- Author: Lenya N. Quinn-Davidson
To see dwarf mistletoe seeds is to experience them. These are not typical seeds that gently drop from a mature plant. Rather, they are explosive — forcibly ejected from their fruits at high rates of speed. I remember learning about this in college: that dwarf mistletoe seeds can travel up to 60 mph and fly more than 60 feet from their hosts (Hinds et al., 1963). This process is triggered by internal heat production (called thermogenesis) within the mistletoe fruit — something that's never been observed in another plant (Rolena et al., 2015). It wasn't until many years after college that I actually experienced the phenomenon for myself. I remember driving along...
- Author: Matthew Shapero
Reposted from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network blog
- Author: Andy Fell
- Author: Jeannette Warnert
Newly minted UC fire scientist Kate Wilkin moves into fire country
Fire scientist Kate Wilkin was on the job just a few weeks...
- Author: Yana Valachovic
Reposted from the UC IGIS blog
Recently I was fortunate to work with the IGIS team in Santa Rosa and Sonoma to explore why so many homes and buildings were lost in the October Tubbs and Nuns Fires. With the IGIS's Shane Feirer we collected drone-based video to record how the fires burned through the vegetation near and around the lost structures.
We observed several sites where there was little fire activity in the forests or woodlands, yet the homes burned. This type of video helps us document how devastating a wind-driven...