Laikipia from the sky
Our work Saturday morning took quite a different form as we learned that Ryan had hired a small plane to take aerial photos of several burn plots. Unfortunately, the plane only had room for three passengers, so we decided that Laura and John would accompany Ryan (Laura’s birthday was on Saturday, and John had only been on a plane once before) while the rest of us would watch from the ground. The doors had been taken off for better picture quality, so they were all buckled in tightly and secured before they took off. 
They returned more quickly than expected because the cloud cover made photography difficult. Fortunately for Luke and me, this allowed a chance to wait for the sun to come out and take a turn in the plane as well! This flight was much more successful, and we returned with several nice pictures. On the way back the pilot asked if we wanted to do a fly over of the research center, so instead of landing we zoomed by Isaac and Mara on top of the Land Rover as we passed just 30 meters above the ground; I’m sure we rattled more than a few windows.
The flight was a helpful lesson in how spatial scale affects our view. Broadening or narrowing the scale at which you view the environment around you allows different ecological observations to be made. When viewing the burn from the ground it is possible to count the individual trees or track the change of ant species, but observations about the environment as a whole are more difficult. Viewing the burn from the air makes it possible to count animal densities across the savanna and to view the heterogeneity of the landscape. As an example, in our short 20 minute flight, we saw elephant, giraffe, lion, and even hyena chasing some gazelle…. sitings which would have been very difficult from the ground. The decrease in tree densities in the burned sites were also very visible from the air.
We spent the rest of the morning compiling our data into one place and making sure that all of our equipment was in order so that we could go out to the field in the afternoon. Everyone (including Donna and the kids) piled into the Land Rover and we worked on a one hectare patchy burn for the rest of the afternoon. We ended the day with a game drive at sunset back to the research center finding elephant, hyena, and a lone male buffalo.
David Stoesz for the research team (photos by the entire team)
