Lichen Yoga in the California Alpine: Yoking the creative and scientific parts of self
Lichen taxonomy is really exciting to some people. And I’ll be honest, I’m not one of them. I prefer the meta-stories — ones about how land and climate barriers have propelled speciation into many divergent paths, how species assemblages shift along different environmental gradients, and ways in which the lichen symbiosis can inform a more […]
Common Alpine Lichens of the High Sierras – California
What are the common alpine lichens found in the High Sierras of California? This handy six page guide just might answer that question. Jason and I made it for naturalists, alpine enthusiasts, and citizen scientists, with the hope that it will be helpful in field identification of common alpine lichen species or species groups. Rarity […]
Alpine Lichens – Mt Whitney: Part 2
Part 1 covered the hike, but we didn’t touch at all upon the lichens on Mt. Whitney! So let’s do that here. Firstly, you might be wondering – what’s the history of lichen collections of Mt. Whitney? Two words: its limited. Here’s the stats: Date […]
Alpine Lichens – Mt Whitney: Part 1
Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the conterminous U.S., looms over the Owens Valley, once a thriving agricultural area, now increasingly arid as its the major supplier of the Los Angeles water supply. It’s a striking landscape characteristic of the High Sierras, and the lichens on the summit were different than those we’ve found on […]
Alpine Lichens: Bishop Pass, Sequoia – Kings Canyon N.P., California
Bishop Pass is one of the more species-rich alpine locations in California that Imshaug collected in during his 1955 surveys. Despite the lack of well-developed soil, he found a number of soil crust lichens (terricolous lichens), along with dozens of rock lichens (saxicolous lichens). So we tasked ourselves with the same, and found all the […]
Mt. Tiffany, North Cascades, Washington
Giant fires raged last year when Jason and I attempted to survey two alpine lichen locations in Washington: Mt. Pugh (Glacier Peak Wilderness) and Mt. Tiffany (Okanogan National Forest); the 2015 fires shut down many of the towns in the Eastern Cascades, and flames were jumping over regional Hwy 2, blocking our access to the […]
