Gabriel Hemery

Sunset and trees – chasing the light

Gabriel Hemery — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:21:17 +0000

Driving home yesterday the sun was streaking through the clouds in a stunning fashion. Unusually, I did not have my camera with me (note to self) and I knew that I had lost a rare moment. Once home and undeterred I thought it still worth walking up to nearby viewpoint while the sun was setting.

Sunset and trees. Lumix G3, 45mm (90mm in 35mm equivalent), f7.1, 1/500 sec, ISO160, tripod.

I planned my walk with the help of The Photographer’s Ephemeris- a really useful smartphone app. The Photographer’s Ephemeris (or TPE) is a tool to help with the planning of all types of outdoor photography, but it comes into its own in landscape and urban scenes. It is a map-centric sun and moon calculator that allows you to see how the light will fall on the land in terms of bearings, and gives the rising/setting times for sun and moon. It has been available for iOS (iPhone and iPad) for sometime, and an Android app was released recently.

Using TPE allowed me to position my camera at the right altitude and position to plan for the setting sun. I wanted to include the canopy of a small copse of trees in the lower portion of the frame.

I was armed with my new Lumix G3, a replacement for my GF2, plus 45-200 lens (equivalent 90-400mm in 35mm), and of course my tripod. One major advantage of the G3 over the GF2, other than having a larger sensor, is that a cable release can be used; making it much more convenient than using the self-timer to reduce camera shake.

There were still some spectacular cloud formations gathering around the dying sun and I took a lot of shots. I hope you enjoy a couple of my favourites. You can read some more of my posts on photography.

Sunset, trees and stormy clouds. Lumix G3, 72 mm (144mm in 35mm equivalent), f6.3, 1/640 sec, ISO200, tripod.

Gabriel Hemery

Tagged: apps, photo, photography, smartphone, sunset, trees

Our Forests Vision – have your say

Gabriel Hemery — Fri, 18 May 2012 16:24:04 +0000

The Independent Panel on Forestry is due to release their final report on July 4th. Although much anticipated by all those with an interest in the future of England’s trees and forests, it is likely that Government will issue quickly a holding statement and hold back on a fully-considered response for many months afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Vision presented by Our Forests for the future of England’s trees and forests has been well-received right across the sector and by the public at large. The Ginger Group is now keen to hear the views of the public, particularly from the half a million people that objected so strongly to the Government’s original proposals to sell off England’s public forests, in partnership with 38 Degrees.

Recently, 38 Degrees shared a post on their blog about Our Forests, written by ginger group member Jonathon Porritt. He explained why Our Forests are hoping 38 Degrees members would share their views on the Vision. You can read his blog post here.

Our Forests have come up with some questions they’d like to ask 38 Degrees members. You can answer the questions whether or not you’ve read the report. But if you’d like to read it to see more about the vision, you can download a copy here.

The survey won’t take long to fill in, and the researchers looking at the answers won’t see your name and personal details – just the answers that you give.

Take part in the survey

Gabriel Hemery

Tagged: England, forestry, independent panel, our-forests, policy, public forests, research

A hidden world of fungal cords

Gabriel Hemery — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 07:02:44 +0000

Next time you crunch or squelch through a rich leaf litter under trees, stop and get your eyes down to the forest floor. Carefully tease apart the rotting leaves, twigs and decaying branches and you may be lucky enough to see some fungal or mycelial cords.

Fungal cords running between a rotting silver birch log and the leaf litter on the forest floor

Quite a number of saprotrophic fungi, particularly the wood-decaying Basidiomycetes (e.g. including some of the stinkhorns, bracket fungi, or puffballs), can form mycelial cords. Cords are collections of hyphae that aggregate to form long cords. These cords can create vast webs across the floors of forests, in both temperate and tropical regions, where they link nutrient resources together.

Fungal cords and hyphae on a decomposing silver birch log on the forest floor. One cord can be seen top right linking to the leaf litter. Bottom left, visible as a network of dark strands, are probably the cords of the Honey Fungus Armillaria mellea

The cords can be visible as creamy white strands, varying in thickness from thin cotton threads to chunky spaghetti. Carefully roll over a well-rotten log (don’t forget to roll it back afterwards) and you may see cords running from the leaf litter on the forest floor, and onto and into the log . Sometimes you may find rotting leaves stuck together by tiny nets of white threads. Cords also travel at the surface of the soil, running along underneath a carpet of leaf litter, where you can track them to their source; often a substantial rotting log.

