It’s happened multiple times. I will be casually wandering through the sage, on another adventure for the Pinedale BLM Office. As I walk, I take in the beautiful, serene landscape around me. I relish the peaceful, quiet air.

All of the sudden, I’m so startled that I jump, nearly clearing the earth’s atmosphere. I hear a squawk, and wings moving as a majestic bird takes off from the ground. I never even saw it before it took flight. Sometimes, others birds will join in flight, as they rise from their hidden havens in the sage. They are….the sage-grouse. I often ponder as to whom is actually more startled: me or the grouse?

Sage-grouse, also known as the prairie chickens, are a major species of interest in the Western United States. They nest in the sage (shocking, right?), and are considered to be an “umbrella species”; conserving these species will undoubtedly conserve many other species of plants and animals that make up the fragile sagebrush ecosystem. In recent years, sage-grouse habitat has dwindled significantly, mainly due to drilling and mining. In fact, there was some debate as to whether or not this bird should be listed under the Endangered Species Act. The BLM, along with other organizations such as the Forest Service, have come up with a plan and assessment tool to continually monitor and conserve the sage-grouse and their habitat.

In order to implement this, however, it is of course important to know where the sage grouse spend their time…i.e. what/where is their range? To this end, several biologists at the Pinedale Field Office have caught sage-grouse, attached radio collars to the birds, and then released them. These GPS radio collars allow the birds to be tracked and also give important geographic information regarding the bird’s whereabouts.

We were very excited when Dale (wildlife biologist) came to ask the interns if we would like to go out with him to catch a grouse and remove the radio collar so that the data may be analyzed. We tried to contain our excitement as we happily drove off to the general area where Dale knew this particular grouse was. In order to pinpoint her location, we used a hand-held antenna, as Lara demonstrates below:

Lara with the hand-held antenna, trying to find the location of the grouse.

The receiver is dialed to the same frequency as the grouse’s collar, and we slowly move the antenna around. Beeping signifies that the bird is off in the direction that the antenna is pointing. It takes us about three hours of hunting and closing in on the bird before we are actually near enough to capture her. Dale has brought a net gun that will hopefully capture the bird. We walk slowly, like a predator closing in on its prey. However, the grouse are smart and quick. The grouse we wanted was with others, and they all panic and fly away. We struggle to identify which one has the radio collar. We do successfully do this, but unfortunately the birds have flown off public land and are now on private land. What’s important to realize is that this is the very foundation of working with un-predictable and wild animals. Sometimes you win, and sometimes you lose. We were not discouraged! Dale promised that we would try again, and then even demonstrated how to use the net gun. It was a neat, educational experience with radio telemetry.

After Dale demonstrates how to shoot off the net gun, the net must be meticulously re-packaged back into its holder, so that it goes off properly the next time.

In preparation for my weekly excursion, I had laid out all my field supplies across the living room floor. Now a routine part of my week, I mechanically began packing all my supplies into my daypack and overnight bag.

“What do you do out in the woods all day?”

Skyping an old friend, I didn’t bother to look up at his virtual face. I was focused on meticulously organizing every object into its designated compartment of my field pack. Packing this way is rather pointless.  By the end of the second day in the field, well, let’s just say my backpack is no exception to the rules of entropy.

“I scout for and collect seeds. They are used for restoration projects. A large number are to reconstruct marshes and coastal habitats damaged during Hurricane Sandy.”

“So, you are telling me that for the past three months you have just been hiking around collecting plants?”

“Seeds. And yes. Pretty much”

“What a dream job.”

I looked up and smiled in agreement.

Thus far, my field partner and I have spent at least 600 hours in the woods. Though the majority of that time has been spent sleeping, the rest has consisted of hiking, setting up and taking down camp, cooking, eating, discussing plans, organizing herbarium specimen, collecting seeds…and peeing. There is never a toilet when you need it, and always is a toilet when you don’t.  It is not an exaggeration to say that the forests and beaches of Delaware have become our second home. For at least 4 days of every week, that is.

My bed for most of the week.

When explained concisely, our job is simple. We hike. Observe. Record. Collect seeds. Then move on. Though a fundamentally straightforward assignment, it can prove frustrating at times. Searching for plants is like playing a game of hide and seek with my elusive little sister. I can spend hours searching for her to no avail, and even when I begin to yell to her that I give up, she still refuses to reveal her master hiding place. At times, no matter how patiently we search, the plants of which we are interested refuse to let themselves be seen. That is why, when we happen upon a plant population of interest, I cannot help but feel a rush of excitement and accomplishment. At times I want to point my index finger at the plants and hysterically yell, “You! HAHA! Not so sneaky after all, you plant!”

