As we wait for the premiere of PBS Nature’s Yosemite, here’s some additional clips from the documentary, including reporting from KQED’s Science Unit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Cn8FsOsBmY&t
Giant sequoias can live for thousands of years. Yet in California’s fourth year of historic drought, these resilient trees are starting to feel the effects of the lack of snow in the Sierra Nevada. University of California, Berkeley, researchers climb the trees to investigate. KQED Science video producer Gabriela Quirós investigates for KQED’s QUEST.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmNZGr9Udx8&t
Learn how the destructive force of fire gives birth to new life. From PBS Nature’s Yosemite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m37QR_4XNY&t
Every winter, California newts leave the safety of their forest burrows and travel as far as three miles to mate in the pond where they were born. Their mating ritual is a raucous affair that involves bulked-up males, writhing females and a little cannibalism. One of our favorite Deep Look episodes from former KQED Science intern Mallory Pickett and KQED Science video producer Gabriela Quirós.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNkNzNOX1AM
Sierra newt males battle it out for the chance to get froggy. From PBS Nature’s Yosemite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEji9I4Tcjo
The humble pine cone is more than a holiday decoration. It’s an ancient form of tree sex. Flowers may be faster and showier, but the largest living things in the world? The oldest? They all reproduce with cones. Deep Look‘s Christmas Special from KQED Science video producer and Deep Look cinematographer Josh Cassidy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIUcuLqakgA
Around the third week of February each year, Horsetail Fall lights up Yosemite National Park with a spectacle of orange and red. The phenomenon, which has taken on the decidedly majestic nickname “firefall,” is an optical trick of the sunset when a host of conditions are just right. From Kevin Key via Storyful.