appreciate that. 1207 01:02:42,480 --> 01:02:45,903 So again, we're gonna go back to aha slides again, 1208 01:02:46,830 --> 01:02:51,120 and just kind of a question gauging the group. 1209 01:02:51,120 --> 01:02:54,330 You won't break our feelings or hurt our feelings 1210 01:02:54,330 --> 01:02:56,160 if you answered no to this question. 1211 01:02:56,160 --> 01:02:59,370 But could a Mount Observatory or Alpine Steward Network 1212 01:02:59,370 --> 01:03:03,570 potentially bring value to your work research or outreach? 1213 01:03:03,570 --> 01:03:08,570 And let's see, 1214 01:03:08,580 --> 01:03:13,240 I thought I was able to put the QR code 1215 01:03:14,220 --> 01:03:16,470 on the side here in case somebody would need it. 1216 01:03:16,470 --> 01:03:17,303 There we go. 1217 01:03:20,310 --> 01:03:22,470 Great, so we have a good percentage 1218 01:03:22,470 --> 01:03:24,840 that people might see some type of value 1219 01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:27,210 in the coordinated network of some way. 1220 01:03:27,210 --> 01:03:28,083 That's great. 1221 01:03:29,700 --> 01:03:32,253 And next question, something that Nat and I 1222 01:03:32,253 --> 01:03:33,840 have kind of been talking about 1223 01:03:33,840 --> 01:03:38,840 is what scale would an alpine researcher monitoring network 1224 01:03:39,060 --> 01:03:40,710 be the most effective? 1225 01:03:40,710 --> 01:03:43,770 You know, this is meant to be kind of just a prompt 1226 01:03:43,770 --> 01:03:46,410 to make us think about how the group is thinking, 1227 01:03:46,410 --> 01:03:50,430 but you know, looking to get some dialogue flowing 1228 01:03:50,430 --> 01:03:53,163 within the group here and also virtually as well. 1229 01:03:54,360 --> 01:03:55,410 [Attendee 1] I think it would be hard 1230 01:03:55,410 --> 01:03:58,233 to do an entire Appalachians one, 1231 01:03:59,070 --> 01:04:02,790 but especially just how geologically 1232 01:04:02,790 --> 01:04:06,090 the mountains are put together. 1233 01:04:06,090 --> 01:04:08,040 But I do like a northeastern 1234 01:04:08,040 --> 01:04:12,903 and or a New England, New York situation. 1235 01:04:15,810 --> 01:04:16,643 [Joshua] Yes. 1236 01:04:16,643 --> 01:04:19,080 [Attendee 2] I would say as the climate continues 1237 01:04:19,080 --> 01:04:21,330 to change and you know, 1238 01:04:21,330 --> 01:04:24,780 ecosystems are moving from the south further north, 1239 01:04:24,780 --> 01:04:29,780 including some portion of southern, the Catskills, 1240 01:04:30,540 --> 01:04:35,467 maybe the Berkshires may be important, but I don't know, 1241 01:04:36,660 --> 01:04:38,387 it's just my two cents. 1242 01:04:38,387 --> 01:04:39,220 Great. 1243 01:04:39,220 --> 01:04:42,363 Can all the virtual attendees hear people in the room okay? 1244 01:04:43,380 --> 01:04:45,180 -[Attendee 1] Yeah. -Okay, great. 1245 01:04:46,980 --> 01:04:51,213 Any other thoughts, reactions, feedback? 1246 01:04:52,830 --> 01:04:54,480 [Attendee 3] I'm curious what it would take 1247 01:04:54,480 --> 01:04:56,910 to expand it to like... 1248 01:04:56,910 --> 01:04:57,930 Obviously it would be great 1249 01:04:57,930 --> 01:04:59,190 to expand it to the Appalachians, 1250 01:04:59,190 --> 01:05:02,500 but like how feasible realistically would that... 1251 01:05:02,500 --> 01:05:04,290 Like, what would it take? 1252 01:05:04,290 --> 01:05:05,123 Yeah, 1253 01:05:05,123 --> 01:05:09,930 I mean it's a really good question and you know, 1254 01:05:09,930 --> 01:05:11,730 one thing that I was thinking about, 1255 01:05:11,730 --> 01:05:14,190 there are other biological field stations that I know of, 1256 01:05:14,190 --> 01:05:17,403 like Highlands Biological Field Station in North Carolina, 1257 01:05:19,307 --> 01:05:21,690 and Mountain Lake Biological Field Station, 1258 01:05:21,690 --> 01:05:24,390 I think in Virginia. 