Half way through our internship, one would assume we would be halfway to our goal of approximately 80 collections. The reality is, we are only a quarter of the way there. It can be unnerving at times. We still have so much to do; time is fleeting and I feel a strong obligation to fulfill my role as a Seeds of Success Intern. My job may not change the course of all humanity, but it is still important. Many organizations rely on us to move forward with their restoration projects, and I like to think they are relying on the right people. (Don’t worry, they are).

Part of our difficulty in locating our  target species stems from the underwhelming state of many of our field sites. Unfortunately, many of the new lands the Delaware team acquired permits for this year are quite urbanized. The result is field sites with little diversity, dry and eroded waterways, non-existent understories, and invasive plant monocultures. A lot of our time has been spent visiting sites that we end up crossing off our list for future scouting and collecting ventures.

Spartina cynosuroides (big cordgrass)

Luckily, not all of our sites are in a state of decay. Just last week my partner and I spend the entire week knocking out multiple collections across beautiful beaches and marshes as shown in the pictures to the left and below. Healthy sites like these are both precious resources for obtaining  plant materials to restore other sites, and are natural blueprints illustrating what a healthy marsh, beach, or forest should look like.

Salt marsh at St. Jones Preserve, DE. (Invasive Phragmites can be seen bordering the marsh, but that is hard to avoid).

Though to me the SOS internship is a dream job, I have come to realize that not everyone is enamored with the prospect of wandering woods and marshes for days on end. I have a few friends who cringe when I show them photographs of invertebrates and snakes I encountered in the field.  I was recently sharing some field stories  with a friend of mine, relating to her the few times in which I got stuck, thigh deep, in marshes and of the time my tent was obliterated by a strong coastal storm in the middle of the night. My friends response: telling me that is is not too late to join her in medical school, away from the dangers of the outdoors. No thanks.

Northern black racer napping in a tree at one of our field sites.

Apart from improving my identification skills, observational skills, and, to some extent, survival skills, the most important knowledge I have gained during the course of my internship so far is that I have chosen the right career path.  Though physically exhausting at times, there is nowhere I would rather be than outside. Collecting seeds will not be my life-long career, but it is an important step toward my goal of spending the rest of my life studying the interactions between all the abiotic and biotic aspects of our world’s ecosystems.  To me medical school is the dark and scary jungle. Where I work, among the snakes, spiders, soils and seas, that place is a paradise.

Mr. Spidey the Spider. (Because I don’t know its scientific name)

Mining is and has been a major industry in Alaska. Minerals continue to be the 2^nd largest export of the Alaskan economy (1). While there are several different resources taken from Alaskan soil, this post focuses on gold. In 2013, roughly 300 placer mines exported 100,000 ounces of gold (1). Placer mines work similar to gold panning except on a larger scale. The miners dig to where an ancient streambed is buried, excavate the rock and sort it by size, and then extract the gold. You can see the old tailings, or mounds of churned gravel, resulting from this practice along creeks in interior Alaska.

Taken on the rocky stream bank at an old gold mine site in the White Mountains. Because of the difficulty in reaching sites and the time required to complete an AIM assessment, we would sometimes camp out at our sites, like this one, to reduce travel time.

If a placer mine is to operate on BLM owned land, there are some restrictions. First, only so many acres can be open to mining at any given time. Second, after mining activity is done, the miner is responsible for restoration of the disturbed area. Third, restored areas have to be approved by the BLM as restored before those acres are released from bondage, AKA the quota for open and disturbed acres. This last point means that the BLM has to approve the restoration before the miner can open new areas for exploration and extraction.

However, until this year, there wasn’t a set standard protocol for measuring whether a site was restored or not, nor an exact definition of what it meant for an area to be restored. This year, based on talks with various groups including mining communities and BLM scientists, the BLM is testing the AIM protocol as a method for measuring these sites and adapting the protocol from its use as a range tool in the lower 48 to better fit the conditions of Alaskan mines.

To be approved as restored, an area must have: 1. 70% vegetative cover 2. Meet certain species diversity requirements for different functional groups (woody, grass, forb, etc.). The presence of invasive species counts against vegetative cover. This is to incentivize miners to use native vegetation rather than non-native or invasive mixes in their restoration efforts. These goals are evaluated through the use of transects, point intercepts, quadrats, and species inventory.

The view of our first mine site that we evaluated using AIM this season. The settling pond is on the left.

