Mark Norris

Mustang Tree Climbing Club today, got off the ground, into, and around the tree using either a split tail or hitch climber moving rope system.

Heard first spring peepers of the season this afternoon

Tracing the origins of Stradivari’s resonance wood Stradivari’s violins represent the pinnacle of classical instrument making, yet the origins of the wood used to construct their soundboards have long …

Or go straight to the Dendrochronologia journal article here by Mauro Bernabei et al. (2026) (open access)
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tree Rings Reveal Origins of Some of the World’s Best Violins

'A study of the tree rings in Stradivarius violins, published in the journal Dendrochronologia, revealed the most likely origin of the violins: wood from high elevation trees in northern Italy.'

Free gift article from The NYTimes www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/s...

I love this idea of #TenMinMerlin, did it a bit last spring. It's always fun to see how nature changes in spring including the speed and extent of that change. Maybe this year I'll include graphs!

Subscriptions were already in a downward slide but the decline accelerated after 2024.

It seems like the broader conservative political strategy is for conservative media to be the only media and thus have complete control of the "truth"

The Baltimore Sun (& other local papers) was purchased in 2024 by individuals that also run conservative broadcasting companies including Sinclair. The political bias cannot be missed. Most stories in the Nation & World section come from the Sinclair National Desk.

'Some 10,109 doctoral-trained experts in science and related fields left their jobs last year as Trump dramatically shrank the overall federal workforce, representing 14% of the total number of Ph.D.s in STEM or health fields' formerly employed by the fed gov't. www.science.org/content/arti...

A local politician told a group that I was a part of this weekend that there's tremendous pressure to expand the Urban-Rural Demarcation Line in our county to allow for more development. How do suburban townhome developments with prices starting in the upper $300k help affordability?

I need to see some data about our so-called housing crisis. I'm not going to take a developer's, economist's, or politician's word for it. How's this fix the very real affordability problem?

And this morning's #sunrise. Lots of birds were active. Merlin helped us identify at least a dozen different species.

Monthly #sunset and #sunrise outings. Here's last night's sunset at the local reservoir

Can't let the students have all of the fun, so I strapped on a saddle and got up a tree too

Groundie kept busy while we climbed

Undergraduate research Tuesday: Again checking trail cameras and collecting SD cards for the #Arboreal project. Might need to replace a couple of finicky cameras that can't seem to remember the date/time or one that forgets to take pictures.

Maggie's draft logo sketch for our informal climbing club

Mustang tree climbing club (name TBD) 2nd meeting this morning. Practiced line setting and MRS with Blake's hitch.
#Arborist skills

This week in Intro Biology: Organismal biology, plant structures.
We sketch as much of our notes as possible. *NotAnArtist *NotToScale

We're capturing raccoons! Ok, we captured one raccoon hanging out 60' up the tree. Interestingly, it avoided the cameras lower on the stem.

Undergraduate research Thursday: Again checking trail camera for the #Arboreal project. Fingers crossed the cameras consistently behave. We'll be back next week to collect cards.

There is No Scientific Justification to Revoke the Endangerment Finding The U.S. EPA's decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding will limit the government's ability to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

As I say here, there is no scientific justification to revoke the engagement finding. In fact, over the last 15+ yrs, the evidence of how climate change affects our health has only grown. Higher risk of allergies, dementia, fertility, heart disease, and death: that’s what’s on the line. @nature.org

Undergrad #Arboreal Research Tuesday: We started using Wildlife Insights to process camera trap images. As a colleague said, This is a game changer! Allowed us to process several thousands of images in an afternoon. Now we just need our cameras to behave...

Trump Allies Near ‘Total Victory’ in Wiping Out U.S. Climate Regulation

'The EPA is expected to revoke the endangerment finding that has underpinned the federal gov’s ability to fight global warming. It determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health & welfare, required federal regulation of these gases.'
Free gift article The NYT www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/c...

Can Mountain Lions Survive as Humans Close In? California Is Trying to Find a Way.

Can Mountain Lions Survive as Humans Close In?
California Is Trying to Find a Way.
Free gift article from The NYT
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/c...

A word cloud from the titles of ~1100 NSF grants that were terminated. The most frequent words are STEM, ADVANCE, Student, career, and engines.

This a word cloud from the titles of ~1100 terminated NSF grants.

It is hard not to see these grant terminations as an attack on the training of the future United States scientific workforce.

Undergraduate research Thursday: Today we began checking camera trap captures for the #Arboreal project. We have over 60k images from 8 cameras deployed late October. As we've seen before, trail cameras are notoriously finicky and few operated the entire time but we did find some flying squirrels.

It seems that this culture varied from park to park within the system. Another student worked at a different park around the same time and had a very positive experience and is now in a permanent position with the MD park service.

A student of mine worked for MD State Parks a few years ago, described the work environment at her park as Toxic, well aligned with what this article describes. Hopefully the new leadership is successful in their attempts to "reform the culture of the park service."

Or what about the impact of moving our educational system online as every K-12 kid now has a device in the classroom. How has this altered school district budgets and more broadly, their environmental footprint to get, maintain, power, and provide content for these devices.

We're hearing a decent amount of the environmental impact of AI data centers (electricity demand & water use) but I'm curious about the same impact of shifting our entertainment to streaming services (as we signed up for another service to get our Winter Olympics fix).

Let's cross check this with where people get their news. Of course we're going to have political bias in our opinions but not all news or "news" sources are created equal. We cannot make informed decisions when we readily accept alternate realities as fact.

Let's cross check this with where people get their news. Of course we're going to have political bias in our opinions but not all news or "news" sources are created equal. We cannot make informed decisions when we readily accept alternate realities as fact.