We got a tropical storm today and it brought actual rain. The forecast called for an 80% chance of rain today due to the incoming system. As I arrived at the field office at dawn you could just smell it in the air, the smell of imminent rain and here in the desert that familiar smell is also accompanied by the smell of the creosote bush, which is very distinct and sort of sweet. On our way out to the field site by the Salton Sea the rain began.

(Video was too big to upload :'(  )

We also completed our vegetation surveys for the season, got all wet, soaked boots, and enjoyed a day that was so very nice (not the usual 100+ degrees that we are used to).

Doing these desert riparian surveys in a desert riparian/marsh habitat during a rain storm really made us all feel like we where anywhere but in the middle of the Sonoran Desert!

Yours truly

One of our survey sites

The plant list and an unidentified tree

18 m radius of our releve transect

Out in the field

An interesting unidentified spider

Clouds condensing over the Orocopia Mountains

When we returned to Palm Springs we found out that power was out in parts of town and had only just came back on in our office. When I left and drove home there was flooding on the streets.

Driving home through Palm Springs, Ca

And now it’s still raining!

Looking out the window of my apartment towards the San Jacinto Mountains

I love the rain and feel so lucky to have witnessed a desert storm.

Crystal Neuenschwander

Palm Springs, BLM

It is now mid-September, and signs of Fall are finally becoming evident. More crisp days, it is feasible to drink tea in the morning and start out the day in a flannel.  Tree lines on our drives are turning gold and red and looking more like classic New England. And not having still, hot summer air makes fieldwork even more enjoyable.

This past week, we embarked on a two-day collection near Providence, RI, and it was quite different than any other we had done. Spartina alterniflora, or smooth cordgrass, has to be collected generally before the first full moon in September, so that the seeds don’t get washed out with the high tide. (Here’s more info about it from the NEWFS GoBotany website: https://gobotany.newenglandwild.org/species/spartina/alterniflora/ ). So with clippers in hand and full-size garbage bags tied to our waists, we set off for the marshes of Rhode Island.

Our mentor Michael proudly wielding his scythe in a stand of Spartina alterniflora.

We met with a woman from the Save the Bay program in Rhode Island, who is working on this project alongside us, as well as a few of her volunteers. The S. alterniflora collection is just one of the many restoration projects they are a part of. The seeds from last year’s collection were immediately grown and planted at Sachuest National Wildlife Refuge in Middletown, RI, to restore a degraded salt marsh there. We were able to see this project a few months ago – several plots composed of about 20,000 plugs, on their way to becoming a salt marsh again. It was so cool to see what our work looks like when it comes full circle! The S. alterniflora seeds we collected again this year will go to that same project. The main reason these seeds have been used right away (besides restoring a degraded marsh as soon as possible) is for a very practical reason – they smell HORRIBLE. This is because seeds are mostly composed of lipids, so the fats start to decay as soon as they are detached from the plant. If the seeds become too moldy, the viability will drop off drastically, and the collection would be in vain. Additionally, these plants came from a salt marsh, so naturally the salty leaves that got into our five full garbage bags smelled like it. By the end of the day, we definitely did too.

One of our five smelly full-size garbage bags of Spartina alterniflora seed heads.

The first day we were in some very dense patches of S. alterniflora, mostly bushwhacking through it, and it was mostly at eye-level or above our heads. That day felt more like trying to mow a lawn with a pair of scissors, although we had a beautiful view. These sites also had sidewalks or trails going through them, and we were able to show many dog-walkers, photographers, and people hunting for treasures with metal detectors what we were doing. It’s always a good day when we can raise awareness about the native plants to people who live right by those populations!

The beautiful view from our lunch break at our first collection site. The grassy-looking plants down on the beach is the Spartina alterniflora!

The site on the second day was a less dense population, and was best reached by sloshing through three feet of ocean it grows next to. Especially on a warmer day, overtopping hot rubber boots is so refreshing. The coastline here was also being degraded by invasive fiddler crabs, which created these sort of mudflat islands right before the S. alterniflora populations. If you’ve ever played “the floor is lava”, it was a very similar situation in trying to determine which patches of mud I could balance on to snag some more seeds, and which would just suck my leg down into three feet of mud – needless to say, I was having a grand old time, although I am definitely sad about the dieback of the saltmarsh.

Our final collection site. The S. alterniflora is the taller grass farther away – I didn’t get a closer picture for fear of falling in!

Krista Heilmann

Seeds of Success East Intern

New England Wild Flower Society

Framingham, MA

The best thing about my internship here in Escalante is that we’ve been able to experience so many different aspects of the BLM’s conservation work. While our primary job has been collecting the seeds of native plants for the Seeds of Success (SOS) program, our CLM mentor is a wildlife biologist for Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument here in southern Utah, so we’ve been helping out with a lot of different projects.