1259 01:05:24,390 --> 01:05:26,490 So there's other kind of field stations 1260 01:05:26,490 --> 01:05:28,320 that could potentially be involved 1261 01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:31,950 down in southern Appalachia area. 1262 01:05:31,950 --> 01:05:33,090 But then kind of thinking about 1263 01:05:33,090 --> 01:05:35,013 the stewardship component as well. 1264 01:05:36,180 --> 01:05:39,420 You know, this is something that the, you know, 1265 01:05:39,420 --> 01:05:44,420 Appalachian Mountain Club or Appalachian Conservancy 1266 01:05:45,120 --> 01:05:46,590 or other things that are kind of focused 1267 01:05:46,590 --> 01:05:48,900 on the Appalachian Trail Network 1268 01:05:48,900 --> 01:05:50,820 could be connected with in some capacity. 1269 01:05:50,820 --> 01:05:53,140 Maybe that would allow integration 1270 01:05:54,030 --> 01:05:55,410 into that type of network. 1271 01:05:55,410 --> 01:06:00,410 But yeah, for me it's difficult to process something 1272 01:06:02,340 --> 01:06:03,930 at that large of a scale. [Joshua Laughing] 1273 01:06:03,930 --> 01:06:06,000 [Attendee 2] Right, that's what I was thinking. 1274 01:06:06,000 --> 01:06:08,070 [Attendee 1] I suppose to expand upon 1275 01:06:08,070 --> 01:06:10,140 what I was saying earlier, Josh, 1276 01:06:10,140 --> 01:06:12,180 and just listening to some others, 1277 01:06:12,180 --> 01:06:15,150 but thinking about kind of what Nat said about networks. 1278 01:06:15,150 --> 01:06:17,820 So like, I think the southern Appalachians, 1279 01:06:17,820 --> 01:06:22,820 because they're separated in a number of different ways, 1280 01:06:23,820 --> 01:06:26,910 geologically and just spatially, 1281 01:06:26,910 --> 01:06:31,170 like that would be its own like southern Appalachians, 1282 01:06:31,170 --> 01:06:33,630 and then there'd be a northeastern Appalachians, 1283 01:06:33,630 --> 01:06:37,380 and then those two could communicate something like that. 1284 01:06:37,380 --> 01:06:40,502 Yeah, yeah, different ideas 1285 01:06:40,502 --> 01:06:42,120 and ways to think about things 1286 01:06:42,120 --> 01:06:45,093 I'll go to the next kind of questions here. 1287 01:06:46,230 --> 01:06:47,130 Just kind of briefly 1288 01:06:47,130 --> 01:06:50,040 thinking about organizational structure. 1289 01:06:50,040 --> 01:06:53,667 And I'm using the word initially here, you know, 1290 01:06:53,667 --> 01:06:55,770 I'm thinking about what the first step would be 1291 01:06:55,770 --> 01:06:58,969 if we were to come together, 1292 01:06:58,969 --> 01:07:00,660 you know, and start thinking about 1293 01:07:00,660 --> 01:07:03,120 how to collaborate work with one another. 1294 01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:05,318 And these are just really broad categories. 1295 01:07:05,318 --> 01:07:06,300 (Joshua laughing) 1296 01:07:06,300 --> 01:07:07,260 There's a lot of different... 1297 01:07:07,260 --> 01:07:09,510 You know, what Nat was showing of all the different ways 1298 01:07:09,510 --> 01:07:10,710 of networking and connecting. 