Steve Voelker

@thetreecorener.bsky.social

2460 Followers 1951 Following

Aspiring naturalist and plant nerd. I teach about Climate Change & Tree Physiology. Expert in plant ecophysiology, stable isotopes, dendrochronology. I also study fish otoliths. Husband and Dad. Assoc Prof of Forest Ecology & Mgt at Michigan Tech.

A picture of my hand (for scale) with a sun-bleached cross-section of a 10 to 12 inch diameter root from a large, tipped-over white pine stump. The surface of the cross section shows a bit of decay and a thin layer of lichen growth indicating it was cut off maybe 20 years ago. There are also shadows on the cross-section from some adjacent willow shrubs.
Example image from FB Marketplace showing large beams from a dismantled barn in Wisconsin.
Hinsdale (1931) map of Upper Michigan (I love this atlas, and the care that went into drawing out the landscape features) noting historic travel corridors in black. The small red circle, on the north (south-facing) slope of Teal Lake is where I was walking today. It has patchy red pine stands along most of the north shoreline that is undeveloped. The south and East shores are developed.
An old red pine stump that was cut off high (about 3-4 ft height) by loggers with an axe, probably during the late 1800s or early 1900s. There were at least a dozen such stumps within a small area on a terrace above a lake. Sometime beforehand indigenous harvesting of resin took place by blazing the lower portion of the stem as seen clearly here.
A white ash tree with a dead top but a lush new canopy from epicormic sprouts along the main stem about halfway up the tree. The area has been cleared of invasive Norway maple so these native trees have a chance to thrive.
A person in safety gear facing away from the camera using a chainsaw to cut a weathered cat-face red pine stump within a dense forest of red pine, paper birch, and maple.
A 3-inch long largemouth mass hooked on a rooster tail spinner that is orange/yellow/green with a gold blade. In the background is a blue sky with puffy white clouds that is reflected in the lake and an undeveloped forested shoreline with emergent pine canopies.
A very old red pine on a rocky outcrop that was fire scarred and fell over when it's stem failed from decay at the top of the fire scar but then it just kept growing with it's remaining lateral branches taking over as leaders.
"You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat" meme showing the sheriff after first seeing the shark from the movie Jaws (1975) but with "Lab" replacing "Boat".
An upland pond in the UP of Michigan on a sunny spring afternoon. The pond is surrounded by red and white pine trees in the background. In the foreground are many dead sapling-sized pine trees. To be that size and be killed by high water levels the "ghost trees" probably germinated in the late 1990s or early 2000s when drier condition were more regular.
A woman in a red fleece and a cap standing in a mostly red pine forest next to a snag (dead tree) with an oblong scar centered at about 1.5 m height. Around that original scar, which is now charred, so tool marks are not visible, are multiple fire scars. It looks like this tree died 50 or more years ago but because the wood is impregnated with resin it has been more resistant to decay than an average dead red pine tree.
In the foreground are sunlit and mostly small diameter (<8 inches) paper birch stems (white and black bark) amidst a background of evergreen foliage (balsam fir, Northern white cedar and white spruce). There is a bit of blue sky in the background and there are no leaves on the deciduous trees yet because it is still too early in spring here.
Three orange and white Stihl brand chainsaws in front of a stacked half cord of wood we did not burn this winter.
A single nodding yellow flower, barely open, hanging from a pink stalk that extends between two mottled leaves that have alternating lime green and a faded maroon hues. The leaf extending toward the camera, underneath the flower also has yellow pollen on it's surface. The small plant is extending up amidst dry brown leaf litter and twigs.
Yellow triangles are Indigenous settlements from the 1600s-1800s CE. Red dots are settlements known from early archeological records. White lines are trails/travel corridors and blue lines are canoe-navigable river systems connecting the Lake Superior region to the Mississippi basin or Lake Michigan with minimal portages between drainages and/or trails.
A partially decayed red pine cross-section cut from a stump adjacent to Lake Superior showing 5 or 6 fires over about 200 years.
Green and orange cedar leaves, cedar cones and seeds as well as cedar twigs on snow.
Me holding the bottom of my broken seat that catastophically failed when I sat down.
A home with an exposed basement with two doors with a pile of ice and snow in front. The background shows snow piled up around some stacked firewood and lumber and some cedar trees.
PhD Defense announcement for Victor Humanes Fuente entitled "What can white pine tree rings tell us about the environmental history of the Lake Superior region?" which is overlayed on top of an illustration of a wood cross-section he sampled from a lake. The lower panel shows a picture of Victor in a wetsuit and holding an oar while balancing on top of floating logs lodged in a green wetland area with white pine trees in the background. The detailed text states "Learn about Victor Humanes Fuente’s doctoral research investigating the capacity of Eastern white pines to store environmental information in their tree rings. He will highlight how lake-effect climate has influenced spatial patterns in tree physiology, how fire and humans have historically modulated 800 years of pine establishment patterns in the Central Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and how Lake Superior water temperatures have changed over the past 500 years, as reconstructed from tree rings."
A single bobcat track pointed downward toward the camera with a partial view of my left hand for scale. The track is about the size of what would be expected for a very large domestic cat.
