The Klamath Mountains with Michael Kauffmann

Michael Kauffmann  0:00  
And I tracked down I was taken through knee deep snow, got over the pass and dropped into a place called Clear Creek in the Cisco news and was humbled because I thought I knew trees I thought I knew plants and I realized I didn't know anything, and the Klamath mountains. It was all new to me. Hello,

Michelle Fullner  0:17  
and welcome to Golden State naturalist, a podcast for anyone who's ever looked around and realized just how much there is left to learn. I'm Michelle Fullner. And today we're talking about Northern California hotspot for biodiversity, the Klamath mountains with Michael Kaufman, whose voice you just heard. In this episode we discuss ancient rocks, carnivorous plants, temperate rainforest, why people are a vital part of the story of place, and why the Klamath mountains are bursting with a truly stunning array of beings and relationships. Two quick things before we get into the episode. One is that the next episode is going to be all about what it means to be a naturalist with Justin Garwood, who actually co edited a natural history of the Klamath mountains with Michael Kaufman. So we all went out to the Klamath mountains together, and I interviewed them separately on different topics. So if you've ever wondered what exactly a naturalist is, or how to develop your naturalist skills, stay tuned for that conversation and make sure you're following the podcast so you don't miss it. And two, if you believe in what Golden State naturalist is doing and want to help more people connect with the natural world all around them, it would be so appreciated if you would consider supporting the show for as little as $4 a month on Patreon, the wonderful people supporting the show on Patreon. Allow me to plan for the future and keep bringing you great guests on fascinating topics from all across the state. And as a thank you patrons get access to bonus audio from interviews, the ability to submit questions for guests and a patrons only book club. If you want to help me keep making the show and reaching more people. You can find me on Patreon at patreon.com/michelle Fullner. That's Michelle with two L's and Fullner is fu ll en er, I'll also put a link in the show notes so you can pop down there real quick and you can even start with a free trial. But now let's get to the episode. Michael Kaufman is an ecologist, author, editor, speaker and educator. He earned his BA in biology with a chemistry minor from Virginia Tech multiple and single subject teaching credentials from Humboldt State University and an MA in Biology from Humboldt State in 2012. Also in 2012, Michael co founded backcountry press where he and his wife Allison Polk, Lembah, who you might remember from the seaweed episode are on a mission to enhance the human connection with the natural world through easy to understand science and direct experience in nature. Together they publish a beautiful collection of books and craft both online and in person experiences in service of this mission as an author. Michael's books include conifer country carnivores of the Pacific slope, a field guide to Manzanita's and California desert plants, and in 2022, backcountry Press published the beautiful and comprehensive Klamath mountains and natural history edited by Michael Kaufman and Justin Garwood. This book has since won the 92nd annual California Book Awards gold medal for contribution to publishing. So without further ado, let's hear from Michael Kaufman on Golden State naturalist.

It was a drizzly morning back in April when I met Michael Kaufman and Justin Garwood in a Safeway parking lot in Arcata, California. We piled into Justin's car and headed east on a windy highway 299 for about 40 minutes until we reached east for campground. The area was still close to campus for the season. So we pulled over out of the way the locked gate, opened our doors and stepped out into a world covered in moss, a trickle of water ran down and nearby rockface. little ferns popping up here and there out of the mosses, trees wore luxurious green turtlenecks and the sound of water was everywhere from raindrops hitting the hood of my jacket to the little impromptu stream coming down from the rocks to the sound of a rushing Creek in the distance. We explored the area for a bit peering into the creek and peeking under a few logs. And soon, Michael and I sat down at a picnic table to discuss this beautiful place we were in.

Michael Kauffmann  4:29  
We're just on the western edge of the Klamath mountains. And because of that we have the influence from the coastal environments, the wet coastal environments. So we're in what I like to call the coastal temperate forests of the Klamath mountains. And basically it's almost like a redwood forest without the redwoods. So the understory is an influence of sword ferns and Trillium and redwood sorrel. coltsfoot. But the overstory is a mix of coastal species like big Douglas firs, tan oaks, big leaf maples, and we even have an endemic conifer here. The Port Orford, cedar, Camus Ypres, Lawson, IANA.

Michelle Fullner  5:10  
That's this one right here.

Michael Kauffmann  5:11  
This is yeah, it's right next to us. And this This is basically its southern range extension right here on in this canyon. How far north as they go, they go up to around Port Orford, Oregon, okay, on the coast cocoa river, they get inland on the cocoa River. That's where the real big ones are left standing. And then they're scattered throughout the Siskiyou mountains in the Klamath mountains, skis or sub range of the Klamath, but there's a really interesting population relict population in the headwaters of the Sacramento River. So way over by Mount Shasta, there's a pocket of these trees that still exists and that there's some debate about why they're still there. But the idea is, it's a kind of this real wet spot near Mount Shasta kind of traps the rain, and that the wetness is has persisted in that Eastern Klamath mountain population in the Sacramento River headwaters. It kind of mimics where we are now. Interesting. Yeah, but it's yet it's about 100 miles away as the crow flies inland. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  6:05  
I just want to pop in here and tell you to remember Port Orford cedars and this funny relic population in Shasta, because they're going to be a great example of something Michael says later in the interview, and here in the Klamath, you have so many little microclimates that you might have something that's reflected really far away, all smushed in together.

Michael Kauffmann  6:24  
Yep, in this one spot. That's right. That's so yeah, every little spots unique in the Klamath,

Michelle Fullner  6:29  
more about what makes the climate so unique in just a moment.

