Plots 1 and 2 complete

So after 7 days continuous work, with 10 hour days of scanning, we finished the main plots we came for - the 1ha drought and control plots. The weather has been nigh on perfect - calm, almost no rain. We'll all be grateful for a day off tomorrow, and maybe some beach action, cleaning clothes, and really just relief at not lugging stuff around the forest. We're all seeing reflectance targets wherever we look and I'm hearing the Riegl's bleeping scan noise in my sleep. Here's what we came for.

Literally the first cut - a tiny slice through only 6 upright scans, representing about 40m along and 20m across.

The scanner data look really, really good. The systematic target layout seems to have worked better than we could have hoped, with a team of 3 marshalled by Lucy keeping track of 60+ poles in 2 duplicate sets of 6 colours - a triumph of organisation! Andy cracks a big grin when the scans match up to within a few mm; when he frowns I know it means more work. But this is the first time anyone has seen this forest like this, and there is so much to come.

Done and done. Happy team after the 144th and final scan of the two plots.

On the way out of the plot, we saw this little fella.

Climbing snake - no ID as yet.

And so what's next after the rest day? Well, right on cue the heavens opened this evening, so looks like we got our core work done just in time. But I've thought that scanning up through the canopy would be great *if* we could do it - the two 45m towers give us a really good shot, and the detailed profiles would be very interesting - and never been done. We discussed how we might go about it and we've got a plan. Monday, we put it into action.

An old jedi mind trick.