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Forest phenology

Deciduous forests undergo an amazing transformation each year. Every spring they use stored carbohydrates (carbon molecules) to build new leaves. This is when sugar maples produce the sap used to make maple syrup. As the newly developing leaves emerge, they begin photosynthesizing and converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic tissue (organic means made up primarily of carbon based molecules). Photosynthesis by plants and their biomass (i.e. leaves, roots, wood, etc.) is a major sink for carbon dioxide and plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle. This is referred to as a sink because plants can store more carbon than they release into the atmosphere via respriation.

In late summer, the trees sense the shortening of the days and begin to translocate resources from their leaves into other tissues. This helps them conserve resources prior to their leaves senescing and dropping from the branches. The leaves are still full of carbon which will then become leaf litter. Some will be incorporated into the soil while some is respired back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

Nearly all time-lapse projects present some challenges but this project was especially challenging. This sequence was shot from the window of a friend's house and was a collaboration with Sam Orr. We shot this sequence in five parts (spring, early summer, mid summer, autumn, and winter). The two longest sessions were spring and autumn with the spring session lasted 28 days and accounted for nearly 3,000 pictures. This sequence was shot using a Canon Digital Rebel tethered to a laptop running the program RemoteCapture 2.7. We had the camera taking pictures 24 hours a day for at least 75 days to have enough pictures to produce this sequence. Other controller solutions are now available that would permit the user to limit the activation of the camera to e.g. 10:00 and 13:00. Unfortunately for us and the camera, we had it running continuously for days often taking pictures at 15 minute intervals.