Welcome back today on Golden State naturalist, we're talking about a biodiverse Northern California mountain range, the Klamath mountains with Michael Kaufman. Let's start with Michael's story. How did you initially become interested in the natural world? And then how did that end up as this deep dive with the Klamath mountains natural history in this region?

Michael Kauffmann  7:24  
Sure. Well, it's a long story, but I can consolidate it. I grew up in the eastern deciduous forests and the title swamps of Virginia near Jamestown and Williamsburg and I was lucky because we had this natural setting that was the National Park of the colonial Parkway to escape to and canoe through and stomp through the mud. And there were these secret spots that nobody knew about that week found his kids that we could go and have campfires in the afternoon or camp out as we got older. And that was my gateway to nature that in the boy scouts, but I think nature close by and being lucky enough to be able to access it was important. Then I went to college and I knew that I wanted to study the natural world because I had a high school biology teacher who created a field course they call it a wet and dry biology and it was two periods so he would load us on a bus and we would go places we had hip waders we'd go through the swamps. We look at beaver dams, we can identify trees in the winter without, you know by bark without leaves. So little things like that really piqued my interest. So I went right to college and and got my biology degree in four years. I can't say I excelled in those four years, but I learned I learned the stuff I wanted to learn. And then I found my way west to teach environmental education. I had done some teaching in summer in the summers between you know my university time and realize that it was a great way to a be able to live wherever you wanted because teachers are needed everywhere but also beat inspire both myself and the students. So I ended up in Tulare County teaching at sai con, which is an environmental education school that sees all the kids from Tulare County all the sixth graders, which is pretty amazing that every kid in the county gets to go to an Environmental Education Center. And that was a one year internship. I parlayed that into a full time job with Los Angeles County teaching in the San Gabriel Mountains. And when I was in St. Gabriel's it was great because a it's this kind of this wilderness oasis in the middle of the urban sprawl, you know, everywhere around the st. Gabriel's that's flat has people you know, the high desert, the LA basin Samara and Edina the Inland Empire, but yet the San Bernardino has and the st. Gabriel's where I live. Where are these epic adventures places, right? Yeah, so I escape i see bighorn sheep, I climb the mountains and I'd start to see these unusual trees at the tops of the mountains. And that also continued when I went to the desert the Mojave Desert, you climb to a high peak, a six or seven or 8000 foot peak in the Mojave and there might be white fur at the top so I started to develop this connection with conifers.

Michelle Fullner  9:55  
The word conifer comes from Latin and literally means cone bearing So all your pines redwoods, firs, cedars cypresses all conifers, I find this word to be a wonderfully welcoming word for learners like me, because using more specific terms like cedar or furred requires a bit more botanical knowledge, whereas conifer allows new people into the conversation to talk about the species more generally. And I love a word that does that.

Michael Kauffmann  10:22  
And conifers are really my, you know, my first love of the natural world as a young adult. And anyway, the other part of the story is everybody I worked with went to Humboldt State Cal Poly Humboldt. So I knew I needed a teaching credential. And after about I was five years with Los Angeles County, I took half a year off, I hiked the Continental Divide Trail, and I moved straight to Arcata nice and jumped into the school thing again, you know, after about an eight year low and lucked into a job teaching middle school science. And I got to say and humbled and that allowed me summers off, which I started to spend on the Klamath and the Klamath mountains. You know it. I'll tell you the first story, and I wrote about this in my first book conifer country, but the first story of me in the Klamath mountains was a weekend in February up here in Humboldt County, we get President's week and you get a

Michelle Fullner  11:16  
whole week off and feminine, or at least in some school districts. Don't get it. Yeah. And

Michael Kauffmann  11:20  
I think it evolved because typically the darkest rainiest times of the year and people just needed a break from no recess with kids or whatever. So anyway, I had that week off. And I decided I looked was poring over maps, and I found this 4000 foot pass in the Syracuse, and I just come from Southern California, 4000 feet, and Southern California, it's no big deal. You know, you could get there anytime a year. Well, I learned pretty quickly that 4000 feet and Syracuse is a different story. And I tracked down I was hiking through knee deep snow, got over the paths and dropped into a place called Clear Creek and the Siskiyou is and was humbled because I thought I knew trees. I thought I knew plants. And I realized I didn't know anything. And the Klamath mountains. It was all new to me. I was seeing. I knew I knew to look for the brewer spruce, which is our endemic spruce, and I found the Brewers spruce, and I was pretty jazzed and like, Yeah, but then I'm seeing firs, hemlocks, and I didn't know what they were, how

Michelle Fullner  12:16  
did you feel at that moment? Was it like a, was it a moment of awe? Or was it like, crap?

