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Pine-Oak-Heath-Sandplain Forest at Camp Johnson -- Forests like this are common south of Vermont, but restricted to a few locations within the state (see http://gigapan.org/gigapans/34970/ for another location). The distinguishing feature is the presence of pitch pine (Pinus rigida) which is near the northern limit of its range here. This forest type occurs only on sandy plains which were created when sediment laden rivers built huge deltas into a post-glacial lake or estuary about 13,400 years ago. This site is 100 meters above sea level and about 8 km (5 mi) upstream from the mouth of the Winooski River near Burlington, VT. See http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/camp-johnson-vt.htm
More information follows in a comment. |
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Pine-Oak-Heath-Sandplain Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- Due to the presence of pitch pine, this is one of the rarest forest communities in Vermont, known only from the deltaic sandplains of Colchester (http://gigapan.org/gigapans/30324/) and this stand in the Salisbury Town Forest. The parent material for the droughty, acid soils is a 13,600 year old deposit of sand and gravel that is about 20 m deep here (an exposure of the deltaic strata under this surface can be seen here: http://gigapan.org/gigapans/34814/). Students at Middlebury College under the direction of Matt Landis have been describing the forest composition and population structure of this stand, and addressing questions about its disturbance history and the probable fate of the pitch pines. Results suggest that pitch pines have not reproduced in this part of the stand for many decades, and that many of the large pitch pines are dying. Most trees marked with flagging in this view are pitch pines.
Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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A ~100 Ma intrusive igneous rock that is characteristic of Cretaceous granitoids of the Sierra Nevada Batholith.
How many minerals can you identify? |
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Hemlock Forest in the Salisbury Town Forest -- Eastern hemlocks are responsible for more than 75% of both tree density and canopy cover in this stand, and hardwoods scattered among the hemlocks include three species of oak. The dark forest floor supports little more than mosses. Many of the trees here are about 200 years old, making it the oldest stand in the Salisbury Town Forest. A few trees are 300 years old, including two hemlocks in another GigaPan (http://gigapan.org/gigapans/35738/) and possibly the white oak near the center of this scene. Logging has occurred here (cut stumps are present in the stand) but it has been less thorough than most places in Salisbury and Vermont.
This stand occupies a southeast-facing slope with thin till-derived soils over Cheshire quartzite. Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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This is a thin section of dunite, a rock made up almost entirely of the mineral olivine, as seen in cross-polarized light through a Leica Z6 APO Macroscope. There is a band of black mineral grains to the left of center of the image that is a cumulate layer of the mineral chromite - in the magma chamber from which these minerals crystallized that band of chromite would have originally settled out in a horizontal layer. The width of the entire field of view visible here is just under 2 cm.
Unlike most of my GigaPans I didn't have help from the robot on this one. The thin section was moved by hand and the images were shot one by one. In fact, the stitch took far less time than the capture. Nonetheless it was well worth the effort - and the kind of task that is ideally suited to undergraduate/graduate students! :-) |
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Northern Hardwood Forest – Sugar maple and American beech are common in this stand and provide the yellow glow. Beech trees have reproduced by root sprouts far from the main trunks and form a dense sapling thicket. These saplings and some young sugar maples have held onto their yellowed leaves and brighten this scene after most canopy leaves have fallen.
The soil parent material at this site is silty deltaic bottomset beds deposited 13,600 years ago under 25 m of lake water near the mouth of a proglacial river. The abundant stones that were gathered to build the wall suggest a close proximity to the glacial ice that was constraining the spread of the ice-contact delta. Although most of the tree species here can live 300 to 400 years, few if any in this stand are more than 100 years old. The near side of the stone wall was an agricultural field until World War II. The far side has been a forest since about World War I, but was heavily logged in the last few decades. Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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Third of a series of three views of the spectacular folds in the Calico Hills just east of Barstow, California. |
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This is my first attempt at taking a macropanorama with multiple focal planes. I used the "Last Panorama" function on the GigaPan unit to retake the same field, but only after selecting another focal plane. I then used Helicon Focus software to render each frame, then stitched the panorama from the rendered frames with increased depth of field. This technique needs some work - I didn't get enough overlap between focal planes, so that's one area for improvement. I'll publish a detailed description of my technique on the GigaPan Forum once I work out the fine details. |
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Mesic Red Oak-Northern Hardwood Forest, Salisbury, Vermont -- This well-drained kame terrace in the Salisbury Town Forest supports a dry example of this forest type with three oak species. The forest community is distinguished by the absence of sugar maple, an important component of hardwood forests on less droughty sites. It includes red oak, white oak, and chestnut oak, and I think at least one black oak (I have yet to get my hands on a leaf or acorn from it).
Some botanical and technical information is in a comment. |
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Brown University's Great Temple Excavation, at Petra, Jordan. Gigapan taken by Ian Straughn. |