00:01:18.100In the order of acrosperals, which occur around the world.
00:01:21.820With his wife, Jana Korzerkova, who is also a lichenologist,
00:01:26.340they have begun a four-year project working on lichen biodiversity
00:01:29.580in the Chihuahuan Desert in New Mexico.
00:01:32.240well carrie thank you so much for joining us on the show like i was mentioning earlier i'm
00:01:38.780absolutely mesmerized by lichens as i'm sure you are and it's really wonderful to be able to share
00:01:44.840this time with you and focusing on these incredible creatures so carrie you're credited
00:01:49.280with discovering over 60 species of lichen previously unknown to the scientific field
00:01:55.520Yet your fascination and dedication to lichen is, as you describe, unorthodox.
00:02:01.780While it's a simple question, I would love to begin with you sharing your personal story.
00:02:07.140How and when did you become so enamored with lichens and their complexity?
00:02:11.520Well, I wanted to study botany, and I was forced into retirement by a disability.
00:02:18.640and so I prepared to go to go back to college to study botany and the rehabilitation people
00:02:27.460said I was too old to invest in a college career for me so I was really depressed so
00:02:36.820so one day at my desk in where I had my microscope and stuff I told my daughters I said whatever's
00:02:43.260behind the house, lichens or mosses. That's what I'm going to study. And luckily that day I found
00:02:49.580three lichens. And I knew there weren't many people working on biodiversity in that field
00:02:57.180and no one in Southern California working on it. So I began studying it. And from the very
00:03:04.600beginning, I aim to be a professional scientist. So I became, after about two years of study,
00:03:11.540I joined the Sonoran Flora Project, describing acrosperals for Arizona and Southern California.
00:03:21.540And at the same time, I started a herbarium at UCR, specializing it just in Southern California's
00:03:29.360lichen flora. And Southern California is really diverse because it has deserts, mountains,
00:03:34.800and even eight, it has a large coastal area and eight islands. So for the last 18 years,
00:03:43.180I studied this whole area, built up a herbarium just on Southern California and wrote mostly
00:03:50.380about Southern California lichens. Thank you for sharing that. And your story is an inspiring
00:03:57.120reminder of the importance and tremendous impact that citizen science or perhaps intimate immersion
00:04:04.300with the Earth has, especially during this time. So I'd just love if you could share more on the
00:04:09.480beginnings of this process. And does citizen science take on new meanings in this age of loss?
00:04:16.060Well, yeah. One thing that's, especially here in America, you can see under Trump,
00:04:20.320there's an attack on scientific funding. Also, in terms of museums, herbariums,
00:04:27.300there's a low amount of investment going on in all of North America in these institutions,
00:04:33.200in most universities. So right now, if a person can do professional work or help people doing
00:04:41.640professional work, it's invaluable. Because at this time, taxonomy and biodiversity,
00:04:50.020despite all the talk about them, is really being ignored. See, right now, we came out of a molecular
00:04:58.260biological revolution in science this is really important and it'll be changed the whole 21st
00:05:06.500century how we look at this but in this earlier phase it was de-emphasized field work in and
00:05:13.080understanding species in order to master the molecular biology now that's being balanced in
00:05:20.300the field now but still there's there's a lagging in uh in taking care of the biodiversity of the
00:05:27.140earth here, especially in North America. See, for instance, people studying biodiversity go
00:05:32.140down to the tropics, of course, because the Amazon, for instance, is being deforested at a
00:05:37.200tremendous rate. But at the same time, here in places like California, with climate change going
00:05:43.460on, you have constant droughts all through the Southwest, California included, and having these
00:05:49.800tremendous fires for something slow growing like lichens or even rare plants. These fires come
00:05:57.560through and wipe out a whole habitat. As you know, some of these fires are as big as New Jersey
00:06:02.860that have happened in California. So anything citizen scientists can do to help professional
00:06:12.580scientist or like me to develop a career of your own is tremendously valuable at this time because
00:06:20.260the environment is changing way faster than we imagined and may even be changing faster than
00:06:26.240currently projected. I deeply agree with everything you said from the importance of people becoming
00:06:34.800involved and knowing that they're really needed. People are really needed in supporting data
00:06:41.840collections, because although I do have some issues around data collections, but this type
00:06:48.120of biodiversity collections, I think, is so meaningful and important right now. Because
00:06:53.780like you said, we're losing things quicker than we can even understand or project.