Fungal cords running along underneath the leaf litter (cleared away for the photograph). The cords rarely penetrate the soil.

It is thought that fungal cords play an extremely important role in recycling carbon and mineral nutrients, but little is actually known about their diversity and behaviour; for instance it is thought that fungi species that form cords can be highly competitive. Their ability to redistribute nutrients across the forest is extremely important but only just beginning to be understood and appreciated.

Gabriel Hemery

These photographs were taken during fieldwork where I was assisting the Sylva Foundation’s scholar, Kirsty Monk, in her DPhil research programme read more

Tagged: ecology, forest, fungi, science

Horse chestnut leaf miner moth on film

Gabriel Hemery — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 07:00:01 +0000

Today I watched a horse chestnut leaf miner moth, Cameraria ohridella, laying her eggs on the fresh young leaves of a horse chestnut tree. Here’s a short film that I captured.

The tiny larvae will hatch in about three weeks and start to feed on the tree’s resources. First the sap by tapping the veins, then by eating the leaf tissue. This is when the brown spots appear as the larvae ‘mine’ the leaves. By mid summer, trees infected by heavy populations of the leaf miner larvae may appear Autumnal; their leaves brown, blotched and tatty.

The Sylva Foundation is looking for volunteers again this year to help spot the presence or absence of leaf miner damage on horse chestnut trees across Europe. Why not get involved? See www.TreeWatch.com

Gabriel Hemery

Tagged: horse chestnut leaf miner, pests, trees

Forest mensuration on a smartphone

Gabriel Hemery — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 07:12:55 +0000

Forest mensuration (measuring trees and forests) has come of age. I have written a few posts about forest mensuration and also how to use a smartphone to measure tree height – see links below. I recently came across some really impressive apps for use by foresters and woodland owners to measure trees and areas, and to calculate stand basal area, using an iPhone smartphone.

The Relascope (Spiegelrelaskop), invented by Austrian forester Walter Bitterlich (1908-2008), is a specialist and expensive instrument used by foresters to estimating tree height, distance to tree (although this is complicated), and the basal area of a stand (the sum of the cross-sectional area of trees, taken as a dbh and calculated inside the bark). Although a superb instrument and highly accurate in trained hands, the Spiegelrelaskop is not likely to be used by many private woodland owners as it is unaffordable to many (£1500/$2400). Other relascope types are available, see How to use a wedge prism relascope to measure basal area, but the development of powerful forest mensuration tools for smartphones, which most people carry today, is very welcome.

The apps that I’ve been trying are available free from the Apple app store, developed by Taakkumn Watakushi from Fukushima in Japan. I have no hesitation in recommending these two apps as I’m not aware of anything else like these that are available for foresters. He also provides a compass surveying app (iCompass Surveying) that enables areas to be measured but I have not tested it.

iHypsometer - click to read more on the developer's website

The iHypsometer is a free (in the ‘Lite’ version) tool for estimating tree height. It works on the same principles of trigonometry that I explained in How to measure tree height using a smartphone but it copes with sloping ground (i.e. when the base of tree is not level with your feet) and it completes all the tricky maths for you. It requires that you have a ‘friend’, whose height you should measure, and who should stand next to the tree, although I find that a stick cut to a suitable height works just as well. Angle measurement works in the same way as I described in How to measure tree height using a smartphone except that it uses the short side of the phone. The only feature that I would like the developer to improve is to use the longer side of the phone for sighting along, as I have found in other apps that this provides much greater accuracy. Visit the iTunes app store to download iHypsometer

iBitterlich - click to read more on the developer's website

The iBitterlich is a free app for calculating forest stand basal area. It uses the view from the camera on an iTouch (latest model)/iPhone 3G and up/iPad, on which it overlays buttons where the number of trees of different categories of dbh can be counted simply by pressing them. In the screenshot (below) I was looking at the second tree that I had counted as a ‘+3′, and I had already counted 4x ‘+2′ and 11x ‘+1′ trees in my sweep, that at this point was almost complete at 320 degrees.

iBitterlich iphone app screenshot. This tree is a '+3'. Basal area and Stand volume are displayed at the top.