What’s great about AIM is that it gives managers and miners a quantitative method for determining whether or not a site can be released. It also fosters interagency cooperation as not only do BLM field scientists participate, but also NRCS soil scientists join in to characterize soils in both disturbed and reference sites. The downside is that these mines are fairly remote. Many are off road, requiring ATVs to reach the site. Some require helicopters to drop off people and supplies as it’s impossible to reach even on ATVs. Because of these transportation difficulties, it’s expensive in both time and resources to visit these mines. AIM itself is also labor and time intensive, which adds to the cost of visiting the mines.

My fellow CLM intern and I went on a couple of AIM trips to evaluate these mines. While the mines can be hard to reach, the quantitative basis of the AIM protocol results in data that can be used to track regional health and succession over time. While there are some sites that don’t appear to be recovering, some sites are. The main difference seems to be in whether the miners re-spread the fines or organic matter over the disturbed site. If that happens, there’s a better chance of successful recovery because it’s very hard to grow tundra or boreal forest in gravel. I’m optimistic about the potential for the AIM protocol to act as an archival dataset for these disturbed regions and to better inform land management decisions.

References

(1) Resource Development Council. Alaska’s Mining Industry. http://www.akrdc.org/mining accessed 8/24/2016.

Regarding seed collection, these last two weeks haven’t been very successful. It seems that other than Tetradymia glabrata, just days past its prime at the time of writing, we are at a point where early season plants have dispersed their seed and late season plants still aren’t ready for collecting. We’ve been hitting the field almost every day hoping to come across populations ready for picking. Instead we come home with a long list of coordinates, a press full of vouchers, and the hope that next time we see these populations won’t be too late.

Cleome lutea. Not quite ready to collect.

Last Wednesday, August 24th we took off to Pyramid Lake to collect seed for two days. Arriving early, we would collect seed until 7 pm and then camp. The next day we would rise and immediately get to seed collecting. Our main target was Eriogonum heermannii. We thought we’d be swimming in seed. We did find plenty of it, but only 2 distinct populations that were ready to collect. We did what we we could, called it a day, and pitched our tents by a beach. 2 collections in 8 hours. I went to sleep feeling disappointed. At around 3 in the morning, in a dreamlike haze, I pried an eye open to see what I thought was a coyote sniffing around and looking at me through the mesh of my tent. “Go away, coyote…”, I mumbled and let my single eye close again.

Next morning I woke as the sun peered out from the mountains. 6:20 am. The coyote was back. Except she was just a dog from the campsite over. I opened my tent and let her stick her two front legs inside my tent so I could scratch her head and a call her a good dog. She was an old dog with graying fur and eyes and she demanded some attention. After a few minutes, my co-worker caught her attention by going on a morning run. She sped up after her and left me to pack up my tent and belongings.

Pyramid Lake shore

An hour later we met with 3 environmental interns from the Paiute who wanted to see what all the seed collecting business was about. We hit up the E. heermannii sites again to provide them with a sure demonstrations of seed cut tests and collecting techniques.

“Okay, now we’ll actually collect seed.” we promised them.

We couldn’t waste another day collecting the same thing so we invited them to scout with us. We scoured sandhills, beaches, canyons. All of them filled with plants too old, not ready, or in such small numbers that made collection an impossibility. We tried to impart on them as much botanical knowledge as we could, as to not make them feel robbed of a day. The names of plants and their uses, fruit types, anatomy. Around 4:00 pm we shook hands and waved goodbye. We left Pyramid lake as well and headed to Bedell flats in hope of something better. We drove for a couple of hours, stopping here and there to take vouchers of something that wasn’t quite yet and curse this phenological lull. At last we headed home, presses looking like broken accordions.

Asclepias fascicularis. Not ready either.

“Maybe next week?”

After a month of living in Susanville, I can finally say it’s more than just a google map layout of the nearest Safeway, Starbucks, Walmart, and State Prison. The Northern Sierras and Great Basin continue to amaze me every day. The dissimilarity between these two remarkable regions first becomes apparent on the drive in from the 395. On my right lies the picturesque pine forest silhouette, characteristic of the Sierras. And on my left, the vast open landscape of the Great Basin greets me with its aromatic sagebrush smell.

Time has definitely been going by faster than I can keep up. Most of the time, the mornings and afternoons feel like completely separate days. Other times, a day feels like a week, especially when collecting Mountain Mahogany. I’ve finally gotten used to the 9pm-5am sleep schedule. But, I’m still getting used to the structure-less work agenda that comprises my schedule. However, most of the time, I can count on doing one of five things: an SOS collection, a special status plant survey, water rights paperwork, juniper mapping, or marking pine trees with the ELFO forester, Clif.

