Geoff Staneff
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gstaneff.bsky.social
Geoff Staneff
@gstaneff.bsky.social
330 followers 440 following 1.2K posts
Former thermoelectrics and fuel cell scientist, software and data product manager; current forestry startup guy trying to reduce the impact of future wildfires. PNW based, have visited high intensity burns this year from Northern BC to the Sierras.
He/Him
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Just as everyone was getting ready for bed an unexpectedly non-zero amount of croaking emanated from downstairs.

We do have a clearly posted notice: "No Wild Animals In The House" on the garage door. It appears to be not as efficacious as hoped.
A small (noisy) frog sitting on a hardwood floor; a clearly marked no-frog zone. This is the least blurry image as there was much running around, screaming, and general encouragement for this frog to no longer be within the house. Why is it in the house? Why is it climbing up the walls? Where did it come from? The clear finished white oak flooring next to the white wall and trim contrasts clearly with the small dark brown and green frog in a strange land. This frog was relocated into the yard, non-violently, where it may find more success in attracting the kind of attention its enthusiastic croaking serenade deserved.
September 6, 2025 at 4:31 AM
gstaneff.bsky.social
Fire Scar Friday?

10 days ago at Blodgett, this is the backside of one you pass on the way in every time without thinking about it. But unless you walk around behind it you won't realize the character in this burn scar.
A fire blackened trunk of an incense cedar at Blodgett Research Forest near Georgetown CA. The brown trunk is blackened at the base, with a void burned out from the fire. The ground is covered with needles, light brown, starkly contrasting with the still blackened trunk. The tree is very tall and the image somewhat distorted to show some of the lower branches far up the trunk. This very large tree will survive this fire scar, and has already as this isn't its first fire. The sky between the trees is cloudy with patches of blue peeking through the white and grey clouds. There is a grey gravel road behind this tree and many other trees in the background of the image. The other trees represent a variety of species including tan oak, ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, and sugar pine, white fir, among others. Large cones (dark brown) and a bed of needles (light brown) dominate the litter, though some sticks and shrub regrowth is here as well. Many of the trees in the background also show fire blackened trunks - Blodgett hosts prescribed fire outreach to the community and actively burns this research forest in order to reduce its susceptibility to severe wildfire.
September 6, 2025 at 12:53 AM
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The view looking west from a rest stop between Ellensburg and Vantage Washington on Tuesday evening. Dry lightning fire starts were pushing a lot of smoke into the air causing some red-sky conditions for much of Eastern Washington. It has occasionally been flowing over into Western Washington too.
Picture of the sun through wildfire smoke, through sagebrush just outside Vantage, WA. The foreground sagebrush is mostly in silhouette with dark brown stems and green leaves. In the midground, obscured by the foreground, are rolling hills of dark green and brown grasses, with a high voltage transmission tower on the left side. The background mountains are red-blue with reflected light from the sun through wildfire smoke. The sky is glowing red-orange around the smoke plume, with the top half of the sun shining through in red ominously.
September 5, 2025 at 10:27 PM
gstaneff.bsky.social
Windy.com is also useful if you want to see projections and forecasts. Yesterday (in Spokane) we were talking about the angry-purple quality all over BC (even as we were smoked in there).