After finishing a 360 degree sweep of the forest stand and counting all the trees, the average tree height is entered in another field, and form factor can be adjusted. The stand volume m³/ha and basal m³/ha are then displayed at the top of the screen. Visit the iTunes app store to download iBitterlich

Have you tried these apps in the forest and did they work for you? Are you aware of similar apps from other developers? Is there a similar set of apps for the Android platform? Do let me and readers know by sharing your views via a comment.

Gabriel Hemery

First editorial meeting

Gabriel Hemery — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:21:35 +0000

Reblogged from The New Sylva:

The New Sylva - Flatplan April 2012

This week we held our first full editorial meeting with editors from Bloomsbury.

It is still two years until The New Sylva is published, and probably nine months before the editorial, design and marketing teams ‘launch’ the book within Bloomsbury. Between now and then some critical decisions need to be taken. The authors met with editors, Richard Atkinson and Natalie Hunt, to decide page size, layout concepts, and various style issues.

Black poplar trees

Gabriel Hemery — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 08:10:05 +0000

Black poplar Populus nigra (subspecies betulifolia) is a tree native to Britain and well-adapted to our floodplains. The species is widespread across the country but never common.

Black poplars often lean, and when in leaf their characteristic diamond-shaped leaves (cuneate leaf-bases) also help in identification. Female trees are very rare and so many trees in our landscape are clonal in origin. Due to conservation efforts to increase the number of trees, when at one time there were thought to be only 7000 left in the country, the species has been planted widely across the country.

I found a group of eight mature black poplars near Wallingford in Oxfordshire. The dramatic clouds added a dynamic touch to the composition of the photo and the low angle of the sun added tone and texture. To avoid lens flare I placed the camera, mounted on a tripod, precisely so that the sun was hidden partially behind the stem of the nearest tree.

Black Poplar trees near Wallingford in Oxfordshire

Photograph: Lumix GF2, 7mm (14mm in 35mm equivalent), f11, 1/200sec, ISO100. Tripod.

Gabriel Hemery

Tagged: black poplar, nature, photograph, photography, trees

On the hunt to capture England's last remaining mature elm trees

Gabriel Hemery — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 15:47:48 +0000

Reblogged from The New Sylva:

The authors recently travelled to East Sussex on the hunt to find some of England’s last remaining mature elm trees.

East Sussex is one of the last strongholds for the elm, where it is assisted in its battle to survive the continuing onslaught of Dutch Elm Disease by a special project run by East Sussex County Council; who employ a dedicated Dutch Elm Disease Officer.

The elm that was

Gabriel Hemery — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:07:52 +0000

The elm that was

This is the latest in my Elm series; my last image being Ghost elm.

I captured the shadow of a very large and healthy Cornish elm Ulmus minor subsp. angustifolia growing in East Sussex. It is one of the last large elm trees remaining alive in England, following the spread of Dutch Elm Disease, which has all but wiped out the majestic elm. The dark chasm depicts figuratively the loss of the elm in the English rural landscape.

I used burn and dodge tools in Adobe Lightroom to create the effect of a chasm in the ground. I left a subtle hint of colour amongst the darkness to help suggest depth (visible at full size). Some small adjustments of greens and yellows helped enhance the already strong tree shadow in the grass. Taken with a Lumix GF2 with 7mm lens (14mm at 35mm equivalent), f11, ISO100.

Gabriel Hemery

Tagged: art, dutch elm disease, elm, elm trees, nature, photography, tree

Drawing the magical oaks of Wistman's Wood

Gabriel Hemery — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 07:56:41 +0000

Reblogged from The New Sylva:

The authors visited Devon recently on the search for a number of trees and forestscapes for The New Sylva. Followers of The New Sylva on Twitter (@newsylva) will know that our first stop was the ancient oaks of Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor, followed by a successful search for one of Britain’s rarest trees; the Plymouth pear Pyrus cordata…