So far, we have collected from Elymus elymoides var. californicus, Poa secunda, Mimulus guttatus, Lotus corniculatus, Cercocarpus ledifolius var. intermontanus, and Leymus cinerus. I absolutely hated collecting Cercocarpus ledifolius, commonly known as Mountain Mahogany. Mountain Mahogany seeds are shaped like an inconspicuously hairy corkscrew, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the plant. The most efficient way to collect the most seeds was by vigorously shaking the tree so that the seeds could fly into our tarp. At the time, this seemed like a brilliant idea. Thirty minutes later, when my allergies were going off, and I could no longer comfortably breathe, I realized it was a terrible idea. Let this be a warning to those who might need to collect it at their field office!

Not all collections have been terrible. In fact, I’ve enjoyed all the other plants, especially Elymus elymoides var. californicus (ELELC2), commonly known as bottlebrush squirreltail and Poa secunda, commonly known as pine bluegrass. Both of these grasses usually grow in areas where cheat grass or medusahead have invaded. Research has shown that ELELC2 is one of the more competitive fire-resistant perennial grasses capable of establishing in areas dominated by invasive annuals. Basically, squirreltail is the Batman of Gotham. Now, whenever I walk by a flourishing population, I have to restrain myself from picking its seeds. Most of the time, I can’t resist the urge. It’s become a tradition among the Lady Bots (our office alternative nickname for CBG interns) to fiercely pick the squirrel spikelets and disperse them among the invasive annual grasses while chanting “DEFEAT THE CHEAT, DEFEAT THE CHEAT.”

Aside from work, I’ve been spending a lot of time exploring in the area. I finally went on a mini solo backpacking trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park (and bought my National Parks Pass) and it was incredible! The plants are just absolutely insane. Even though most things are past bloom, I was still able to find some things to key out like Penstemon newberryi, Penstemon gracilentus, and Phyllodoce breweri. I’ve also visited Lake Tahoe a few times, Greenville, Chester/Lake Almanor, Quincy, Silver Lake, and soon, I’ll be going to Yosemite, Crater, and Tahoe from the Tahoe Rim Trail. Luckily, I’ve accrued almost six days of comp time, so I’m thinking of taking two weeks off and just doing the whole thing at once! If I do end up doing the TRT, it would mean not being able to explore other places that are on my “to-do list.” There’s just too much to see around Susanville! Oh, and I’ve also visited Truckee, which is the coolest place in California (besides Santa Cruz.) I got some real’ good vibez from all the cool people who live there…#truckeelove.

Well jeez, for some reason I was feeling overly ambitious, and thought that I could write, in detail, about everything I’ve been up to at work. Obviously, I was wrong! I guess you’ll have to stay tune for next month’s blog to get the juicy gossip going on in special status plant populations and juniper plots!

To be honest, this past month since my previous post has been a complete blur. So many things have happened, where do I start?

Last month I had found out that my program mentor at the BLM, Mr. Johnny Chopp, was leaving his position here at the Carlsbad, New Mexico, BLM Field Office for his dream job. He had been hired as a wildlife biologist with the Army Corps of Engineers back in his hometown. This was a long-awaited opportunity and great news for him; for me, I am not so sure. He was the only one in the office, nay, the city of Carlsbad, NAY, the whole of Southeastern New Mexico that understood the purpose of the Seeds of Success and how to achieve its goals, and the CLM Program. It left me uneasy to be thrown into such a position that required superior knowledge of this area’s flora and the leadership to work basically unsupervised.

I found this out a week before I took “vacation,” and realized the timing of my out-of-town stint was in such a way that Johnny would be gone by the time I got back. I did not have time to process this transition until I got back to Carlsbad.

My little “vacation” away from the Chihuahuan Desert started with a trip out to Savannah, Georgia, for the Botany 2016 Conference. I was accepted as a PLANTS grant participant for the conference, meaning I got to attend this meeting as a “student,” all expenses paid, with a mentor and peer mentor to help me navigate around the Conference. Unfortunately, the timing of the Conference was awful (as you will see here soon). However, I had such an incredible experience!

A picture of the PLANTS grant participants, peer mentors, and mentors in front of the Historic District of Savannah on the last day of the Conference.

