Performing high-altitude research on global warming
From the SF Chronicle's science writer Carl Hall, featuring CNR alumnae Ann Dennis and Connie Millar:
Stately corpses of bristlecone pine trees, some dead for 2,000 years but still refusing to lie down, stood watch last week as botanist Ann Dennis and a crew of naturalists stepped off plots on the shoulders of 14,246-foot White Mountain Peak near the Nevada border.Working more than 10,000 feet above the sunbaked floor of the Owens Valley, the scientists were transforming one of California's highest mountaintops into a living laboratory of climate change.
Dennis and her colleagues are part of a global network of mountain-climbing researchers, all using precisely the same methods to observe the impact of global warming at high altitudes on five continents simultaneously....