1299 01:07:10,710 --> 01:07:13,500 There's a lot of ways that you can think about this, 1300 01:07:13,500 --> 01:07:18,060 but just kind of general thoughts on, you know, 1301 01:07:18,060 --> 01:07:19,533 what the first step would be. 1302 01:07:20,640 --> 01:07:22,320 You know, personally I think that there's, you know, 1303 01:07:22,320 --> 01:07:25,650 some type of NSF planning grant or something in the future 1304 01:07:25,650 --> 01:07:28,350 that would really help us think about, 1305 01:07:28,350 --> 01:07:31,440 you know, regional coordination in some way. 1306 01:07:31,440 --> 01:07:35,790 But, you know, just kind of some ideas 1307 01:07:35,790 --> 01:07:38,853 on ways to network and connect. 1308 01:07:41,760 --> 01:07:45,120 So a lot of support behind forming a network 1309 01:07:45,120 --> 01:07:47,070 that's hosted by a regional organization 1310 01:07:47,070 --> 01:07:49,140 with a compatible mission could 1311 01:07:49,140 --> 01:07:52,053 be something FEMC or AMC related. 1312 01:07:54,060 --> 01:07:56,910 Any kind of general thoughts or ideas 1313 01:07:56,910 --> 01:07:58,060 from the group on this? 1314 01:08:02,040 --> 01:08:03,450 [Attendee 3] I guess I would just say that 1315 01:08:03,450 --> 01:08:05,850 I recognize the heavy lifting that's gonna be involved 1316 01:08:05,850 --> 01:08:07,530 in any organization. 1317 01:08:07,530 --> 01:08:11,400 I do worry about equitable access 1318 01:08:11,400 --> 01:08:13,650 for smaller organizations, researchers, 1319 01:08:13,650 --> 01:08:16,230 with smaller nonprofits and smaller colleges 1320 01:08:16,230 --> 01:08:19,850 about recognizing the sheer amount of work 1321 01:08:19,850 --> 01:08:21,150 it would take to organize this, 1322 01:08:21,150 --> 01:08:23,880 but making sure they have a place at the table 1323 01:08:23,880 --> 01:08:25,560 and are treated equally. 1324 01:08:25,560 --> 01:08:26,393 Yeah. 1325 01:08:26,393 --> 01:08:27,540 [Attendee 3] In terms of their research. 1326 01:08:27,540 --> 01:08:29,003 [Attendee 2] That's a really good point. 1327 01:08:31,200 --> 01:08:33,390 [Attendee 1] I think also that some of these places 1328 01:08:33,390 --> 01:08:36,030 also distribute their data to a multitude 1329 01:08:36,030 --> 01:08:39,003 of organizations that would not be included in this. 1330 01:08:42,930 --> 01:08:43,763 Yeah. 1331 01:08:46,343 --> 01:08:48,543 So yeah, something to think about some more, 1332 01:08:51,870 --> 01:08:54,330 you know, for our initial group of mountain observatories, 1333 01:08:54,330 --> 01:08:57,420 thinking about how our data can be conducted, 1334 01:08:57,420 --> 01:09:00,468 which is a lot smaller scale 1335 01:09:00,468 --> 01:09:02,100 of a regional group of Mount observatories. 1336 01:09:02,100 --> 01:09:02,933 But, you know, 1337 01:09:02,933 --> 01:09:05,700 for our, you know, field stations, just thinking about, 1338 01:09:05,700 --> 01:09:09,360 you know, maybe FDMC being a resource for hosting our data, 1339 01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:10,890 you know, is a really good first step. 1340 01:09:10,890 --> 01:09:14,364 But thinking about this broader network, you know, 1341 01:09:14,364 --> 01:09:19,016 there could be some coordination that could happen 1342 01:09:19,016 --> 01:09:23,400 at, you know, these larger scales. 1343 01:09:23,400 --> 01:09:25,350 We're gonna skip over this session. 1344 01:09:25,350 --> 01:09:26,430 Kind of looking at the time, 1345 01:09:26,430 --> 01:09:29,970 I feel like we're doing fairly well in terms 1346 01:09:29,970 --> 01:09:34,470 of kind of thinking about this as a larger group. 1347 01:09:34,470 --> 01:09:37,740 So I think I'm just gonna kind of go 1348 01:09:37,740 --> 01:09:40,830 through these different questions here as a larger group 1349 01:09:40,830 --> 01:09:43,830 and we can kind of all reflect on them together, 1350 01:09:43,830 --> 01:09:47,010 seeing the amount of time that we have left. 1351 01:09:47,010 --> 01:09:50,000 But the first question I have here is, 1352 01:09:50,000 --> 01:09:52,440 in what ways could a regional mountain observatory 1353 01:09:52,440 --> 01:09:55,980 or alpine stewardship network expand opportunities? 