Michael Kauffmann  12:22  
Like? I think I think always there because I, you know, again, I said I was humbled and I was because, you know, I kind of came in thinking, Oh, I know, I'm pretty good naturalist. I know, right? I know, my trees. But it was also became a challenge. And so I finished that trip, and I got back to civilization. And I went to the I remember going specifically to the Cal Poly library and trying to dig into any sort of literature about the plants appeared specifically kind of for distributions, and there wasn't a lot. There was, you know, obviously, Ron landers, conifers of California, sort of a Bible for conifer lovers. But Northwest California was a gap in that book. He didn't he didn't have the information I was looking for. There's some literature from the 60s and 70s, from Griffin and Critchfield. They had some nice maps. And I dug through that and fell in love with their biogeography and distributions. And then that led me to meet one of the professors at Cal Poly John Sawyer, and he really set me on the course as a Klamath mountain naturalist. Hmm. And that progressed from there. It progressed from there, you know, he took me under his wing i by what was it 2012, I finished my first book with him as my mentor, he convinced me to turn it into a master's degree at Cal Poly. And that was my book conifer country. And what's exciting about that book is it was the first natural history that was allowed to be a master's thesis at Cal Poly and 25 years so that I had no data analysis. It was all mapping, interpreting relationships of these conifers, in the reason that I pursued that is because the Klamath mountains are one of the most diverse temperate coniferous forests on the planet. Okay,

Michelle Fullner  14:01  
and I want to dive into that more deeply. But first, I kind of want to frame the conversation. And I think that I've heard you speak elsewhere really in a compelling way about what a natural history actually is. And I want to get that definition to sort of set the scene for what we're about to talk about. Sure you define a natural history?

Michael Kauffmann  14:18  
Well, if I take it back to my arrival in California real quick, I lived in Tulare County, like I said, but we took the first week I lived in this internship in this at this school, we took a trip to Sequoia National Park and we stopped at the Visitor Center on the way in at three rivers and I bought the Sierra Club guide to the Sierra Nevada and Joseph Whitney, or Whitney's as the author is the author's name, but that was my first real exposure to a natural history. And a natural history to me is is a story defined by some sort of boundary, whether it's climate or geology or both. And obviously the Sierra Nevada is easily defined by geology that the Grinnell attics and it was a great introduction. You know, because it discusses the birds and mammals and the plants and the geology and the climate. So natural history is really a story about a specific place. And growing up on the East Coast, it's a little harder to define a natural history because the Natural Histories on the East Coast are so much older. And you know, if the Appalachians are 400 million years old, they've had a lot of time to, to sort of meld and different places within the Appalachians sort of come together over that long periods of time. The geology maybe melts together a

Michelle Fullner  15:30  
little bit not as cleanly delineated. Yeah,

Michael Kauffmann  15:33  
it's older, the West Coast is newer. And I think that allows it to be a natural history to be told. So to me, that's what a natural history is. It's a story of a place as comprehensive as you can make it. It's

Michelle Fullner  15:45  
almost like the way that you organically experience a place because when you go somewhere, you're not just only seeing birds, right? It's not like which, you know, field guides for birds. Great. Awesome, right? But there's so many layers when you go to a place and you start to know it and you start to experience it and putting all of those layers together. Would you say is that kind of what makes it natural history?

Michael Kauffmann  16:06  
Exactly. Okay. Yeah. How those birds relate to everything else around it, the ecology, the ecology, exactly.

Michelle Fullner  16:12  
Relationships. I love. That's beautiful. Okay, so a natural history is the story of a place, interweaving as many beings and other factors like geology and climate as possible. But how should we come to a natural history? What kinds of assumptions should we bring the

Michael Kauffmann  16:28  
assumptions around natural history? I think what's important to understand is that you're never going to know it all, first of all, so it's, again, a humbling thing. And you know, when Justin and I put this natural history of the Klamath mountains together, just in Garwood, we drew on a lot of local experts, because we wanted to make sure that it was comprehensive. But I think the other important part about natural history is, at least from my perspective, is that it's, it's a love story. I mean, it's, it's something that you really have to immerse yourself in. And the story part is also important, and you're a storyteller, you know, this, but you have to be able to weave the maybe it's just the lichens and bryophytes, right that pique somebody's interest, but if you can weave that in to their relationship to invertebrates, maybe that person is going to flip to that chapter. And then they they find a new love, right? And and I think by telling a story in this way, we're leading to more, I would hope, leading to more understanding and that understanding deepens all of our relationship to the natural world, and then ultimately, our stewardship and caring for these places.

Michelle Fullner  17:31  
If you haven't listened to the episode on nature journaling with John Muir laws, cue that one up next, because what Michael says here reminds me so much of what John Muir laws, also known as Jack says about love, Jack defines love as sustained compassionate attention. And bringing together a comprehensive natural history of a place is going to require a lot of sustained, compassionate attention to be done well, and that really radiates off of Michael in this conversation and off the page in the claim of natural history. So let's dive into the Klamath mountains and where we are right now. So I'm wondering if you can just give a physical overview where are the boundaries? Sure.

Michael Kauffmann  18:08  
So the Klamath mountains are defined by rock and I talked about how you define a natural history. So Justin, and I use the Klamath mountain geomorphic province. And what's interesting about the Klamath mountains are they're they're literally an island geological islands. So these these rocks on which we sit today are old, like upwards of 6070 80 million years old, the rocks get older as you move further to the east up to 300 million years old, but the rocks were formed under the ocean floor. In many instances. There's there's some exceptions. And that's the other part about the Klamath is the geology is nutty complex. But basically, these rocks were igneous, formed at the base of the ocean and through tectonic movement have been what's called accreted or just dumped onto the North American plate. So there, they might have been put here that about the same time as some of the CO strange, but they were formed much earlier. All right, interesting. So because of that, it creates a complexity and often that complexity comes from heavy metals, nickel, magnesium, things that a lot of plants don't deal with well, or you know, anything really, but plants are sort of the the easiest way to see that. And so this, this ancient rock is here, it's surrounded by this younger rock of the coast range to the west and the cascades to the east. And it's really created this abiotic and biotic Wonderland because of the interactions of the soils, the climate and obviously other abiotic factors like fire have sculpted the Klamath mountains for a long time. I found a webpage from