The dry-lightning that came up the coast this week starting wildfires... everywhere is mostly to blame.
Air quality map for the Pacific Northwest, Washington and BC. Most everything is colored yellow-orange for bad air quality. There a few areas of green marking good air quality in Northern BC and closer to Alaska, there are big regions of red to angry purple indicating you should hold your breath over vast portions of BC and some parts of Washington. Most due to local wildfire starts from dry-lightning storms this week (recent fires are putting up a lot more smoke than the older fires). As the winds flow down slope towards the Puget Sound the smoke building up behind the mountains on the east side is pulled through into west side population centers. Represent bas health outcomes for everyone involved.
September 5, 2025 at 10:16 PM
gstaneff.bsky.social
The colors were just something else out here. The blue and white of the sky contrasting with the green and orange of the needles, with the brown and black of the trunks and ground. It looked like a brush demo with a color transition from the ground to the sky.
More of the giant sequoia stand at Blodgett. The blue and white of the sky contrasting with the green and orange of the needles, with the brown and black of the trunks and ground - with many many trees arranged in a regular array across 10 acres of study.
August 28, 2025 at 1:10 AM
gstaneff.bsky.social
An old charred stump in the sequoia plot at Blodgett. Despite the bright sunlight, under the tight canopy it was very shady with small bits of sunlight poking through periodically. This view is mostly trunks, the the canopy untouched above.
Old stump, blackened in a recent underburn in a study plot of giant sequoia. The trunks are brown and black, the low branches are white and not completely trimmed, the canopy is above the frame for the most part, green in the background. Filtered sunlight comes through the stand. Every tree has a tag with number and unit information, these trees have been measured and tracked since their plantings 45 years ago.
August 28, 2025 at 12:16 AM
gstaneff.bsky.social
More from Blodgett's Segi stand (yesterday). The torch line can be seen in the bed of wood chips that didn't carry the fire during the burn. There is a patch of some groundcover coming in, sitting in a spot of sun breaking through.
Another image from a stand of 45 year old giant sequoia, post prescription burn. The trees have dark brown-black trunks, green needles with orange-brown scorch from the heat of the fire, and the ground has black trails from where the fire burned (and didn't) through the stand. Centered is a patch of green groundcover that has sprouted up in a patch of sunlight, at the base of several burned stumps.
August 27, 2025 at 5:34 PM
gstaneff.bsky.social
Spent the day here, getting dusty and covered in soot doing a post-fire survey of a former research stand being introduced to fire. Blodgett is in full "burn the forest to save the forest" mode now, they are getting a lot of work done this year (not now in high fire season, natch).
A stand of 45 year old giant sequoia planted in a geometric array. This stand had Rx Fire introduced this year, but it was really too wet for the fire to carry well. You can see the black tracks from the fire in the ground litter, missing patches of ripe fuels, but generally burning hotter around the bases of these trees. Sequoia drop a lot of litter in part to encourage fire intensity because that fire kills rivals and not the sequoia. The green tops reach into the cloudy sky, lower down the needles are all scorched amber-brown, the trunks show blackening, but many low branches remain (in white).
August 27, 2025 at 6:31 AM
gstaneff.bsky.social
I think we might not be looking in the right places.
Or giving it enough time.
The Bike Tree of Vashon Island. Apparently abandoned in 1954, it sits inside the trunk about 7' up today. A rusted bicycle has been consumed by a growing tree, leaving the front tire and handlebars free on one side and part of the rear wheel, fender, and hub at the back. The scene is forested, with a full green understory of dense brush and many smaller alders in the background, some covered with climbing green ivy. The chain needs oil.
July 30, 2025 at 5:53 PM
gstaneff.bsky.social
Hey folks, tomorrow July 24th we're doing our monthly forestry and startups meet-up. I hope to see some new faces out for pizza and BEvERages to talk forests, climate, and as we get into the hot part of the year, wildfire.