00:06:59.020Oh, yes, for sure. We're losing them fast. A good example is right now,
00:07:04.100we're working on a paper describing six new species for Southern California.
00:07:09.560and luckily these are in the desert where they have a longer chance of lasting but some of the
00:07:16.060stuff we recently described we have only two or three locations of in areas like in conifer forest
00:07:23.820where fires are happening at a really rapid rate. I'd imagine many of us even those who see a great
00:07:33.120deal of beauty in lichen may not know much about their ancient presence. And I've read
00:07:40.060that some samples of lichen from the Arctic are over 8,000 years old, and that lichens as an
00:07:47.940organism have been around for perhaps 400 million years. So I'd really love if you could share some
00:07:54.440of the common traits of lichen, like their extraordinary long lifespans or their slow
00:07:59.620and steady growth yeah most lichens grow really slow like maybe a micron a year or so uh there
00:08:06.600there's exceptions in in in tropic areas and in in some uh like in the arctic some some things
00:08:13.800like cladonias grow really fast but overall if you see uh for instance in the mojave desert here
00:08:20.940you can see a lichen the size of a 50 cent piece or a silver dollar and it can be 50 or 60 years old
00:08:28.340uh the the reason they grow so slow is they have an alga or cyanobacteria in it as a symbiont
00:08:36.440and most of the time they only are photosynthesizing or actually alive
00:08:41.840and and working only like early in the morning during rainstorms high humidity
00:08:48.280and then the rest of the time they're dormant so uh if there's a secret to long life in lichens
00:08:55.700It would be that we spend most of our time asleep.
00:08:59.580On looking for lichens, you've said, quote,
00:09:02.500when I'm looking for lichens, my mind is clear and I'm completely visual.
00:09:07.060There is an art to looking for lichens, a non-rational appreciation of reality, end quote.
00:09:13.700I was hoping you could expand upon this and then perhaps share with us
00:09:17.820your appreciation of lichens from a contemplative or aesthetic perspective
00:09:22.840as dreamlike objects of wonder rather than items of scientific categorization?
00:09:28.820Yeah, for sure. Because science is basically a rational process. I mean, I'm looking at
00:09:36.240diversity. I'm analyzing it. I spend most of my time in a lab looking at a microscope,
00:09:42.260doing measurements, studying literature, writing. All that is a real rational activity.
00:09:48.280And you can get sucked up into that. Also, the collecting. I can agree with you that there's a lot of miscollecting being done. And that's another part of it. It becomes like an avarice, rational activity of collecting things.
00:10:05.140Now, two things I really think we have in nature is both first thing, the contemplative part.
00:10:11.720I'm an atheist, of course, but in nature, even when I'm doing scientific work, I try and stop
00:10:19.560several times during the day. And maybe every time I look at something and I just stop and
00:10:27.060and have my mind completely silent and just feel complete unity with with reality
00:10:34.900and that's a feeling that you can get in nature in small areas or in big large areas like a redwood
00:10:43.460forest it's it's in you and it's feeling that unity with a reality and with life that we're
00:10:50.840part of a giant process of life that goes back billions of years. That part, I think, is every
00:10:58.380scientist should be practicing that. And all of us can appreciate that in nature. The other part
00:11:05.060is the aesthetic part. That's a little different. That means your mind's clear and you really
00:11:10.840observe. So you enjoy like the colors. For me, the lichens are beautifully colored, most of them. But
00:11:17.500you enjoy the colors the shapes you enjoy the beauty of the relationships of things and that's
00:11:24.200basically very visual and but also includes your hearing hearing sounds and that part's aesthetic
00:11:30.880but that's a different wavelength in your brain and uh the second part what would i first talking
00:11:37.340about uh the contemplative part that takes a little relaxing and for some people that they
00:11:43.220have to get beyond just thinking or just being active hiking and as a sport and you just have
00:11:51.220to relax and really let yourself go thank you so much for sharing that i i felt you in it and i
00:11:59.280feel really similarly myself when i'm in the forest and i'm building relationships with
00:12:05.040the plant life and the mycological life the lichen life and i agree lichens are just
00:12:11.360incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing and and i the colors are incredible the shapes and the way they
00:12:18.940grow onto one another like i'm thinking of this one lichen that i don't know the name of but it
00:12:23.840it kind of is like the seafoam green and then at the end there's these little dark orange red
00:12:29.460balls at the end of uh-huh and they're just you know you look and they feel like there's
00:12:34.280worlds within worlds in lichens so i yes i really feel you now i want to go back to
00:12:40.780you had mentioned fires and lichens, as you also mentioned, take an incredibly long period of time
00:12:47.460to grow. Further testament to this would be that it takes over 50 years for lichens to recover
00:12:53.380after being exposed to fire. And in California, especially Southern California, we have seen an
00:12:59.500increase in fires and we probably will continue to. So I'm curious as to what the lichen population
00:13:06.060is going to look like in California should these fires continue to grow,
00:13:10.980or even how the lichen population has changed in the last couple of years?