Michelle Fullner  19:39  
Michigan State University that explains this really well. It says biotic and abiotic factors are what make up ecosystems. biotic factors are living things within an ecosystem such as plants, animals and bacteria, while abiotic or nonliving components such as water, soil and atmosphere, the way these components interact is critical in ecosystem. So abiotic and biotic factors are important in every ecosystem, but in the Klamath mountains, the abiotic factors, including fire, as Michael just mentioned, drive an incredible amount of diversity. I'll let Michael explain more about how exactly that works. And

Michael Kauffmann  20:16  
because of that dichotomy from it's tons of mountain ranges to write, so we have all these sub ranges from the Siskiyou mountains to the Trinity Alps, to the Scott mountains to the Trinity mountains, you know, so all these different mountains, these different Appalachians have different characters, some might be taller, some might be granite, some might be Serpentine, but they all have this common origin story of ancient rock. So you've got this setting where the rock really drives diversity and biodiversity. And then again, you've got this complex climate where we're we're in here now we're in basically a rainforest this this area gets about 60 inches.

Michelle Fullner  20:51  
National Geographic tells me that a temperate rainforest gets between 60 and 200 inches of rain per year. So this western part of the Klamath mountains is just squeaking into that definition with 60 inches of rain per year. Still, we have a temperate rainforest in California. How cool is that? And I was so excited that I interrupted Michael to point out the mosses in epiphytes, which are non parasitic plants that grow on other plants, dairy, mossy moss everywhere you

Michael Kauffmann  21:20  
look. Yeah, yeah, it's incredible fights. Yeah. epiphytes hanging everywhere. We've got ferns growing up the side of this big leaf maple in front of us, if we were to get up into these Douglas firs around us, they'd probably have some interesting epiphytes up there, whether it's, you know, an animal or a plant living off of these things. So you've got, again, in the western part of the Klamath, you've got this wet situation and as you move further to the east, things dry out. So that also creates this dichotomy in life. Where wet pockets become less common and drier pockets become more common serpentine also becomes more common. That's that heavy metal rock that I was talking about. I have so

Michelle Fullner  21:59  
much serpentine drama to report. The first Did you know that serpentine is California State rock, and that it can be apple green to black and is often modeled with light and dark colored areas. It's really pretty or that it occurs in Central and Northern California, in the Coast ranges, the Klamath mountains and in the Sierra Nevada foothills. According to the California Department of Conservation. I also found a whole page from the US Forest Service titled serpentine soils and plant adaptations, which explains that plant growth on serpentine is typically stunted woody plants that grow to tree height on non serpentine soils grow in a dwarfed or shrub like form on serpentine soils. And it also discusses a bunch of other interesting plant adaptations to serpentine so I'll link that page in the show notes in case you want to learn more, but I also found the most amazing SF Gate article from 2010 When apparently there was a movement to remove serpentine as California State rock and remove the category of state rock altogether all because serpentine contains asbestos. This SF Gate article reads like something out of IE entertainment news in the best possible way. I have to read you an excerpt because it's just so good. The stoning question serpentine has been the state rock since 1965, but a group led by Senator Gloria Romero, Democrat East Los Angeles, once it removed from the symbols list because it often contains the carcinogen linked to 2500 deaths a year in the United States. Romero has introduced SB 624, which would strip the all of Greenstone of its title, but she is now running up against a gaggle of geologists and natural history buffs who have removed their spectacles thrown down their lab coats and are rallying to the rocks defense Serpentine, they say is intricately linked to California's tumultuous geologic history was closely associated with gold deposits during the Gold Rush provides habitat for rare plants and insects. And last but not least, is beautiful. The article also mentions that serpentine is sometimes associated with magic and the occult. And perhaps most importantly, geologists claim Romero's Bill wrongly states that all serpentine contains cancer causing chrysotile asbestos. In fact, naturally occurring asbestos that remains undisturbed to the ground presents no risk. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, I was digging the drama of all this but in all seriousness, while I appreciate Senator Romero's sensitivity to the very real deaths caused by asbestos, it doesn't sound like serpentine left undisturbed in the ground has anything to do with those deaths. So I have to say I'm with the geologists on this one. And I'm glad serpentine is still the state rock because I think that will inspire a lot more people to learn about it and all the interesting ways that it impacts ecosystems, okay, back to the abiotic factors like serpentine driving, Klamath biodiversity, so you've got climate, you've got geology, you've got everything. You've got slope and aspect and all of these different factors and just looking at the map in the book, trying to understand what was going on. I mean, I can't even give an overview of it, because there are so many tiny pockets. Oh, over the place that are informed by those different abiotic factors that then create these different little sub habitats, right, like these little mini ecosystems. Exactly. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit then how that leads to the biodiversity found in the Klamath mountains.