Details here: lu.ma/dn82mhs0
Photo of checking real-time LiDAR measurements
Ponderosa Pine forest, dusty brown ground covered with needles, a few downed trees looking worn and gray, straight black and redish trunks with plate like bark, and green canopy fading off into the distance. There is a man wrapping a steel tape measure around one of the trees, measuring the diameter. Several of the trees have orange paint indicating those trees are to be retained in any subsequent forest treatment on this site.
July 24, 2025 at 2:21 AM
gstaneff.bsky.social
Ponderosa Pine at 8,000' in Arizona might be fire resilient at a basal area of 40-60 sq ft per acre. This stand is at 150-180 with very few trees marked for removal. Setting aside the treatment target for a minute, why mark the LTM instead of ITM? An affection for tracer paint? A love of Orange?
A Ponderosa Pine Forest near Flagstaff Arizona. The sky is blue, the ground is dusty brown, the trees are densely packed, and most of them have orange paint diagonally across the trunk. There are about 3x as many trees as are healthy in this landscape, but from this mark maybe 1 in 10 will be removed. It is hard to understand why this was Leave Tree Mark instead of Individual Tree Mark, perhaps other people enjoy orange paint on all the trees in their forests?
July 18, 2025 at 6:35 PM
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This week I'm back in the Flagstaff area showing folks at the Coconino and Kaibob how an on-machine LiDAR and Camera system can help projects achieve their objectives and reduce mistakes and incidents from operators taking too few or too many trees from the landscape.
Post project landscape near Flagstaff Arizona; light brown ground, dark brown to black trunks, green needles, and clear blue skies. Unless you really look you won't notice that there is something strange with the spacing and diameters in this stand. Instead of random clumps and openings, the operator created something akin to city blocks, and instead of leaving a mix of diameters the operator selected heavy from the 8-14" DBH class. The combination, while holding less fuel and reduced likelihood of continuous crown fire, leaves a raptor's playground and a bit of a dead area for prey animals.
July 13, 2025 at 6:02 PM
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Last month, I was getting stuck on a ridgeline in the Sierras. It turns out the mechanical treatment limit of around 30% is a soft limit; here I was sliding backwards downslope at only 25% due to the loose post-treatment surface litter. Took an hour with a come-along to pull it out.
A hillside, 25% slope, with dry loose pine litter scattered across the surface and a few trees and a UTV well and truly stuck on that slope. Between the trees you can see deep blue sky, the trees have green needles and dark trunks, the littered ground is all light browns - brittle dry material dropped to the ground 6 months earlier. The UTV is a 4wd diesel 2-seater by Polaris, in greys and orange. There is a camera and lidar system on the roof.
July 13, 2025 at 5:56 PM
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Some post treatment forest, is it enough? Is it too much? Should we do more? The classic response in Forestry is "it depends," and so it does. The ridgelines offer an opportunity to hold a fire and contain it within a watershed, but sometimes conditions line up for extreme fire despite efforts.
Some Sierra Mixed Conifer along Dog Valley Road. The scene has a mostly open forest with green brush on the ground, tall dark brown trunks, and green needles with brilliant blue sky peaking through the canopy. This area is probably as 120sq.ft./acre, treatment goals along the project were mostly at 80sq.ft./acre, but some areas were left at much higher densities. The untreated landscape is often in the 350-400sq.ft./acre densities.
June 22, 2025 at 6:03 AM
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Stopped by South of Lake Tahoe to take a look at the last reaches of the Caldor burn scar. We were out to support some fuels reduction work and it helps to see what happens when the fires get out of hand.
A hillside covered with black sticks south of Lake Tahoe. A few trees near the bottom of the picture have some green needles, one on the right is browning, likely dead from the fire damage, but most of the trees in the scene are quite dead from the high intensity fire that burned up this hillside. The sky is bright blue, across the top of the ridgeline.
June 22, 2025 at 5:50 AM
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Hey, spent the week off-grid in the Plumas. Saw some trees, tested some systems, introduced some of the team to where we work and why. A great week to spend in the woods, but tired now.
A selfie of a man with a brown hardhat, orange shirt, and orange sunglasses, standing in a rocky clearing on the top of a ridge with forested hills in the background. The sky is blue, the ground rocky, light brown and dusty, there is a weathered, dead, silver barked tree and some green shrubs about.
June 22, 2025 at 5:43 AM
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This is a mirror array, like a CSP facility. There are also lens arrays; here's one from 1922 that could reach 3,000C. They used to put these things wherever and just surprise the neighbors.