Whoever thinks the desert is devoid of life will find themselves sadly mistaken if they ever come to the Staircase — at night, insects buzz and chirp and whir, and during the day birds soar overhead and chatter in the juniper and cottonwood trees. We’ve been catching bats to learn more about the different species that live on the Monument, and when we set up mist nets in the dark over rivers and streams, a chorus of croaking frogs and cicadas drowns out the silence of the dark.

My mentor works with the National Hummingbird Monitoring Network trapping and banding hummingbirds to study migration patterns and population dynamics, so every other week we get up long before dawn and head out to our monitoring sites to trap the tiny hummers. What an amazing experience. We have two native species on the Monument — the Blackchin and the Broadtail. Another species, the Rufus Hummingbird, migrates through every summer on their way from Alaska down to Mexico, an incredible journey for a bird weighing only about 3 grams.

In our spare time, we catch lizards and amphibians as part of ongoing baseline species surveys. The lizards I’ve talked about before in another blog, but we recently traveled up the Boulder Mountain north of the Staircase and found ponds full of morphing tiger salamanders. Weird little creatures, but so much fun to study.

All for now —

~Kate

BLM; Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, UT

Feeding hummingbirds after we weigh, measure, and band them

Tiger salamander working on growing legs

It’s official — fall has come to the desert. The mountains around Escalante are turning gold and red as the aspen leaves change, and the nights have gotten cold. Days are still warm on the Monument, but nothing like the scorching weather of the past few months; we are loving it. Seed collection is still in full swing here, so days are packed with monitoring, collecting and pressing herbarium specimens. My co-worker leaves in two weeks while I still have a month left here in Utah, so we are trying to get as much done as we can before she goes.

These past four months have been pretty incredible on a number of fronts — so many new experiences in a truly magical place. Living on Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument has really been a once in a lifetime experience; there is so much wildness here, so much space for roaming. I’d bet it’s probably one of the least explored places in the lower 48.

Canyon country is like no other place I’ve ever been, and it will always remain dear to my heart. As I’ve come to know the desert, I feel in a strange way like it’s come to know me as well; I’ve grown a lot while I’ve been down here with the red rock walls and damp canyon crevasses, and while I’ll be honest and say I’m excited to get back to the land of Big Water — I will definitely be back to the Staircase one day.

~Kate

BLM, Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, UT

Long Canyon Narrows

Adventure to Bryce Canyon National Park

30 days from now will be my last day as a CLM Intern here at the BLM office in Palm Springs. I can’t believe how fast the time has flown by, I feel like I just got here. As the time draws ever closer I face apprehension about what comes next, where I’m going to go from here. I have job applications out across the west coast and even a few in Nevada, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico. Last month I flew up to Northern California for an interview that turned out to be some what of a surprise as I learned that the job was rather different from the posting. They advertised that they where looking for someone to do pollution monitoring in their county and conduct air and water quality testing, but when I got there I found out that they actually needed someone to do pesticide monitoring. I reread the ad and the words pest or pesticide are no where in the ad. I asked about the water quality testing and monitoring and they said that that’s a separate division of their department.

In the mean time as I wait to hear from potential jobs I am trying to come up with a back up plan, maybe save up my money, hunker down for the winter and wait for field jobs to open up in the spring. But where to move to? I guess as each day passes I am closer to knowing the answer.

I just saw that I got in the BLM News Bytes again. I was the DRECP where Secretary Jewell announced that California will use for 10 Million Acres of California Desert for renewable energy. A bunch of BLM folks that where in attendance all got together for a group photo and I just saw it in my email. Here in a link to the photohttps://www.flickr.com/photos/blmcalifornia/29399756270/in/dateposted-public/

For the reminder of my time here I will mainly be finishing up plant surveys out at Dos Palmas ACEC, continuing work with the Desert Pupfish, keying out unknown plant species, and finishing up SOS collections.

So many memories of the field season, so many amazing experiences. I have endured scorching temperatures,  found my self 8″ away from a coiled rattlesnake, and seen spectacular sites. I got to see my first petroglyphs too. I now know the raw beauty and wonder of the desert and just fallen in love with it.

Lost Lake at Dos Palmas

Selfie at Lost Lake

My mentor walking out onto a fallen Palm tree on the Lost Lake

What a great summer! I’m still kinda scared, but also looking forward to what this next chapter will hold for me.

Crystal Neuenschwander

Palm Springs, BLM

The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore. – Vincent van Gogh

Most of my memorable and worthwhile experiences comes while taking risks. BLM has standardized safety regulations to prevent accidents that allows comfort during such adventures as flying in a helicopter. Although risky, this last field assignment left me feeling susceptible and free. The heightened view from the air is beautiful, grand, and the closest thing I’ve felt to being a bird.

Here’s some images of me out monitoring for vegetation during a mining compliance trip up North off the Dalton highway

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I am each of these people at one point or another.