1354 01:09:55,980 --> 01:09:58,287 So just kind of throw your ideas up on the board here 1355 01:09:58,287 --> 01:10:02,133 and we can talk about them as a larger group. 1356 01:10:03,540 --> 01:10:04,936 [Attendee 4] What do you mean opportunities? 1357 01:10:04,936 --> 01:10:05,769 (indistinct) 1358 01:10:05,769 --> 01:10:08,760 Opportunities for research coordination 1359 01:10:08,760 --> 01:10:12,840 or for kind of integrating stewardship 1360 01:10:12,840 --> 01:10:17,313 or research into academia for, 1361 01:10:18,360 --> 01:10:20,040 you know, kind of just broadly thinking about 1362 01:10:20,040 --> 01:10:24,600 the various opportunities that may be available 1363 01:10:24,600 --> 01:10:29,600 by forming a network in the region. 1364 01:10:33,845 --> 01:10:36,595 (softly talking) 1365 01:10:41,190 --> 01:10:44,430 So access to very large grants, really good point. 1366 01:10:44,430 --> 01:10:46,680 You know, thinking about funding opportunities 1367 01:10:46,680 --> 01:10:51,210 and, you know, collaboration at larger scales, 1368 01:10:51,210 --> 01:10:54,060 you know, allow, you know, 1369 01:10:54,060 --> 01:10:57,270 the ability to potentially apply 1370 01:10:57,270 --> 01:10:59,850 for larger amounts of funding and work together. 1371 01:10:59,850 --> 01:11:01,740 Collaboration, initiate ideas, 1372 01:11:01,740 --> 01:11:05,133 possible increase in strengthening of funding opportunities. 1373 01:11:20,130 --> 01:11:22,623 So I'll see some participants are typing here. 1374 01:11:26,580 --> 01:11:31,580 Synergy, uniformity and data collection at broader scales. 1375 01:11:32,700 --> 01:11:35,610 Coordinating around assisted migration, 1376 01:11:35,610 --> 01:11:40,610 which is why I was torn toward it being Appalachian wide. 1377 01:11:40,800 --> 01:11:43,680 Understanding trends, being seen in some areas 1378 01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:47,100 and management successes so that we can apply elsewhere. 1379 01:11:47,100 --> 01:11:48,750 Both coordinating stewardship efforts, 1380 01:11:48,750 --> 01:11:52,560 or intentionally trying different approaches 1381 01:11:52,560 --> 01:11:53,760 on different sites. 1382 01:11:53,760 --> 01:11:55,350 That's a good point. 1383 01:11:55,350 --> 01:11:57,720 Could provide a foundation for securing funding 1384 01:11:57,720 --> 01:11:59,670 and also an outlet for publishing 1385 01:11:59,670 --> 01:12:03,930 the organization's efforts and accomplishments. 1386 01:12:03,930 --> 01:12:06,330 Creating entry level jobs and conservation 1387 01:12:06,330 --> 01:12:08,820 for young people, working to collect data 1388 01:12:08,820 --> 01:12:10,890 and steward summits. 1389 01:12:10,890 --> 01:12:12,090 Increasing diversity, 1390 01:12:12,090 --> 01:12:15,570 generating public support through events. 1391 01:12:15,570 --> 01:12:17,040 All great ideas. 1392 01:12:17,040 --> 01:12:19,230 Anybody wanna jump in verbally 1393 01:12:19,230 --> 01:12:21,333 with any thoughts or reactions? 1394 01:12:26,760 --> 01:12:27,750 [Attendee 3] I totally agree 1395 01:12:27,750 --> 01:12:29,040 with the funding opportunities. 1396 01:12:29,040 --> 01:12:31,110 I mean, grant writing is an art 1397 01:12:31,110 --> 01:12:34,413 and a lot of smaller places might not have that expertise. 1398 01:12:36,180 --> 01:12:37,013 Yeah. 1399 01:12:42,030 --> 01:12:44,880 Great, now on the flip side of this, 1400 01:12:44,880 --> 01:12:48,780 what barriers exist to unleashing these opportunities? 