Story on these furnaces from 1956 here in the archives:
calteches.library.caltech.edu/1597/1/Duwez...
Black and white picture of a solar furnace at Caltech, comprised of 19 lenses used to focus the sun and generate temperatures of 3,000C. Dr. Eugene Loh stands next to the furnace, which is 3x his height and appears to be sitting in a very large mailbox that keeps the system out of the sun when not in use. Solar furnaces are... light activated and continue operate if left out when not in use.
June 11, 2025 at 7:38 PM
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Post a warning.
A tree in a lush forest setting. Grey-black bark of a young douglas fir (~25" in diameter) with a red and white sign posted. The top half of the sign reads in white letters on a red field: "Private Sign." The bottom half of the sign reads in black letters on a white field: "Do Not Read."
March 24, 2025 at 12:42 AM
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Why bother? Most of the time it isn't worth it, but if you are taking a photo for press or publicity purposes working with raw format is harder with your cell phone. You can also do things with a real lens that the cell phone can only approximate. Bokeh, gradient and color-shifting filters, etc.
A scene with a large Ponderosa pine in the foreground in shadow, with a low-union (two trees with intersecting trunks at the ground), and sparse trees fading into the background. The scene is a mix of lights, darks, brightness, and shadow. The blue sky washes out in order to get detail on the trunk in the foreground shadow, the bright white snow field on the right side blows out completely. The brown ground leading back to more black and red tree trunks fading into the forest are well resolved, despite the dappled shadow. The middle of the scene is mostly green from the pine needles on the trees receding into the distance.
March 15, 2025 at 6:05 PM
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I'm not a frequent photographer and I rarely get out the big camera. The cell phone camera is usually just better - especially when dealing with dramatic dynamic range conditions. Bright sun, snow, and forest shadows is one of those challenging environments. Finding useful settings takes effort.
Four frames of the same scene, with different shutter speed and exposure settings. Camera has a circular polarizer, set at random and was at whatever the settings were left at for a portrait session months ago with a different lens. The scene is a wintery forest, with sparse snow on the ground, brown dirt, black and red tree trunks, green needles (a couple with yellowing and a snag with none) and a wispy blue sky in the background. This is early morning and the bright sun is coming in shallow from the left side of the frame. The top-left is way overexposed, this was actually the third step down to get the exposure right. The next frame to the right begins to bring the range into view. The frame in the lower right is under exposed, this is fixable in post with a little loss of detail in the shadows (usually fine), the lower left is good enough to make a pretty picture. With your cell phone you just point and shoot and it all comes together for you.
March 15, 2025 at 5:58 PM
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Cold, but productive week exploring the process of uneven age stand management. Putting that in place on USFS land opens the door to less severe fire outcomes (e.g. converting post fire replantings into something that respects carrying capacity).

Measuring DBH or DSH under 4' of snow is a trip.
A winter forest scene. It is hard to judge scale, but the snow here is 4' deep. The foreground is snow-filled, with a vehicle track down the center into the distance. In the mid-scene are green pines with red and black bark (mostly Pondo, some larch and lodgepole, and aspen near riparian zones), with light blue sky with wisps of cloud in the far distance. This stand has between 120 and 180 sqft/acre basal area and will be thinned across age classes to a target of 60. Nothing above 21" can be removed. Under uneven age stand management there aren't many snag-patches, sick or weak trees were generally culled in prior treatments, so they have to actively be recruited - some trees that are about to die are deliberately left standing to become snags.
March 15, 2025 at 5:40 PM
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You would say that, being a law professor.

But really, we're all sleeping on the "menu featuring poutine" avatar. Why feature the evils of suboptimal freedom fries over something like the secure vault door of the strategic maple syrup reserve?
Image of the inside of the Canadian Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve, a large warehouse space filled with white 55gal (208.198 litre) drums of, presumably, maple syrup. Strategically, there are no indicators of who or what is inside these barrels or even little red maple leaf logos anywhere in the frame. The reserve extends into infinity, like the end scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where the "Top Men" are working on all the powerful artifacts securely stored by the government.
March 3, 2025 at 9:40 PM
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While genetics wasn't specifically controlled (beyond collecting seed from the same area) the sample size and bulk trends suggest that spacing describes the observed growth behavior in incense-cedar well (with the caveat that being eaten has a significant impact on nominal survival, even for trees).
Figure from Cox, York, and Battles showing bulk Incense Cedar growth characteristics after 19 years as a function of growing space. The trend in diameter at breast height drops quickly as the spacing gets very close. The trend in height shows slightly less response to spacing. The volume of the bole is mostly linear, suggesting competition impacts height very early in the lifecycle.
February 27, 2025 at 3:55 AM
gstaneff.bsky.social
Something more representative of their portfolio?
The BP logo is normally a sunburst of yellow and green representing their public statements and aspirations towards clean energy. Inverting the colors and running through a sepia filter better reflects their core competency in extracting oil and gas, which they are doubling down on.
February 26, 2025 at 7:17 PM
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Tuesday Treeday?

Here are some samples cut from Blodgett Research Forest of local Incense Cedar - all are about 60 years old. There are significant differences in diameter due to neighborhood interactions (all from the same forest/history).

36x difference due to competition for light and water.
4 rounds cut from different Incense Cedars, all of about 60 years old and of vastly different character. The largest example's diameter is 6x that of the smallest, meaning 36 times more stem area due to the much thicker growth ring accumulation. The growth rings are necessarily very close together in the smaller examples, which tends to make stronger boards as timber but much less resilient and lower carbon forest stands than the free growing examples with minimal competition.
February 26, 2025 at 4:17 AM