BLM-LFO

Fall has hit Lander, which means cooler weather, more precipitation, and that our seed collecting has come to an end. Except for the various Artemisia species and the occasional opportunistic collection, we have finished our Seeds of Success seed collecting. We managed to surpass our goal of 20 collections, and we are creating herbarium labels for our vouchers in preparation for sending our specimens out to the various herbaria.

Since we are spending less time monitoring potential collections, we have been able to help out with other projects around the office. We helped one of the fire guys by flagging juniper trees that are going to be cut down. The water-hogging junipers have recently started to encroach on areas of our field office that are used for grazing and are causing previously riparian areas to dry up. Rachael and I had polygons on our Trimble marking the areas that are going to be cleared, and our job was to flag the perimeter of the polygons so the cutting crew will know which areas need to be cut. We finished flagging the first three sections, and were gearing up for the last and largest section, which looked to be about 8 miles in circumference. However, we showed up to find that the polygon designated an area covered in sagebrush, with not a juniper in sight! Why someone thought that area might have junipers remains a mystery, but at least it saved us a lot of time.

The area we were supposed to be flagging- not a juniper in sight!

We also helped to conduct a survey in our field office of Ute ladies’-tresses (Spiranthes diluvialis), one of the four plant species in Wyoming listed as Threatened or Endangered. We began the survey by driving 4 hours to a site near Casper that the plant is known to grow at so that we could see the plant in person before we began looking for it in our field office. When we reached the site, we spent 30 minutes searching the bank of a stream for the plant. The plant is less than a foot tall and grows among grasses and sedges that are almost twice its height, which makes it very difficult to spot. Eventually we found one, and then another, making our long drive worth it.

Spiranthes diluvialis

We spent two days visiting potential habitats in our field office. Not much is known about where the plant grows, but there are a lot of factors that eliminate habitat as potential, such as banks that are too steep, too alkaline, or too moist. We did find two orchids, but neither was the species we were searching for. The only way to differentiate Spiranthes diluvialis from other orchids is by its flowers. However, each individual plant can go several years between flowering events, so the survey will need to be conducted for several more years to ensure the survey is thorough and complete.

Since our mentor is a wildlife biologist, we have been helping him with some wildlife work as well. For the past week, we have been visiting previously mapped white-tailed prairie dog colonies in our field office to determine whether they are still active. We have also found some colonies that were created more recently, so we are mapping those by walking around the boundary with a Trimble GPS. This is quite a bit more difficult than it sounds. The white-tailed prairie dogs spread their holes out, so it is not always possible to stand at one hole and see the next one. One colony we mapped was over 3 miles in circumference, and we could walk for several minutes before finding another hole.

It has been interesting to get a sense of all the monitoring that is required for the sensitive species in our field office. As October approaches, our work will probably turn away from plants and more towards wildlife (and office work). Our mentor has some sage grouse related projects lined up for us, and we have been working on tidying up the loose ends for our Seeds of Success collections. Beyond that, we are excited to take on whatever projects come our way.

Bonus pictures:

Petroglyphs at Castle Gardens, a popular destination for visitors in our field office

When searching for plants, sometimes you find other surprises

Cirque of the Towers, one of our weekend backpacking destinations

Lara Grevstad

BLM Lander, WY

Floating the River

The sky still dark and stormy

We set off late, damp

Floating the river

Water thick with sediment

Red as the canyon

Floating the river

We treat teasel and thistle

Avoid the milkweed

Floating the river

Searching the grassy shoreline

Perfect habitat

Floating the river

Anticipation building

An orchid, hiding

Floating the river

Found our tiny friend in bloom

Ute Ladies Tresses

Floating the river

Rain drops fall on our dinner

The clouds have come  back

Floating the river

Bald eagle dives and catches fish

Shares it with a friend

Floating the river

Wind is blowing at our backs

Mission accomplished

Recently, the weather around Salmon, ID has begun to change to fall. We have had our firsts frosts and snow, the mornings are much colder now, and it is harder to wake up in the morning with the reducing daylight. The changing of the season has also brought a change in my work. Working more with the range crew at the office, I have begun a fence mapping project of one of the more remote areas within my BLM field office. The mapping project forces me to hike all day long in country that I otherwise wouldn’t get to. It has been absolutely beautiful. I am seeing parts of the field office I didn’t even know existed, and am in awe with the beautiful landscape that is right outside my front door. The wildlife has also been amazing. The other day while GPSing fence, I stumbled right across 3 moose, 2 foxes, 2 rattlesnakes, and the largest herd of elk I have ever seen. To be quiet out in the wilderness surrounded by such amazing wildlife is almost a sublime feeling. This project has given me such an appreciation for the beauty that the Salmon field office holds.

Signing off for now,

Austen, BLM, Salmon, ID