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Featured Work
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BatteryBench: A Protocol for Testing Portable Battery Chargers and Electronic Devices for Backpacking, Backpacking LIght, December 2021
Some backpackers use a portable battery charger to keep other battery-powered devices running on longer trips. Portable battery chargers are also known as portable battery packs, battery banks, battery packs, portable chargers, portable power devices, portable power banks, power banks, or power packs. It’s almost too easy to find tests and comparisons of portable battery chargers. But none that I read or watched focused on the most important factors that backpackers should care about, including the lightest models for charging your phone or earbuds. |
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Adapting to Changing Wildfires: Part Three, Backpacking Light, November 2020
This past summer and fall, wildfires in the Western U.S. seemed to set new records daily. News reports featured endless streams of scary images, incomprehensible statistics, and mysterious maps. But all of this told only part of the story. NASA satellites with special infrared sensors capture images of fires every day. By animating those images, we can get a different look at how fast and how far wildfires grew in 2020. |
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Adapting to Changing Wildfires: Part Two, Backpacking Light, October 2020
Wildfires in western North America have changed for the worse and will continue changing. Fire tornadoes ripped living trees out of the ground, set them alight, and dropped them miles away. Blazes consumed 400 mi² (1,000 km²) in one day. Researchers compared the worst wildfires to the firebombing of Dresden in World War II or Hiroshima’s destruction by an atomic bomb. While reasonably cautious backpackers are unlikely to perish in wildfires, we must learn to live with altered fire behavior, landscapes, and rules. This essay is an exploration of what some of those changes might look like. |
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Adapting to Changing Wildfires: Part One, Backpacking Light, October 2020
What is the future of backpacking in an era of frequent massive wildfires? This year’s giant blazes in the Western U.S. closed many thousands of square miles (tens of thousands of square kilometers) in forests and parks for weeks and months. This essay gives you some background on wildfires in the U.S., describes the potential health and safety risks, and suggests how to stay safer and healthier. |
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USGS Science in Point Reyes National Seashore, USGS, December 2016, video
The park also uses USGS science to manage this iconic but complex setting. For example, local ranchers lease 28,000 acres of National Park land for dairy and beef cattle. To monitor ranch lands, the park uses maps, air photos and other databases from USGS. |
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Condors in Purgatory, Science Notes, August 2015, multimedia
Swooping low across a canyon inside Pinnacles National Park, California condor #444 appeared to be in fine health. “Ventana” hatched in 2007 from a nest in Big Sur, and she paired five years later with #340. The next year they fed their first chick regurgitated food scavenged from miles away. That food came from a dead animal—rotting, stinking and crawling with maggots. But one of the condor’s favorite meals, the gut pile left behind after a hunter kills a deer or wild pig, threatens the survival of this critically endangered species. |
rexsanders.com
2022 July 29
2022 July 29
