Meet TREE’s newest Research Associate, Dr. Jen Sanger from Tasmania! Jen and her partner, Steve, are global tall-tree-climbers, plus they study epiphytes and take awesome photos of the world’s tallest trees. Here are a few images of their recent project in Taiwan, with a quick description written by Dr. Sanger:
In March 2017, we travelled to the beautiful mountains in Taiwan with a team of scientists and tree climbers to document one of the countries’ endemic conifer species, Taiwania cryptomerioides. We use innovative arboreal rigging techniques to create a ‘Portrait’ of the tree. We did this by taking numerous photos from different points over a vertical linear transect. These photos were blended together to create a complete, single image of the tree without visual distortion. With climbers in the tree as a scale reference, our Tree Portrait allowed people to see, for the first time, how grand and truly massive this tree species is. The image of our Tree Portrait has been extremely popular in Taiwan, helping us to educate people about the importance of these trees.
