Introduction Page 12 |
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How can scientists learn everything about an ecosystem - such as rain chemistry and how fast trees grow - without studying it all year long, for many years? The answer is, they can't. To do the research that we are interested in here at the HBEF, our scientists, students, technicians, and others must go out into the forest (we call it "fieldwork") and measure ecosystem components during all seasons, in all weather, for many years. For example, to accurately measure how much snow or rain has fallen in the HBEF and all the watersheds during the year, technicians must visit every rain gauge in the experimental watersheds every week of the year - and there are currently 24 permanent rain gauges (referred to as "weather stations" on the map). In the summer two technicians drive along a dirt road to the bottom of two different sets of watersheds (watersheds 1-6 and watersheds 7-9) and hike to all the weather stations. In the winter these same technicians snowmobile the unplowed road and up into the same watersheds. It takes an entire day every week to visit the rain gauges! Click here to begin a tour of HBEF long-term monitoring techniques. Or, go to the next page where you will be able to learn more about acid rain research at the HBEF. ![]() ![]()
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