Ecologist Lauren Oakes wanted to know how the rest of the forest was responding ... and clarinet for shore pine. In the clip above, each note represents a tree, and its pitch and how hard it ...

But amid the devastation stood some survivors. At the time, UC Davis biologist Patricia Maloney and a team of researchers entered the forest to collect seeds from 100 surviving sugar pine trees.

Pine trees hate shade, but this was a clearing in the dense Adirondack forest, most likely created by a hearty gust of wind that had toppled the previous overstory, so it was pine-friendly.