00:13:16.440Well, there's two things going on. One thing is, well, we'll take Cajon Pass, which you leave
00:13:21.900Southern California's coastal area between the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains and go
00:13:29.460out to Mojave. This is a long pass through there. It had a lot of fires in the 1990s.
00:13:36.060It had good chaparral, good soil conditions, good rocks, a lot of rocks, and it would have
00:14:53.640this is a continuous habitat since before the Pleistocene.
00:14:58.520So you have like literally three, four hundred species all within a 20 square mile area.
00:15:06.020So we don't know how much diversity has already been lost in Southern California from fires.
00:15:12.020But I would say that there's one thing, another factor besides this not being able to recolonize well, is during the Pleistocene, a place like Southern California or parts of the desert, even New Mexico, were a different habitat.
00:15:31.500They usually had summer and winter rains, and they were much more moister than they are now.
00:15:37.700a good example in Southern California is fir trees grew down to 1,500 feet. They're now up
00:15:43.500around 5,000 feet. And so you had a lot of things that had moved from the glacier south during the
00:15:52.060Pleistocene. And then as the climate change into the Mediterranean period, and we grew like,
00:15:59.460for instance, Southern California and in Southern California, there's no summer rains. So as that
00:16:05.860climate developed, most of the species that had moved from the north in this direction
00:16:12.300began to disappear. In fact, many of the species that we know were even collected at the beginning
00:16:20.080of the 20th century are now 500 miles north of here. So those things have been disappearing for
00:16:27.900sure. In the Santa Monica Mountains, for instance, along the coast, okay, there was a collector of
00:16:34.080lichens there from 1890 to 1918. From 1890 to 1918, when he collected, it was the beginning
00:16:43.820of a period when the rainfall along the coast began to decrease. And there's been a general
00:16:51.120decrease since the turn of the 20th century in the amount of rain in Southern California.
00:16:57.060When this man died in 1918, he'd been collecting in the Santa Monica Mountains
00:17:01.360for over 20 years. And his records are at Harvard. Now, I went through all his records
00:17:08.420and at least 70 lichen species that he collected, I could not find.
00:17:15.960And in the Santa Monica Mountains, for instance, this area is chaparral, oak trees, and chaparral
00:17:23.560can get really thick. If it stays moist year round, it won't catch fire so bad. I mean,
00:17:30.480if it stays moist and there's constant rainfall and stuff, you don't have a drying out of the
00:17:36.060brush and stuff. But what happened is starting in the 1920s began large scale fires. And so we can
00:17:45.820pretty well, except for some things like building highways along the coast, almost all of those 70
00:17:52.260species disappeared probably within about 20 years. That's unbelievable to just learn how
00:17:59.960fragile these species are. Oh, yeah, because they can't reproduce fast enough.
00:18:06.940Well, additionally, as someone who is now studying lichen outside of Southern California,
00:18:12.380I was hoping you could speak to how lichen populations and diversity will change as a
00:18:18.500result of climate change, residential and commercial development, and pollution,
00:18:23.760especially pollution, which as I understand it, is one of the most serious threats to the health
00:18:28.760of lichen. We already know that lichens aren't able to grow in cities or around industrial sites.
