I got to escape the office last week and go into the woods for two days! I was helping a researcher measure trees for his project on the Piedmont Watershed. He is measuring how much water various native trees are take up and other things in the watershed like annual rainfall and urban runoff. For all my tree fans out there, the trees included Tulip Poplar, Sugar Maple, Longleaf Pine, and Shortleaf Pine. I got to wander around in the woods and measure the height and diameter of previously tagged trees. To measure the height, we used a device called a clinometer which I had never heard of or seen before. In all of my classes we used sticks that were held at a certain distance from the tree and at a certain angle, then we had to do all the calculations to see how tall the tree was– definitely not anywhere near as accurate as the clinometer. So that was fun to learn about and use. However, I forgot to wear pants with belt loops, so using the tape measure was a bit awkward, but I learned for next time.