Michael Kauffmann  25:18  
Sure. Yeah. So one of my other first introductions to the Klamath mountains was a book by David Raines. Well, it's called the Klamath knot. And I think that really typifies what you're trying to say here, where you look at a map and it just looks twisted and contorted. And is that where the title comes from? Yeah. Yeah. So So why Okay, so first off, obviously, you've got these different rocks, and as they get eroded by the systems of water, the watersheds, water moves in different ways because of the hardness of the rock. So that creates this not so to speak, but you also have the dichotomy of low elevation to high elevation. So we've got in California in particular in California is Klamath mountains, the Klamath mountains extended Oregon, but in California is Klamath mountains, we've got several ranges that reach 9000 feet, which isn't high by Sierra Nevada standards, or Mount Shasta standards. For

Michelle Fullner  26:06  
reference, the highest peak in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is Mount Whitney at 14,495 feet, which is also the highest peak in the contiguous United States. And I didn't realize this, but Mount Shasta is actually not that far behind Mount Whitney at 14,180 feet. But

Michael Kauffmann  26:23  
when you have this proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the moisture through the orthographic effect,

Michelle Fullner  26:29  
really quick, the orthographic effect is what causes brain shadows. Here's a quick explanation from NatGeo. When an air mass moves from a low elevation to a high elevation, it expands and cools. This cool air cannot hold moisture as well as warm air, cool air forms clouds, which drop rain and snow as it rises up a mountain after the airmass crosses over the peak of the mountain and starts down the other side. The air warms up in the clouds dissipate. This means there's less rainfall, those

Michael Kauffmann  26:57  
higher elevations create snow forests, right. They trap snow in the winter, there has been glaciation in both large and small scale. So we have several valleys similar to Yosemite and that they're big glaciers. Canyon Creek in the Trinity Alps is one. So a big glaciers sculpting that canyon, but in maybe a smaller Canyon and the Siskiyou is that the mountains only get up to 6500 feet. We had historically smaller glaciers on the north facing slopes. And those create these little microsites today that are Meadows or lakes or some form of a wetland. And then again, you've got the soil that that can drive biodiversity. One of my favorite places on Earth is a mountaintop in the siskey wilderness. It's almost all Serpentine, but it has these little pockets these Finney pockets, where the water flows out of the serpentine and darling Tonia California cook grows the pitcher planter, the Cobra Lily, it's a carnivorous plant those

Michelle Fullner  27:52  
photos in the book of just the whole place carpeted pitcher plants and cable

Michael Kauffmann  27:56  
and wire the pitcher plants they're well they're there because other plants can't deal with these heavy metals. And how do they survive? Well, they supplement the nutrients through carnivory. Right? They're trapping insects in their pitcher darling Tony is hard to cultivate. But some Eastern pitcher plants are more easily cultivated. So you may have seen them in garden shops or whatever. But it's the same mechanism where they have a light or scent that draws insects in insects get trapped and they slowly digest them. So anyway, again, we're talking about dichotomy. So high elevation versus low elevation Western forests versus Eastern forests. And then there's also a dichotomy from the south and the Klamath Mountains to the north, because we are at the southern tip of the Pacific Northwest rainforest. And you mentioned as we walked in today, this is the first time it really feels like I've been in a rain forest on the Strip. But then as you move into Oregon, the rain forest, the Pacific Northwest becomes more of an influence. But in the south, the Sierra Nevada and the coast range, and the Great Central Valley of California influenced the Klamath mountains. And we also have an influence from the Great Basin to the east. So again, it's kind of this this mixing ground of ecosystems and around every bend in the river around here, there's something kind of unique and cool to to check out.

Speaker 2  29:11  
See you're getting the extreme ends of all of these different bio regions overlapping in one place in addition to all of the other factors that you mentioned. Exactly. So can you help us kind of conceptualize how the biodiversity found in the Klamath compares maybe to other regions? Like how does it compare to the Sierra Nevada?

Michael Kauffmann  29:31  
Sure. Yeah, that's a good question. So I mean, and that's really why I think I latched on to the conifers is because conifers, I think are in a manageable means to comprehend biodiversity. When you talk about the Klamath mountains, we're talking about 36 species of conifers, and we're talking about 3500 species of vascular plants. I'm sorry, flowering vascular plants. Yeah. So I think it's a lot easier to understand. 36 Verse 3500. Right. So to talk about the conifers, we have a couple of endemics, right so these to things that went nowhere else on earth, Port Orford, cedar, Burr spruce, I've mentioned them but we also have again, we have the influence from the Pacific Northwest, we have western red cedar. We have western hemlock, things that basically reach their southern range extension right here, Sitka spruce, we also have things that reach the northern range extension like redwoods, Sugar Pine, Jeffrey pine, or near their northern limits here. So again, it's this crossroads of plants that I think are the is kind of the window into that, but it's also those things drive the diversity of animal life, you know, and everything in between.

Michelle Fullner  30:32  
Right. One of the things we've looked at, you know, native plants on the podcast before, yeah, native plants, as Naomi Fraga puts it, are the building blocks for all terrestrial ecosystems, right? So if you have more building blocks or more diversity of building blocks, then you're going to have more diversity as you kind of move through the foodweb.

Michael Kauffmann  30:48  
Yep, so then to relate that back to the Sierra, when you have one rock type, which is granite, which is relatively hospitable compared to Serpentine, then it becomes a little bit less diversity because

Michelle Fullner  31:00  
at this point, the rain started picking up. There's raindrops we sit

Michael Kauffmann  31:05  
under a tree, we decided to move. Alright, we had to we got rained out. We did we started and now we're sitting under a Port Orford cedar to stay dry. And

Speaker 2  31:14  
it's working. It isn't great, like drips to the outside of the tree. This is perfect. So we were talking about biodiversity. And we talked a little bit about conifer biodiversity, but I also wanted to use these two terms of paleo endemic and Neo endemic and I'm curious if you can define those for