00:18:34.640So with the increased and widespread air pollution that is transpiring globally,
00:18:38.980it's apparent that lichens face more than just one threat. So to what extent are lichens facing
00:18:45.720endangerment? Is your immense cataloging and recording of lichens propelled by the understanding
00:18:51.280that the landscape is rapidly transforming? Well, one thing with the air pollution thing,
00:18:57.120say, just from nitrates, even if the lichens are able to absorb the nitrates and not be affected,
00:19:02.980it changes, for instance, on ones on bark, it changes the pH of the bark and causes a decrease
00:19:09.360in habitat. It causes an acidification of the bark. And so that's the main problem with air
00:19:16.860pollution. It was much worse when we were in sulfur dioxide and having acid rains.
00:19:21.680So some stuff is coming back, but it's being limited by this nitrates, which are selecting towards certain species that are more common.
00:19:32.560The other thing with the, even in the Pacific Northwest and stuff, this constant droughts is the main problem, though, because it's still a fire hazard.
00:19:43.840That's probably the biggest danger I see going on even in the next hundred years.
00:19:48.380but uh yeah air pollution is a problem but yeah that's that's uh that's a problem here in
00:19:55.940southern california too but in our in my own observations in in for instance southern california
00:20:02.740and this is an area with heavy nitrate pollution we still have overall if you just go even a little
00:20:09.880bit into the mountains or out into the desert we still have high diversity so there so that's not
00:20:16.480That's not as serious as this fire thing.
00:20:19.120Even in the desert, for instance, in Joshua Tree, there's grass.
00:20:24.180Different kinds of bromas came in, our invasive grasses that are in the desert.
00:20:29.780So what used to be a fire that would start and just burn for some brush and be uneven
00:20:35.600now has all this fuel from the built-up brome and just burns through and burns down the Joshua Trees.
00:20:43.580One of the biggest Joshua tree areas was completely burnt with some of the biggest trees that are in Joshua tree.
00:20:50.940And it's all from this buildup of grasses.
00:20:54.100See, that's another thing that's a problem with all these, with lichens,
00:20:58.560is it's these invasive species that come in and add to the fuel load in areas, too, besides the fire.
00:21:08.720Yeah, lichens are going to have a tough time anyway in the next 300 years as we go through this extinction event we're living through.
00:21:17.780Yeah, it's fascinating and really depressing to hear what happened in Joshua Tree and these invasive grasses that are giving more fuel and helping the fires burn longer and more potently.
00:21:31.040So it's hard to hear, but it's important to hear.
00:21:34.280And I do want to just mention around air pollution.
00:21:36.820I remember when I was learning about usnea and I had heard, you know, if you're seeing usnea, then that's a good sign that air pollution is not overtaking the area per se.
00:27:51.340In fact, in an area, say, like the Mojave Desert has 150 species, Channel Islands has 450 species, in areas like this, almost every one of those lichens is totally useless in terms of human use.
00:28:07.720So we were giving a walk, and I was explaining that, and one guy got very angry and says, this is not the way you should be telling people about lichens.
00:28:17.380You should be telling them how useful they are to people.
00:28:19.980and the thing is is that they're not useful just like most insects are not useful yes they're
00:28:27.340useful for the total ecological landscape and and relationships but in direct utilitarian terms
00:28:36.180they're useless in fact that's why there's lichen is not the best career to get into as a scientist
00:28:41.840either because uh in uh most funding starting back even with obama most funding for science
00:28:49.020is going into, quote, innovation, utilitarian values. I mean, utilitarian projects that can
00:28:56.100be, you know, end up being into enterprise and entrepreneurship. I myself deal with a field that
00:29:04.580is mostly useless to human beings in the direct sense. Most of nature is like that in terms of
00:29:13.300doing it in economic terms. I think we really have to move beyond. We have no choice but to
00:29:19.440move beyond capitalism. If we're not able to do that during the next 300 to 400 years,
00:29:26.700as the climate changes, as environments are degraded by climate change, we could end up in
00:29:33.500a period that is just terrible. I mean, you know, it's much more totalitarian than we are now.
00:29:40.420I that's the thing I think is the saddest thing to me about what's going on with climate change
00:29:46.020is because you see the world is being destroyed so quickly the relationships before that and it'll
00:29:53.540happen so fast like for instance rising of the oceans when it really gets going it'll happen
00:29:59.660within a hundred years once it's the major ice fields melt I mean you're talking about most of
00:30:05.920the populations of the world being wiped out for where they live. They're going to have to migrate
00:30:10.820somewhere. It's going to be a gigantic mess. And we have no way currently, as a united people of0.97
00:30:19.560the earth, to deal with this problem. Everything's divided up between different economic and political
00:30:25.900power groups. So unless we move beyond capitalism, we may be heading towards extinction.