1401 01:12:48,780 --> 01:12:51,780 And, you know, I don't know if people 1402 01:12:51,780 --> 01:12:53,640 just wanna write down the barriers first 1403 01:12:53,640 --> 01:12:56,220 and then maybe we can talk about as a group, 1404 01:12:56,220 --> 01:12:59,043 how some of these barriers could be overcome. 1405 01:13:20,430 --> 01:13:24,030 Organizational processes, something we talked about earlier, 1406 01:13:24,030 --> 01:13:28,263 thinking about how we all network and connect. 1407 01:13:43,200 --> 01:13:44,913 Focus on shared goals. 1408 01:13:51,750 --> 01:13:53,940 Translation of monitoring products 1409 01:13:53,940 --> 01:13:56,343 to conservation and stewardship. 1410 01:14:00,570 --> 01:14:02,940 Need for inclusion and equity, 1411 01:14:02,940 --> 01:14:04,500 drifting towards hierarchy, 1412 01:14:04,500 --> 01:14:08,043 losing the network to a dominant organization. 1413 01:14:08,914 --> 01:14:11,220 Is that interesting thing to think about? 1414 01:14:11,220 --> 01:14:15,720 Equity in access to alpine summit, natural communities, 1415 01:14:15,720 --> 01:14:19,260 public interaction aspect, 1416 01:14:19,260 --> 01:14:22,020 crossing funding government jurisdictions 1417 01:14:22,020 --> 01:14:23,913 across multiple states. 1418 01:14:29,970 --> 01:14:31,920 Communications between state agencies, 1419 01:14:31,920 --> 01:14:36,333 academia and the NGOs, servers, 1420 01:14:41,550 --> 01:14:43,890 I dunno, whoever wrote servers. 1421 01:14:43,890 --> 01:14:46,713 Maybe if you can clarify or think about it a little bit, 1422 01:14:47,730 --> 01:14:51,536 just provide a little more detail if you're willing to. 1423 01:14:51,536 --> 01:14:54,369 (Joshua laughing) 1424 01:14:58,410 --> 01:15:00,090 Funding from our host institutions 1425 01:15:00,090 --> 01:15:03,120 to work on network development, 1426 01:15:03,120 --> 01:15:06,390 computer power and space and where it's housed. 1427 01:15:06,390 --> 01:15:08,240 Okay, that's the clarification there. 1428 01:15:12,600 --> 01:15:16,560 Capacity of some partners currently at maximum already. 1429 01:15:16,560 --> 01:15:18,010 It's another very good point. 1430 01:15:18,960 --> 01:15:22,040 So any kind of ideas and feedback about some 1431 01:15:22,040 --> 01:15:25,200 of these idea and barriers and potentially 1432 01:15:25,200 --> 01:15:29,013 how some of these barriers could effectively be overcome? 1433 01:15:31,950 --> 01:15:33,900 [Attendee 3] I think the larger the network, 1434 01:15:33,900 --> 01:15:36,240 the more difficult it would be because of these barriers. 1435 01:15:36,240 --> 01:15:37,080 So, you know, 1436 01:15:37,080 --> 01:15:42,080 three sites I could envision, 30 would be a lot higher. 1437 01:15:43,418 --> 01:15:44,251 Yeah. 1438 01:15:50,430 --> 01:15:53,310 Feel free to chime in here at any time, everyone. 1439 01:15:53,310 --> 01:15:54,957 [Attendee 2] There are certainly large grants from NSF 1440 01:15:54,957 --> 01:15:57,390 for the development of cross collaboration 1441 01:15:57,390 --> 01:16:00,120 in novel networks like this, 1442 01:16:00,120 --> 01:16:02,280 would be the potential for funding for that. 1443 01:16:02,280 --> 01:16:03,113 Yeah. 1444 01:16:04,560 --> 01:16:05,880 [Attendee 1] I just think it would be important 1445 01:16:05,880 --> 01:16:06,983 to go, you know, 1446 01:16:06,983 --> 01:16:11,983 a step at a time and not rushing processes 1447 01:16:12,180 --> 01:16:15,783 and letting people's relationships be at ease, 1448 01:16:18,570 --> 01:16:20,970 so basically like a very much a timing issue 1449 01:16:20,970 --> 01:16:24,660 and you know, that way you're not overpowering anyone 1450 01:16:24,660 --> 01:16:26,520 and everyone is kind of coming in, 1451 01:16:26,520 --> 01:16:27,900 which may take a long time, 1452 01:16:27,900 --> 01:16:32,400 but I think to build relationships, it takes time. 1453 01:16:32,400 --> 01:16:34,413 [Joshua] Yeah, good point. 