http://gallery.pictopia.com/providerasset/1/pictopia_logo.pnghttp://gallery.pictopia.com/providerasset/1/pictopia_logo.pnghttp://gallery.pictopia.com/natgeo/gallery/92241/2012-02-04T14:23:18Z2012-02-04T14:23:18Zhttp://gallery.pictopia.com/natgeo/gallery/92241/photo/8389209/

A team of people and a year of planning went into photographer Nick Nichols' documentation of this 1500-year-old, 300-foot tall redwood. Ultimately using three cameras on a pulley system, Nichols took 84 digital images of the tree, and Senior Editor Ken Geiger spent 120 hours stitching them into this composite.

//pictopia.com/perl/get_image?provider_id=318&ptp_photo_id=natgeo:8389209&size=128&m=1328394198.0//pictopia.com/perl/get_image?provider_id=318&ptp_photo_id=natgeo:8389209&size=128&m=1328394198.0Special 6 Foot Redwood Printhttp://gallery.pictopia.com/natgeo/gallery/92241/photo/8389209/In the Magazine/Past Issues/October 2009/Redwood Forest2012-01-30T08:29:53ZMichael Nichols/National Geographic Image Collectionhttp://gallery.pictopia.com/natgeo/gallery/92241/photo/8479315/

A tagged northern spotted owl in a redwood forest.

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The largest patch of old growth redwood forest remaining.

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Cathedral silence fills the old-growth sanctuary of Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

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A glass-plate negative from the 1890s, held by Edie Butler of Humboldt State University, records one of countless fallen giants.

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Coastal fog covers Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

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Clear-cuts in a stand of fir, spruce and redwood trees.

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A rare snow dusts the trail through Del Norte Coast Redwoods Park.

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A banana slug in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

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The duo's focus was forest management. Here, Fay notes the size of a truckload of logs.

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Scientists measure a fire cave in a redwood damaged by wildfire.

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A black bear who strips bark off of redwood trees to get at sap.

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Elk scatter across a meadow in Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park.

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Equipped with radar, Dave Bigger, at the time a biologist for Humboldt Redwood Company, searches before dawn for endangered marbled murrelets during the birds' summer breeding season - a requirement under the timber firm's Habitat Conservation Plan.

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On company land near the Mad River in northern California, Lowell Diller, senior biologist for Green Diamond Resource Company, and his inseparable assistant, Riley, lure a northern spotted owl to an old-growth stump baited with a mouse (not pictured).

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Geologist Neal Youngblood holds an aerial photograph encompassing the 48,000 acres acquired by Redwood National Park in 1978, when the area was laced with clear-cuts and 450 miles of logging roads.

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Fay checks out a burn pile in a clear-cut.

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From the southernmost redwood in Big Sur to the northernmost tree near Oregon's Chetco River, Mike Fay and Lindsey Holm spent almost a year walking the redwoods, stopping often to record plants, animals, and forest conditions around them.

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Fay and Holm also passed through San Francisco, rebuilt with redwood timber after the earthquake and fires of 1906, and across the Golden Gate Bridge.

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National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Mike Fay emerges from a hellish hike down Little Lost Man Creek in Redwood National Park.

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Fay and Holm look for marbled murrelets up high in old growth. "In 20 years we won't think of logging these lands like we do today," Fay says.

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