Michael Kauffmann  31:31  
sure. So we talked about endemics already, and those are things that within some boundary grow nowhere else, right. So often an endemic could be a mountain top or it could be a mountain range. Or it could be the Klamath mountains, right, which is in the case of the Bruce Bruce paleo and Neo paleo means old and Neo means new. So we have indeed BISM in two forms anywhere, but I think it's a nice way to explore the uniqueness of the Klamath mountains if you talk about the old endemics and the new endemic, so the old endemics, and again, I'm gonna bring it back to conifers because this is my wheelhouse, but an older nimic would be something like a redwood. Right? So Redwood once, there were, of course, many species of redwoods in the past, since the end of the Cretaceous, there has been a decline in conifers in general because the asteroid hit the Cretaceous

Michelle Fullner  32:19  
ended 66 million years ago with the impact of the asteroid Michael mentioned, which caused the extinction of about three quarters of all animal species on Earth, including all non avian dinosaurs. It also did a number on conifers

Michael Kauffmann  32:34  
than anyway, the the ones that survived, basically have been able to sort of find and I say that within an anthropomorphic way, but you know, find this habitat that suits them and persist for long periods of time. So this is a species that maybe was once more widespread through climate changes has become restricted over very long periods of time to a certain area. And again, redwoods are a great example, a lot of the conifers and Cooper Stacee are good examples of the redwood relatives, whether it's a western red cedar or cypresses, across California, they all sort of have small ranges.

Michelle Fullner  33:09  
Okay, remember back at the beginning of the episode when I said to remember the Port Orford, cedar because it was a good example of something Michael would say later, this is what I was talking about. Porter, furred cedars are another paleo endemic. They used to have a wider range that has since contracted, but for whatever reason, possibly the abundance of water, they've persisted in an inland pocket in the headwaters of the Sacramento River. So they're mostly in southwestern Oregon, Northwestern California, and that little blip in Shasta if you want to check them out, okay, but if that's a paleo endemic, what's a NEO endemic now

Michael Kauffmann  33:43  
Cyprus is a good example of of Neo endemic so a NEO endemic means a newly arisen endemic species. Neo endemics can happen for a variety of reasons. But I think the easiest way to think about them is a plant that maybe explores novel habitat or a new place we call an ecological release, where maybe something spreads out into a new area that was maybe disturbed in some way, maybe it's a harsh soil, and it speciate on that medium, whether it's, you know, again, in a lot of this happens on the serpentine. So we have these, these new species that have arisen in more recent times due to this novel habitat that they've explored, and then become reproductively isolated from a parent population. So you know, I'm talking about plants, but we have a really cool story here with chipmunks and Neo endemism within chipmunks, and they're actually genetics and a few other morphological features of the of the Chipmunks are starting to now just be understood and they're basically divided by the large rivers that flow through the Klamath, interesting. So each of the different watersheds are in between watersheds has different species of little

Michelle Fullner  34:51  
chipmunk community. Yeah, isolated in that area. Exactly. How cool yeah, do you have any favorite Klamath endemics?

Michael Kauffmann  34:58  
Oh, definitely. Yeah, the clan foxtail pine is my favorite species of maybe besides my human children's species on Earth, I mean, it's so it's a relative of the bristlecone pine. So they live over 1000 years and they live on mountaintops, only the highest mountain tops within the Klamath mountains. And it's a paleo endemic All right, so they had a much wider range. We know this from pollen records and in the lake, like, like Clear Lake has in Lake County has pollen from foxtail pines about 20,000 years ago.

Michelle Fullner  35:33  
Fun fact, Clear Lake is thought to be the oldest lake in North America, and scientists from UC Berkeley have taken cores of the sediment at the bottom of the lake, sort of like Arctic ice cores, but made out of mud. And the cores go back 130,000 years or more. With those cores, they've been able to map the way the climate has changed over that entire time period, and have used pollen to determine which plants were present around the lake in the past, currently clear like is surrounded by oak woodlands, but used to be surrounded by conifers like the foxtail pine and others during the last ice age,

Michael Kauffmann  36:08  
but they're not there anymore. Right. So they've moved around and they've become isolated on this climate that mimicked the climate they enjoyed in the Pleistocene. Wow. So that's, that's my favorite. That's your favorite.

Michelle Fullner  36:19  
Awesome, I love it. So yeah, let's, let's hear too. We talked about some specific plants. Let's hear about the big scale plant communities as they exist and as they're distributed across the planet.

Michael Kauffmann  36:28  
Sure, I think, you know, this goes back to this idea of Klamath mountains being a crossroads. And we have the influence of a lot of different vegetation. And when vegetation repeats itself, it you can define it as a vegetation Alliance, which might be the most common vegetation lines in the Klamath mountains is probably the white for Douglas fir forests. So that sort of mid elevation just at the snowline conifer forest that, you know, as you're hiking up into, say, the Trinity Alps, you know, when you transition out of the broadleaf forests, we're you know, we're kind of in a transition here, in a lot of ways. If we went up a little higher up this mountain, it would be all conifers, but we still have the influence of the 10 oaks and the big leaf Maples here. So we're right at the edge of that snow forest. But anyway, the point is that you look at these patterns, and you can define them in many ways. And the California Native Plant Society has a whole program on vegetation and how do you define vegetation? And it's very complex. I think within California, there's 450 alliances, right? Which means, again, like I just mentioned, this Douglas fir wafer, or redwood, or you know, whatever it might be, it's kind of you take that dominant species or one species or several species, and then see where that repeats itself. Well, that would be really hard to do for the Klamath because I think there's CMPs to find almost 200 of those alliances here within the Klamath, so we have just under half of all the alliances in California here in the Klamath, right. So

Michelle Fullner  37:51  
what we did is how much of the size of California like what percentage question,

