September 2005

Finally the new bunkhouse/conference room building is under construction.  The building will have 3 rooms (2 beds in each), a conference/social room and two bathrooms.  There will be 2 showers in one bathroom and one (wheel chair accessible) in the other.  The contractor plans to finish by early October.

The California region proposal to NEON (National Ecological Observation Network) has designated the the southern Sierra as it's geographic focus.  The proposal specifically looks to build on existing research infrastructure in this area including Yosemite NP, the San Joaquin Experimental Range, the Kings River Administrative Area, the Teakettle Experimental Forest and Kings Canyon/Sequoia NP (north to south respectively).

There will be a Teakettle Organized Oral Session Restoration effects of fire and thinning treatments on mixed-conifer ecosystems at the ESA 2004 Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, from August 2 to August 6, 2004.

The cabin will be open by May 1 and operations will be up and running by June 1.  It does not appear that the installation of the new bathrooms will begin until sometime in 2005.

2003 field Season:  The 2003 field season was very successful:

Data:  We began the post-treatment re-mapping of the plots, which moved quickly and we hope to finish the re-map in 2004.  In addition to completing all the usual re-measurements we mapped the soil depth on all 402 grid points began digging a network of soil plots to measure fine roots and gain a better understanding of the soil structure.  We also collected additional dendrochronology data and assembled a 200+ sample herbarium..

Infrastructure Update: After 66 years of complete isolation the Teakettle Cabin finally got its first phone call.  Five lines were installed in spring 2003 and the cabin now has phone, FAX and internet.  In addition, we upgraded the solar power from 800 Watts to 3600 Watts.  We created a dry lab in the garage with benches,  a gas drying oven and refrigeration.   Teakettle is slated for construction of a bathhouse creating two additional bathrooms (Men's and Women's) in summer 2004.