00:30:33.260well we are you know in so many ways we are yes you know we're we are we're there we're in the
00:30:41.080extinction crisis it's interesting to hear the three four hundred year scenario i've never heard
00:30:46.820those numbers before so i i'd like to hear about that and maybe also just in terms of extinctions
00:30:53.820i i was reading that right now there's only two lichen listed as threatened or endangered by the
00:30:59.720U.S. government. And you can compare that to 942 plants and 1,447 animals on the endangered
00:31:06.960species list. So I think that's interesting to note. And then also on the topic of extinction,
00:31:12.160I just wonder what does and does not get recognized? You know, it's been brought to
00:31:17.540my attention in doing some of the research for this interview, just how much we've become
00:31:22.040reliant on extinction as a metric. You know, so I'm wondering, do you see any problems with this
00:31:27.400sort of hyper attention around extinction because are we falling into this trap of only caring about
00:31:34.060one set of species at a time once they tip towards extinction rather than focusing our energy and
00:31:40.300acknowledging the tremendous inherent value of all life? Yeah, well, I totally agree with you.
00:31:46.300This whole idea of just concentrating on rare species is BS because as important as it is to,
00:31:55.280for instance, save the red wolves down in the red states or make sure that redwoods continue
00:32:03.220being repopulating. And all these things are really valuable. A real wild place is a gigantic
00:32:11.560relationship of many things that are common. Okay, many of the species are common. It's the
00:32:19.020whole environment that these rare species, the rarer species also exist in. But by concentrating
00:32:25.940just on the rare species, it tends to take away from the habitat and appreciating the wholeness
00:32:32.120of nature and habitats. And a lot of that lichen habitats that are burning in, for instance,
00:32:39.220Southern California, nobody would consider particularly valuable. They have maybe three
00:32:44.400or four main chaparral plants, or they have oak trees that are everywhere, coastal live oaks.
00:32:52.580They have their granite areas, you know, and there's nothing there that's usually rare in
00:32:59.440the plants. Well, Southern California does have quite a few rare plants, but a lot of these areas
00:33:04.800are not that particularly rich in rare plants. Yet when they go, and this is happening all over
00:33:11.960the world, when these common areas go, you're losing a tremendous part of nature. It's just
00:33:17.720like when I was saying about these lichen deserts. I mean, you go there and it's, yeah, the plants
00:33:25.900are there that came back after the fire, the habitats there, the rocks and the beautiful
00:33:31.980landscape. The thing is, is one part's gone. And with that one part gone, it's just like when
00:33:39.160you're in a forest that's been some of these artificial forests where they've been cut down
00:33:44.580and regrown, or areas where you walk in and you hear no sound, hardly. Yeah, I think a great thing
00:33:52.020about this program you got going with your group is that it concentrates on the wholeness of nature.
00:33:59.220Politically, these endangered species things are under constant attack. So, I mean, they're not
00:34:06.800really that effective overall anymore. They have a built-in economic factor that can be taken to
00:34:12.840court, and that still hasn't been worked out. So without some kind of political change,
00:34:18.440even this concentrating on rare species is taking us away from concentrating on the protection of
00:34:24.940all of nature. So the thing I was talking about three to four hundred years is I believe that
00:34:33.880within three or four hundred years, we'll reach the worst part of the melting. If we're going to
00:34:41.760go through a melting of the polar ice cap and a raising of the ocean levels up to 90 feet,
00:34:48.700this should happen in, I would imagine, four or five hundred years. And when we reach that point
00:34:54.900when it's over and we've gone through all the first part of everybody trying to migrate and
00:35:01.040all the wars that are going to come out of that. I think at that point, we'll reach a point where
00:35:05.860we'll be looking towards the future if it's not completely out of control, but we'll be seeing
00:35:11.080a nature, a large amount of the species that exist now be gone. And so that's the, I just
00:35:18.040use that as a general figure. Well, now that we're into the conversation of extinction and
00:35:26.040capitalism and and how we were here and what we have to do to or what i hope that we do in order
00:35:34.600to protect as much as we can it just it's it would appear to be such a delicate balance between
00:35:41.560challenging the institutional and structural powers that uphold the system we're in while
00:35:46.940also working on an individual or conscious level it would appear that there is a mass
00:35:52.540paralyzation by a state of unconsciousness and i often think about how wounded we are as a society
00:36:00.100and in a sense it matters less what our governing bodies look like for example what does it mean to
00:36:07.640reject hierarchy and self-govern if ourselves remain untended so i'm curious if you have any
00:36:14.960thoughts on direct action in changing society or perhaps what do you think reality and fantasy is
00:36:21.500if the facade of our democratic government truly crumbled overnight?