Image show a distribution of Billion-dollar disasters by state on the left broken down by early vs recent time periods and based on "Drought" for the Western US and "Freeze" for the Eastern US. Adjacent is an image of the conterminous US states broken down the middle and highlighted by an image of forest wildfire in the West and snow-covered boreal conifers in the East.
Example ice core data from Antarctica compared to marine sediment core data over the last ~3 million years.
Snow piled up to the top of a chain link fence with trees in yhe background.
Facebook marketplace ad showing a stack of white pine boards salvaged from a building on Calumet. Most of the old buildings there were built in the late 1800s.
Three little minks romping around a wooded lakeshore near a red-painted wooden walkway and pier extending out into the water.
Figure showing dice degrees displayed as 4 sets of colored lines spanning 1900-2026 that students generated by rolling dice. Each of the four colors is a group; the differences represent how variation in inter-annual climate can lead to different rates of warming in different locations despite the same forcing.
Five sets of dice that are multicolored and include 6, 8, 10, 12 and 20-sided dice.
Younger me in the foreground -- and overlooking a dry part of the island and the Pacific Ocean in the distant background. The only native conifer, bishop pine, occurs here in small patches, seen behind me, it occurs almost exclusively where fog impacts certain elevations and slopes.
A wood bowl held upside down to show the cross-sectional face of the wood displaying many tree-rings. The pith and light brown heartwood are near the lip of the bowl at the bottom/center of the image. Lighter colored sapwood constitutes most of the outer sides of the bowl. A crack with dark brown/black mineral stain proceeds from the pith outwards toward the edge of the indicates it was there when the tree was alive, and at this northern edge of the species range could likely be a "frost crack". Which can cause radial cracks to form in sugar maples during extremely cold winter temperatures.
Brown and black rock about the size of a large grapefruit sitting in a sunlit window.
Close-up picture of a gray bird with a dusky orange cap and largish black beak open and actively snacking on an array of brightly red to orange-colored crabapples. The background is a white pine tree and there is snowflakes fluttering down as blurry white spots across the image.
Picture from split rock lighthouse near sunrise of the shoreline of Lake Superior on right with ice extending outward to open water, where a wall of fog rises up perhaps 100 meters or more. The photo was taken by Lee Radzak, longtime lighthouse keeper until he retired in 2019. He noted it was -35 degrees F that morning.
Bobcat sitting peacefully in the snow, next to big paper birch tree.
A person in an insulated jean jacket and full safety gear using a chainsaw to cut through an old red pine stump in a conifer forest setting.
Really big (old growth) white pine in a cutover landscape matrix. The loggers missed this one hiding in a hemlock and white cedar grove.
Very large old red pine remnant with a knife for scale.
Scruffy middle aged man with a blue and green plaid shirt and pink glasses laying on a bed of reindeer lichen wintergreen and lowbush blueberries.
A blue plastic bin holding a bunch of folded aluminum sheeting strung together with cordage and small floats between the metal.
Red pine canopies growing on a steep slope above the Sturgeon River, within a matrix of northern hardwoods during early fall, so some of the deciduous leaves are yellow or red.
A scatterplot of oxygen isotopes in precipitation vs temperature. There are two plots each with 110-130 data points that both display a strong positive relationship (r-squared of 0.69 or 0.78) . However, the data collected on Lake Superior's south shore (in Upper Michigan) ranges from about 2 to 4 permil lower at temps below 0 degrees C compared to data collected on Lake Superior's North shore directly across the lake in Ontario.
Two aspen trees adorned with golden leaves in autumn morning light. Deep blue sky in the background.
A large triangular piece of copper that is flattened and showing grooves from being underneath a glacier on top of a carpet with a tape ruler laid on top for scale.
A man standing on top of the lower section of a large coast redwood tree that is egg-shaped in cross-section. He is holding up a very large chainsaw to try and line up his cut. The cross-section is buried up to 18 inches deep in organic soil from when it fell during a storm.
Rose-Marie Muzika and myself along the shore of an undeveloped beach on Lake Superior.
Beaver-gnawed aspen stump. It bit through about 50% of the wood before the tree fell down. Truck keys are on the stump for scale.
Image looks upslope showing sparse vegetation and trees and white rocks across bare red soil with a background of blue sky and clouds. A dead bristlecone tree in the foreground shows a conventional excurrent form whereas a live bristlecone tree in the foregroumd shows a decurrent form.
Door to the cabin is open it is dark inside but mostly dry. Above the door is a Forest Service sign that states no tresspassing.
Small, 4 acre seepage wetland/pond with low ground-water levels in April 2012 so that vegetation covers the pond but has not greened up yet. In the wetland vegetation there are many linear features extending from shore that indicate a taller structure and/or different shrubby species present. There are conifer trees around the outside of the pond where they have not been recently clear-cut with some remaining seed trees.
Twos similarly sized bur oak stems amidst lush, green, mid-summer floodplain vegetation. The stem on the left has thick furrows in the bark that cast shadows making it appear very dark whereas the stem on the right has relatively thin and closely appressed and peeling bark that makes the tree appear much lighter in color. Both trees have a blue-handled increment borer inserted into the stem and a backbpack at the base.