1454 01:16:36,750 --> 01:16:37,980 [Attendee 3] I don't see it up there, Josh, 1455 01:16:37,980 --> 01:16:39,573 but maybe turf battles. 1456 01:16:40,860 --> 01:16:41,693 [Joshua] Turf battles. 1457 01:16:41,693 --> 01:16:43,290 [Attendee 1] so many jurisdictions involved, 1458 01:16:43,290 --> 01:16:44,880 federal government, state government, 1459 01:16:44,880 --> 01:16:47,820 local government, private enterprises- 1460 01:16:47,820 --> 01:16:48,840 [Joshua] Yeah. 1461 01:16:48,840 --> 01:16:49,740 [Attendee 1] Various nonprofit hiking clubs. 1462 01:16:49,740 --> 01:16:53,340 I mean, I think it's gonna be some head banging, 1463 01:16:53,340 --> 01:16:55,044 you know, everybody wants the same end, 1464 01:16:55,044 --> 01:16:55,877 (Joshua laughing) 1465 01:16:55,877 --> 01:16:56,730 but how to get there. 1466 01:16:56,730 --> 01:16:58,110 [Joshua] Yeah, I can see that. 1467 01:16:58,110 --> 01:16:58,943 Yeah. 1468 01:17:05,250 --> 01:17:07,863 Okay well we'll go on to the next question here. 1469 01:17:10,500 --> 01:17:12,001 What would make you comfortable investing time 1470 01:17:12,001 --> 01:17:14,370 to participate in a Mountain observatory 1471 01:17:14,370 --> 01:17:15,840 or alpine stewardship network? 1472 01:17:15,840 --> 01:17:16,673 So, you know, 1473 01:17:16,673 --> 01:17:19,383 we kind of discussed some of these ideas on, 1474 01:17:20,340 --> 01:17:23,490 you know, organizational structure and, you know, 1475 01:17:23,490 --> 01:17:27,425 we all have these very busy lives, you know, 1476 01:17:27,425 --> 01:17:30,303 and very busy careers that we're all involved with. 1477 01:17:31,230 --> 01:17:33,183 You know, is there some aspect of, 1478 01:17:34,161 --> 01:17:36,963 the way that an organization would be structured, 1479 01:17:39,012 --> 01:17:42,060 or you know, the way that it hosts meetings 1480 01:17:42,060 --> 01:17:43,760 or other things that would make it 1481 01:17:45,240 --> 01:17:48,060 kind of important aspects of a network 1482 01:17:48,060 --> 01:17:52,073 that would make it more approachable for you to share, 1483 01:17:53,520 --> 01:17:58,083 to participate and connect with the larger network? 1484 01:18:01,470 --> 01:18:03,510 Relationship oriented, 1485 01:18:03,510 --> 01:18:05,190 knowing that the results of the work would lead 1486 01:18:05,190 --> 01:18:08,430 to tangible conservation outcomes. 1487 01:18:08,430 --> 01:18:11,490 Knowing that organizational goals are to include 1488 01:18:11,490 --> 01:18:14,700 and invite all people into conservation work, 1489 01:18:14,700 --> 01:18:17,883 knowing data collected will inform management, 1490 01:18:19,140 --> 01:18:20,703 achievable goals. 1491 01:18:44,220 --> 01:18:46,533 Connection to on the ground action, 1492 01:18:47,430 --> 01:18:49,713 regular meeting times once a month. 1493 01:18:51,060 --> 01:18:52,500 And that's something that our smaller group 1494 01:18:52,500 --> 01:18:53,610 has been doing right now. 1495 01:18:53,610 --> 01:18:56,880 And if anyone here in this group, 1496 01:18:56,880 --> 01:18:59,130 both online and in person are interested 1497 01:18:59,130 --> 01:19:01,260 in being part of the conversation 1498 01:19:01,260 --> 01:19:03,483 of our smaller group amount observatories, 1499 01:19:07,257 --> 01:19:09,840 please reach out to me and let me know. 1500 01:19:09,840 --> 01:19:13,140 And we're planning on meeting again in January 1501 01:19:13,140 --> 01:19:15,900 and our group is very inclusive, 1502 01:19:15,900 --> 01:19:18,720 and I think that we'd love to have 1503 01:19:18,720 --> 01:19:20,853 you be part of the conversation. 