Michael Kauffmann  37:54  
the Klamath mountains are about the size of Vermont or New Hampshire? Okay. And gosh, I would say and Callahan's huge. Yeah. Yeah, I would say a 10th of California. So we have half of those, just under half. Yeah. So again, that's due to this, this unique influence from all over, right. So what we did for the book is we distilled it down to 10. plant communities, we call them right, so we took it out of the Alliance level and in looked at just the biggest broadest patterns and you know, we've talked again, we we started by discussing this coastal rest, right. But we also look at Interior lowland forests. So things along the river canyons which might be characterized by Douglas fir, Bigleaf, Maple Canyon oaks on certain aspects and slopes. So we know within these different communities, there's a lot of overlap, obviously, what the way we did it, but then then we move up into the mountains, we look at the montane conifer forests, we look at the sky islands, we look at the serpentine landscapes. So all of these together really paint the picture, but I think what one that's really interesting to discuss the Chaparral because I think a lot of people in California are very familiar with Chaparral familiar Yes. Basically, from here south. It's the dominant vegetation type below maybe 3000 feet to the coast range. And so where people live where people live Yeah, exactly are the Sierra Nevada has has Chaparral influence, but we're at the northern extent of chaparral and the northern Klamath mountains in Oregon is where Chaparral basically disappears as you transition into the Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest, but within the chaparral, we have various types here within the Klamath mountains. So we have the traditional Chaparral that people are used to, but it's it's not very widespread in the Klamath, so things like shimmies different Ceanothus. And you know, Manzanita, the white leaf Manzanita, basically the South East Klamath mountains have that reflection of the rest of California. As you move further north that Chaparral shifts a little bit and an often becomes montane Chaparral and south facing slopes with Greenleaf Manzanita Chinkapin In Huckleberry oak, so we have these dwarf vegetation communities, but only in small pockets, you know, and again, this is the classic Klamath mountain story.

Michelle Fullner  40:10  
So the diversity in the Klamath mountains is represented from literally the ground up, starting with the rocks going up into plant communities and out into entire food webs. And in order to tell such a multifaceted story, Michael brought together a lot of people with expertise in a lot of different areas.

Speaker 2  40:28  
So let's talk about some of the best stories that came out of this book. I mean, I know that you had 3434, authors 34. It's incredible. And this is a group of people who have spent a lot of time in the Klamath mountains and have had many experiences. Yep. And so I'm curious if you have any favorite stories, or favorite, you know, either in making the book or that people have told you about their experiences, or that you have had personally here in the mountains.

Michael Kauffmann  40:54  
I think for me, the most interesting story came when we decided to include first peoples in the natural history, which is not done very often. But we felt like it was an integral part. But I didn't know why I guess when we started, so I created an outline about 2014. And in the second chapter was first peoples and I didn't know why I put it there. But I do now. And I learned a lot by including that and Frank lake was the is the lead author on the first peoples chapter. And what I came to learn through Frank, and then the other people that I met from the Karuk tribe in particular, but also Yurok in Hoopa, was that people have had a huge influence on the Klamath mountains for a long period of time. And I think as a Westerner, Western science teaches us that there's wilderness and wilderness is wild, and it should be left wild. And you know, the ecosystems work just fine. But when those ecosystems have been influenced by people for 10s, of 1000s, of years before the arrival of the Westerners 150 years ago, there's a dependence on that from the ecosystems a lot of ways. So I learned in particular, I learned about oak woodlands, and I didn't mention that plant community just now. But oak woodlands along the rivers, those were all village sites, and I had no I had no comprehension of that before this project started. I knew some of them were, but I didn't really understand the level of influence that the first peoples had on the Klamath mountains. And you know, California or western US or whatever, North America, I mean, this, I think it's a reflective of kind of what is not taught in universities, or at least wasn't when I was there. And I think that that's changing for the better. So just learning, learning the influence that the first peoples had, whether it was fire, to build trails, fire to improve places that they would harvest food, and still continue to harvest food, you know, that those are all things that were new for me. And I think that that was, again, humbling, but also eye opening and exciting.

Michelle Fullner  42:51  
Yeah. And I think that, the more you learn about that, the more you realize that a natural history in California, at least I can't speak to any broader than that is very much incomplete without understanding the role of First Peoples because like you said, when you're talking about a scale of 10s, of 1000s of years, yep, it becomes coevolution. Right? It becomes something different from just Oh, some people were here. And they did some things, right? Like, no, things are changing the interaction, and the relationships are actually being formed by the presence of humans on the landscape. Yep. And

Michael Kauffmann  43:25  
so now when I go to a place, and I think about this place in the Marvel mountains that I visited repeatedly, it's a serpentine meadow. It's full of bear grass, it's full of lilies, geo fights in general. And this was, you know, these were gardens for First Peoples they brought, maybe they brought initially some of the balls, some of the balls may have been there already. But the the amalgamation and the collection of what's there, the amount of bear grass that's there, you know, this was all tended the wild was tended. And now when I see these, some of these places, I feel like I understand them a lot better. Yeah, that's great. Still don't understand. I understand you're sure.

Michelle Fullner  44:01  
Yeah. Yeah. I think that that the amount of complexity, we've talked about the the level of complexity even within one ecosystem, right, and it takes a lifetime to learn that and there's still going to be more, more that you don't know. So definitely check out Frank lakes chapter on first peoples in the Klamath mountains in natural history for more information on these ancient and still continuing land relationships in the Klamath mountains. All right, what do you hope were kind of the big takeaways from either reading the book or listening to this podcast?

