Using climbing to do field research

Wondering if anyone has been able to use climbing to conduct research ideally in botany to reach cliffside plant communities for example. Looking to gain some experience and would like to utilise my skills in rock climbing and my study in forestry and botnay. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbC68OFBmDg

I actually doubt there is much climbing related activity, but I am sure lots of folks have used rappelling to access cliffside micro ecosystems for both botonny and animal research.  The problem with climbing to these areas is that you have the potential to damage them as you climb to them.  If you rap in, you have more control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1VFb4ddi3w&t=93s 

There's a podcast on the Firnline where Roman Dial (environmental science PhD) talks about using crossbows to shoot lines from tree to tree and climb between them so he could stay up there for days. There's a paper published on the technique I've dug up on google scholar before.

El Cap Tree was first climbed in 1952 to evaluate whether it was Ponderosa or a Jeffrey Pine.

It's mentioned in Camp 4 and also Al Steck's description is kinda interesting: "A good ledge it was, and we soon were sitting at the base of the “Tree.” Oddly, the sound of a tree frog was quite audible. Here was an isolated outpost of nature … unsullied by contact with its infinitely larger life-source below in the Valley. Just the sort of material for a jolly Ph.D. thesis on wild life, it seemed."

I did a lot of climbing as a wildlife biologist; climbing trees to band bald eagles, long rappels to access peregrine falcon nests, raptor observation blinds 100 feet up in trees.  No botany though.

The Science or Discovery channel had a documentary of biologists using climbing techniques for researching the plant/animal life in the California Redwoods. It was quite fascinating.

This isn't from the documentary but gives you an idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2lWZ4BSHQ4

My Forest Ecology professor talked about shooting tree limbs down with a shotgun to get bud samples. So you could always just shoot at the cliff.

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/apexprod/rws_etd/send_file/send?accession=osu1562584961670604&disposition=inline

Masters thesis from a student at the school I used to work at.  He looked at the impacts of climbing on lichen communities in the Red.

Andre Chiangwrote:

Wondering if anyone has been able to use climbing to conduct research ideally in botany to reach cliffside plant communities for example. Looking to gain some experience and would like to utilise my skills in rock climbing and my study in forestry and botnay. 

You should reach out to the Rumney Climber's Association and the Western Mass Climbers Coalition. I believe WMCC has sponsored studies in the past at Farley and Hanging Mountain (may be ongoing at Hanging Mountain?). The RCA may have done something similar when they purchased the Buffalo Pit.

I recall a cool story in the Climbing Zine about doing wooly flying squirrel research via rock climbing.

I also saw this podcast posted on MP about really old trees that live on cliffsides.

There was a position open a few years ago at Devil's Tower for a climbing ranger / bird ecology person. The job description required trad climbing up to 5.9 to access bird nests for surveys. 

http://www.cliffecology.com/who-we-are

"Owner and founder of Cliff Ecology Consultants, Peter Clark is a PhD student of natural resources at the University of Vermont. He holds a master's degree from West Virginia University and a bachelor's Hampshire College. He has over fifteen years of experience specializing in studying rare and inaccessible landscapes from cliffs to remote mountaintops to lava flows."

I used to climb big Northern California trees as part of bald eagle research.  I’d get into the nests, bag an eagle chick and lower it down to be measured and radio tagged.  The chicks were decent sized, the time to this was right before they learn to fly.  

So, I’d short fix my rope with about 20 feet of slack, get underneath the nest and then mantel up and in.  Usually the chick would charge me wigs up and talons slashing.  I’d have to finish my roof moves and while carefully getting the wings down and the chick hooded.  Then I’d chill in the nest while the scientists did their thing, pul the bird back up and rap back down.  Fun stuff!

That sounds like a pretty cool gig. I would have loved to find something like that when I got out of college.

Alpinist article from 2017 about climbers doing botanical research and human impacts on cliff zones: alpinist.com/doc/web17c/wfe…

Bats and impacts of white-nose syndrome are of major interest to terrestrial biologists. Peregrines too but mostly monitoring these days compared to the early days of hand rearing eggs.

And frogs live on El Cap. Whats up with that?

Big Wall Bats - Yosemite Conservancy Grant Page

big wall bat abstract

Rock & Ice Bats Article

I know of some research into cliffside monkey flower (mimulus) but not sure where its at.