Shoots and leaves: the shotgun scientist who hunts moving trees – Guardian

Angelica Patterson is on the lookout, shotgun in hand, as she hikes through New York state’s Black Rock Forest. She focuses on her target high up in the canopy, then bang – a branch falls to the ground. “I can’t climb trees, building scaffolding is expensive, and using a slingshot requires a lot of skill,” she says. “A shotgun is an efficient, cheap and effective way to collect the high-up leaves that have full exposure to the sun.”

Patterson puts the northern red oak branch into a bucket of water, cutting the submerged stem to ensure that its leaves continue to function, before walking back to her laboratory in the forest. Here she studies how trees adapt and move in response to increasing average air temperatures. “When I first started learning about how plant communities change through time, I’d never associated trees with migration because they’re sessile and don’t move like four-legged creatures or fly like insects. So it’s eye-opening to realise that tree communities shift their ranges to migrate to places where they can thrive,” says Patterson, 39, a PhD student at Columbia University’s department of earth and environmental science.

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