Michael Kauffmann  44:31  
Well, I mean, I think for me, my top level goal has always been connecting people to the natural world, and that's why I'm a teacher. But I also you know, kind of reflecting on what I just said, I think it's also for me, I need to be continually connected to the natural world and I you know, the influence of social media, you know, technology, whatever it might be these days like this is there's this is just one more way to become less distracted. And for me, I need to, I'm realizing it's a little more selfish than I have When I first became a teacher, but because I think the needs bigger, but yesterday I was on a field trip with a bunch of third graders and, and just to see the awe that they, you know, we saw, we went to Patrick's point or Su Mei State Park, we went to wedding rock, and we saw whales, you know, way off in the distance, but just, and then they started to see sharks. And then they said, I don't know if they really saw sharks, but their imagination, right, you know, their imagination. And they were telling themselves a story of the natural world without the influence of, you know, a TV show or whatever it might be. So, you know, I think that that for me, and taking it back to that developing a love of a place and through love comes understanding and better stewardship. I mean, for me, that's, that's what it boils down to, I feel like if I can make a small impact in people's lives, where they might want to protect a certain watershed, or whatever it might be, I think that's my big hope and dream. That's

Michelle Fullner  45:54  
great. And I think that that's not going to happen if they don't have those experiences. I mean, speaking in my own life, I had some very amazing early experiences in the natural world, I had the opportunity to be outside a lot. But then when I got to my high school biology class, instead of having a field biology class, I had a football coach, who didn't want to be there, who, you know what I mean? Who, who was like, here's what it says in the textbook, and I just zoned right out. Yeah. And I think that that, you know, but I had some great English teachers, which is great, right? We need people in all these different areas. But I think that it really turned me off of learning science in school. And I think that if people can have those experiences, where they're learning hands on field science ecology, that's going to bring them in closer relationship. And I think that's really great. It's great, what you're doing.

Michael Kauffmann  46:41  
Thank you. And I appreciate what you're doing, because you found your story through English class in high school. But what was the influence that you had to draw you into the storytelling of science? I guess, it's my question for you is your

Michelle Fullner  46:55  
question for me? Well, I think that I had very young early experiences, I lived on a 32 acre piece of property when I was seven and eight years old. On my grandfather, my grandfather's property, my great grandfather, in the eastern hills of Napa Valley, and oak woodlands Coast live oaks, predominantly. So at this time, my family lived in a little tiny 15 foot camping trailer on my great grandfather's property, because we were trying to save money for a down payment on a house. And my dad was working like 14 hour days building scaffolding at an oil refinery. So my brother and I would wake up super early, and feed the cows and the chickens and then go exploring. But what were we doing on our adventures, some of them are things I don't recommend handling bats and snakes and amphibians and you know, all kinds of things. And I developed that sense of independence and intense curiosity about the natural world and a sense of connection, then it's just taken me a really long time to come full circle to that.

Michael Kauffmann  47:52  
Well, thanks for your science storytelling. Through a literature perspective, I

Michelle Fullner  47:58  
guess I'm happy to have the opportunity. Okay, one more thing on this. For a lot of really good reasons. It's illegal to capture bats in California under most circumstances, unless you have a permit from fish and wildlife. I didn't know this when I was seven. But now we all know. So let's love the bats by giving them space and call your local Wildlife Rehab if you've spotted one you think needs help. My last question for you. Okay. Is what about the Klamath mountains still takes your breath away?

Michael Kauffmann  48:29  
Good question. I think, I think right now, I have several trips planned with with my kids this summer. And I'm just really looking forward to seeing the Klamath mountains through their eyes and what takes their breath away. I know, I think I generally know what to expect to the Klamath mountains. Now. There's always some surprises. You know, I've talked about some of them, but they they're going to teach me a lot more, I think, because I know, I know how they think. And I know how they see and I know what they get excited about. So So yeah, we're gonna do some trips this summer. We're gonna get up to we're gonna see a lot of snow this summer. And probably do a little trail work, but also some exploring seeing some lakes and climbing some mountains. And yeah, so I think that that that is my excitement right now is seeing the Klamath mountains through the eyes of my kids.

Michelle Fullner  49:11  
That's beautiful. Well, Michael, thank you for bringing me to this beautiful place and teaching me about it. Yeah. Thanks, Michelle. So look closely at the incredible life forms around you consider how they might be driven by the rocks under your feet, the altitude where you stand in the rain, rolling off your umbrella, and maybe even make your way to the Klamath mountains if you ever get the chance. I want to thank Michael for not only introducing me to the climbing mountains and sharing so much knowledge and experience with all of us but also for inviting my family over for dinner when we were in town, which was so fun. And we even got to see a California pitcher plant growing outside of his and Allison's front door. If you haven't already paused this episode earlier to order Klamath mountains in natural history. I can't recommend it highly enough. It's packed with great information, detailed maps and gorgeous photos that will make You fall in love with the Klamath mountains. If you stick around to the end of the episode, I always tell you something interesting or embarrassing or funny from my week and this week, it's that my six year old stayed home from school sick on Monday, but she was feeling good enough to help my husband with projects around the house. So they just like built a stepstool together and I changed out a broken lock and I was not super productive that day but sat on the couch and half worked have shared space with them and it was so peaceful. Definitely my favorite day of the week so far. Anyway, that's all for this week. I can't wait to see you on the next episode of Golden State naturalist. Bye.