00:36:26.320Well, firstly, I don't think we're that democratic here in the United States.
00:36:31.320But anyway, say, for instance, if it's possible for an end to capitalism,
00:36:37.060okay, I think we're entering the best possible period for this to happen.
00:36:41.820First thing we have, we're facing a crisis that most people do not realize it now.
00:36:47.920within the next hundred years, everybody will realize we're facing this. We're facing this
00:36:53.160in the same way we'd be facing an alien evasion. We're all in it. And then at that point,
00:37:01.080it's the first time in history that we all face a common enemy. And so I think that's one thing
00:37:10.220that'll be historically different than even the period we're living in now. The second thing is,
00:37:16.400is the failure of our current capitalist economy and the nation state, individual nation state
00:37:23.680organization we have of the world will have proven itself to most people that it's been a complete
00:37:31.440failure. Third, with the destruction of habitat, the vast migrations, the social chaos that'll
00:37:41.880come out of this, large areas that, uh, problems with food, all of these problems will create
00:37:48.640pressures to push people towards action. So real change anytime in history has to come from real
00:37:58.000factors more than one individual choice. And I think, so I think I'm, I'm really positive that
00:38:04.680if ever there was a chance to, for a major change, it'll come out of these terrible events.
00:38:11.880Because for once, we have a reason to be united as a people around the earth.
00:38:18.280I think you have to also keep in mind this.
00:38:21.480Okay, if you were living in Rome in the year 60, you wouldn't be able to imagine, imagine that there'd be anything beyond the Roman Empire.
00:38:34.480you might like say amen i don't really like these people fighting each other in the coliseum
00:38:41.400and killing each other but well anyway it's happening here you'd be complaining about yeah
00:38:46.860only rich people run this this society i'm in i run a bar down here it's uh i have to pay the
00:38:53.920the roman soldiers a bribe to in order to operate here you would like you wouldn't be able to
00:39:00.420imagine or living in in in europe in the middle ages that things would ever be different
00:39:07.160and so we have to always keep that in mind that well we should never be depressed completely by
00:39:14.480the period we live in massive changes could happen within the next 100 or 200 years
00:39:20.660and there's no way we can imagine them or see how they're connected with our lives now
00:39:26.480I can see like just say with this this millennial thing that's going on about socialism you know at
00:39:33.380least this understanding that government has to do more it's not just a free market society
00:39:38.560okay this is just that's millions of people are coming to this conclusion this is the way change
00:39:45.240happens so there is no there's a dynamic between your individual life you should not feel like
00:39:53.680alienate it because you can't, quote, do anything. For instance, I work on these lichens all the
00:40:00.240time, okay? I write papers about them. I do inventories so people know what's in a particular
00:40:06.720area. I describe new species, many of which may not even be here in 100 years, okay? That's all
00:40:15.280I have time to do. I've had, in the rest of my life, I've had time to raise a family where I
00:40:20.980had to do a lot of work for. And I don't feel depressed by what's happening. And that's all
00:40:27.840you can do. For instance, you're doing this show. You guys have a good foundation. I was glad to
00:40:33.140donate $25 to it. And that may not seem like enough, but it's all of what we can do as an
00:40:41.440individual is limited. We shouldn't feel like despair because we can't do more.
00:40:47.340i think we need to to just keep moving in the direction we're all moving and there's big
00:40:55.960cultural changes going on and we just go with these cultural changes and believe that
00:41:02.200just like the butterfly that beats its wings and causes a rainstorm around the other side of the
00:41:09.700world you know we have to embrace the chaos of our lives i'm very hopeful for the future myself
00:41:17.280But unfortunately, I think we're going to be entering into a new earth, so things are going to really change a lot, and it's unfortunate.
00:49:04.400You may be too far away from something like that, so you don't give up.
00:49:09.480Lichens like insects and stuff are a little hard to work on.