1504 01:19:22,280 --> 01:19:23,910 Bowney and birdy, the fun stuff, 1505 01:19:23,910 --> 01:19:25,350 great. 1506 01:19:25,350 --> 01:19:26,490 Not going in alone, 1507 01:19:26,490 --> 01:19:29,250 modeling our network after other successful networks, 1508 01:19:29,250 --> 01:19:30,093 great point. 1509 01:19:34,980 --> 01:19:36,990 Linked to other regional initiatives such as staying 1510 01:19:36,990 --> 01:19:39,423 connected initiative, it's a great idea. 1511 01:19:40,890 --> 01:19:44,373 Making fun group hikes, parties, data, info sharing. 1512 01:19:45,870 --> 01:19:48,450 Yeah, you know, right now, you know, overall, you know, 1513 01:19:48,450 --> 01:19:52,110 we kind of have this loose idea and we kind of shared a lot 1514 01:19:52,110 --> 01:19:55,963 of these ideas with all of you today about possibilities, 1515 01:19:55,963 --> 01:19:59,970 and I think really what it takes is, you know, 1516 01:19:59,970 --> 01:20:04,410 just being connected and learning from one another 1517 01:20:04,410 --> 01:20:06,723 about our work and what we're doing. 1518 01:20:07,680 --> 01:20:09,960 I do think that there could be these opportunities 1519 01:20:09,960 --> 01:20:13,470 for networking grants of some sort in the future 1520 01:20:13,470 --> 01:20:15,753 to really develop some type of network. 1521 01:20:16,680 --> 01:20:21,090 And that, you know, Nat's network 1522 01:20:21,090 --> 01:20:23,370 is a little bit more, you know, 1523 01:20:23,370 --> 01:20:26,220 developed than the science and monitoring network 1524 01:20:26,220 --> 01:20:27,053 that I'm looking at. 1525 01:20:27,053 --> 01:20:28,317 But, you know, both of our networks 1526 01:20:28,317 --> 01:20:30,720 are kind of in the early stages here. 1527 01:20:30,720 --> 01:20:33,630 There's opportunities for our networks to, you know, 1528 01:20:33,630 --> 01:20:36,210 potentially either interact in the future 1529 01:20:36,210 --> 01:20:40,050 or, you know, connect in some way. 1530 01:20:40,050 --> 01:20:42,150 You know, there's just so many different opportunities 1531 01:20:42,150 --> 01:20:43,560 and ways to kind of think about all of this. 1532 01:20:43,560 --> 01:20:46,920 So I hope today's, you know, discussion 1533 01:20:46,920 --> 01:20:50,490 and our presentations kind of leave you 1534 01:20:50,490 --> 01:20:51,998 kind of thinking a little bit more, 1535 01:20:51,998 --> 01:20:56,130 and kind of ruminating on some of these ideas that we had 1536 01:20:56,130 --> 01:20:59,610 and both Nat and I would love to hear from you as well. 1537 01:20:59,610 --> 01:21:01,660 So, you know, reach out to us 1538 01:21:03,660 --> 01:21:05,970 and, you know, give us additional thoughts 1539 01:21:05,970 --> 01:21:08,790 or let us know that you want to be included 1540 01:21:08,790 --> 01:21:11,580 in future discussions or involved. 1541 01:21:11,580 --> 01:21:13,740 We would love to continue 1542 01:21:13,740 --> 01:21:16,680 the conversation with all of you going forward. 1543 01:21:16,680 --> 01:21:20,223 So really appreciate all your time today, everyone here, 1544 01:21:22,217 --> 01:21:23,767 and yeah, thanks for everything 1545 01:21:24,646 --> 01:21:27,625 and looking forward to continuing the conversation later. 1546 01:21:27,625 --> 01:21:28,574 (Joshua laughing) 1547 01:21:28,574 --> 01:21:31,657 (attendees clapping)