Chipmunks!


Some thoughts about natural history study, global warming, and chipmunks

I've been lucky enough to visit and old haunt of mine a couple of times this summer. Slate Creek Valley, just outside of Yosemite and starting at 10,000' elevation was my home for a great summer way back in college. Among other things, I helped lead a long term study of chipmunk behavior there that looked at the interactions of two species and their habitats. One species, the Alpine Chipmunk, is smaller and adapted to the more open, rocky alpine conditions that exist at this timberline site. The other species, the Lodgepole Chipmunk, is larger and better suited for the small forest patches present. We studied their behavior intensively in natural enclosures and in the wild. Much of this data was apparently never published and I'm looking into that now as it strikes me that these types of interactions and adaptations could be a very good indication of some of the types of changes that will be seen as global warming continues. It's not easy to collect the type of baseline and detailed observational data that may be needed to help with such studies. The wide distribution and range of the many species of chipmunks in California and beyond would seem to make them very good subjects for such long term study and monitoring.

Thinking about all of this brought me back to a very special person, the late Enid Larson, who I was fortunate enough to meet and correspond with back in the early days of my sierra studies of the mountain beaver . She conducted a long term study (!) of Merriam's Chipmunk in the Santa Lucia mountains near Salinas, California from 1957-78. During that period, by her count she spent more than 10,000 hours in the field and accumulated more than 5900 pages of field notes. She published an amazing 3 volume document, apparently at her own expense, that details much of this work. I have a personally dedicated copy of this study on my desk here and have been pawing through it again after my sierra hikes. This incredible dedication and ability is the type of effort that can provide the very baseline information that is so often unavailable when important decisions about landuse change and development are being made. I want to acknowledge Enid Larson's excellent work and am thankful that I was able to meet her even though it was quite late in her very productive life. I'm going to try and follow through on some of this by bringing this kind of perspective into my work with native species in California.

Dale
just a little overwhelmed/

Posted: Sat - March 1, 2008 at 10:43 PM          

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