00:49:14.220Okay, so I started working on them with a dissecting microscope.
00:49:17.980With dissecting microscope, just to look at them up close or with a hand lens, you need to look at them with equipment.
00:49:29.080You need to be able to look up closer than you can see with your eye.
00:49:32.500so that creates a problem with this because then you have to have a dissecting microscope and then
00:49:37.760if you're going to try to identify them you usually need a compound microscope so once you've
00:49:45.020made that commitment then you're up into a different level and when you make that kind
00:49:50.740of commitment then you're going to have to really study and you could it's like learning to play
00:49:56.960guitar, though. You could do it in 15 minutes and a half hour a day and become good at it.
00:50:03.080But that's the level where citizen science starts to become real science. And then it's just,
00:50:09.980don't forget, science wasn't like it is now. Science originally began with people
00:50:15.860studying stuff as a hobby, basically. Science, the word science is only a couple hundred years old.
00:50:23.780And now it's a whole academic thing, whole government agencies and stuff.
00:50:29.960Once you've reached that level, then you're going to need to connect with either people working at universities.
00:50:37.240Another thing is, is any area, even if you can't contact these social groups or if you don't have good contacts at a university or meet the right people at a university,
00:50:49.480go to any national park any reserve any any national forest there's people there they are
00:50:59.260so understaffed that anything you want to work on you can you can get help with you can or you can
00:51:07.140volunteer say for instance the joshua tree they have money to study the drying out in mojave
00:51:13.200desert the rainfall is going down and so they're worried about the existence of the joshua trees
00:51:19.260You can go in and volunteer to help collect the data for that.
00:51:24.360And then if you're like me, when I started studying lichens, I wanted to understand what
00:51:41.220And then I went and called the state park.
00:51:44.340I mean, I went and called the National Forest for the Cleveland National Forest, got hold
00:51:48.760of the botanist and they gave me a permit to go out and learn and and I was just all I was supposed
00:51:55.240to do is contact them if I found anything interesting so this higher level getting into
00:52:02.860the real science and you're not just also just collecting data for say like this Joshua tree
00:52:08.420thing you don't need to know anything about but you don't need to be a botanist to do that
00:52:12.580If you're going to this higher level of science, no matter what you're studying, there's almost always a need for that.
00:52:22.540You can get help from the national parks.
00:52:25.300And then usually, in most things you study, there's a regional expert.
00:52:31.000And these people are enthusiastic, if you can get hold of one, to talk to anybody that's interested in what they're interested in.
00:52:38.580So what I did is then, once I felt confident about what I was doing and got my direction, once I got a permit and then was able to collect more material and study it, then I started contacting scientists that were already academically established, asking questions, writing them.
00:53:00.060You could do this with botany, insects. It's not just lichens. And I got answers from most of them.
00:53:06.100So there's different levels of what you, I don't like the term citizen science in some ways, but there's different levels of this involvement you can have without being an academic and having a doctorate.
00:53:18.240So it's possible to go through these stages.
00:53:21.000Once you've reached the stage where you're working on a field, okay, you're not going to be able to do, well, we will be able in the future.
00:53:29.300But right now, for instance, you won't be able to do molecular biology.
00:53:32.240so you can only you'll have to realize when you're getting into something like lichens
00:53:38.500insects or whatever you're studying that you're not going to be able to have access necessarily
00:53:44.740to the the most advanced techniques so what I did when I got into this is I said okay I'm not
00:53:52.520going to have money for molecular work I'm not going to be able to go study that I said so what
00:53:58.580I can do is I can do biodiversity studies. So you find out what you can do, look at the field,
00:54:07.300and you can get an idea of what's needed. So I knew that nobody was working in Southern California.
00:54:15.080I knew that a flora was coming up, that they needed information for that.
00:54:19.800I know that the places I went to were interested to know what lichens they had.
00:54:25.060So I was able to fill a gap that was missing.
00:54:28.960So whenever you're getting into one of these fields, you look for a gap where you can fill in a spot.
00:54:35.440This is if you're going straight into the science.
00:54:39.880And so on that level, you can become a citizen science, a real scientist without having an academic degree.
00:54:49.420The only trouble with this, though, is making money.
00:54:52.320So, I mean, you have to balance this with somehow making a living.
00:54:55.920I myself was forced into disability, so I had a pension coming in.