Flying into Savannah was something of a culture shock for me. It was my first time being anywhere near the East coast, or the South! The people are different from the people of Colorado. I had seafood for every possible meal. I got to experience first-hand the 106 degree weather with 90% humidity. Overall, Savannah was an incredible place to visit. But more importantly, I went to my first big conference! I was roomed with a student from California who was just finishing up a summer REU at my home institution (University of Colorado Boulder), with the professor that recommended I go to this conference in the first place…what a small world! I learned the world of botany is a tight and niche group of people where everyone knows everyone, and everyone is incredibly friendly and supportive of one another. I learned so much about the current research in botany, about graduate school, and about what I want to do in the future! I am a recent undergraduate, and was unsure what exactly I wanted to do with my future (one of the reasons I am exploring federal jobs through this current internship). However, coming here I realized I want to get back into academia, and start looking towards graduate school, hopefully in the next year or so. I have a long road ahead of me (for one I still have not yet even taken the GRE), but now I have a goal to go back to school! And as a young adult like me, I think it is important to know what you want, and be passionate about it, and I have officially taken the first step.

A short break from my Carlsbad, NM internship was spent, well, getting married. Unconventional to say in the least, but doable with a great support system. Photo taken by S. Bober

The Conference was a great experience, but like I mentioned earlier, was unfortunately timed. I flew back home as quickly as I could for the second part of my vacation…MY WEDDING. That’s right. I flew home from Georgia to get married the very next day. To be fair, I planned the date of this wedding before I accepted this internship, and before I received a grant to attend Botany 2016. It would not have happened without the everlasting support of my friends, family, and newly-wedded husband. With that said, it ended up being a rather nice gathering and was glad to finally marry my high school sweetheart, love of my life, and best friend of nearly 10 years.

Even with the most supportive people one could ever ask for, I would not suggest planning one’s wedding in the middle of this internship. Going back to Carlsbad straight after getting married was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life, and I would not wish that kind of transition on anyone. With that said, I am happy to say that I have the most encouraging and uplifting people in my life, all on my side for finishing out this internship. It was very hard to come back to Carlsbad, NM, but glad that I did.

There is a solitary beauty in the desert, and on this particular day was enhanced by awesome clouds painted onto a background of blue the and vibrant green of a thirst-quenched desert. Photo taken by B. Palmer

There are plenty of happy pollinators here in the desert, finding their way to vivaciously-colored flowers. Photo taken by B. Palmer

I came back to New Mexico to find that the weather was much more tolerable, and the early July monsoons FINALLY came…over a month late. This is good news for us here, because a lot of the landscape has gone from brown to green, and there are finally seeds to collect now and to collect in the coming weeks. The other Carlsbad CLM intern, Meridith, was even able to do a collection while I was gone.

Our second collection of the season, Mentzelia strictissima. I missed out collecting, but there are plenty more to do! Photo taken by B. Palmer

However, I came back to Carlsbad with no set direct supervisor. Again, an odd feeling for someone as young and inexperienced as I am. There was a day I even went out on my own to scout for plants and potential collections, and came across one that was beginning to fruit. I knew it was one of three things, but went ahead and started collecting it, even though I was unsure of the plants’ identity. I found that I have to rely on myself and using dichotomous keys more now that it is more difficult to ask around what the plants are.

This is a flowering and fruiting yellow aster, one I believe to be Isocoma pluriflora. Please correct me if you believe I am wrong! Photo taken by B. Palmer

In the last few weeks the other CLM intern and I were finally set up with the New Mexico State Botanist, Zoe Davidson, as our new program mentor, and would be getting plant identification help from Patrick Alexander. But the catch: Zoe is located in Santa Fe, Patrick in Las Cruces. Though we have support from afar, we are still on own and are our own boss, and ultimately are the ones to decide what to collect. This indeed has been an interesting leadership opportunity, with a LOT of room for trial and error.

For example, we were driving around scouting for potential populations to collect from, when we could not find a turn onto a dirt road we wanted to take. All of the sudden, we found ourselves on the Texas border, much farther than we intended on ever going! All in the end, you got to shrug it off and realize that sometimes it’s good to get lost, so that the next time you go to that area, you become, well, not as lost!

Sometimes you have to embrace the wrong turns…even if you end up in Texas! Photo taken by N. Montoya

We also learned that we need to do more research before going out to collect seeds. Meridith had decided while I was gone to do some collections in an area called Dark Canyon when I got back, a drainage area that is beautiful, green, and full of potential collections. Our first collection of the day was very successful, collecting the very pollinator friendly Fallugia paradoxa (Apache Plume) with ease.

From the Rosacea is Fallugia paradoxa, known more commonly as Apache Plume. This collection was rather meditative and calming. A great way to start the morning! Photo taken by B. Palmer

We were on a roll, a downright collecting-spree, and decided that Dasylirion leiophyllum (Sotol) would make a nice addition to our collections. This is a plant that to the untrained eye looks similar to Yucca and Agave, with a very tall inflorescence, anywhere between 5 and 15 feet tall. So we set out through every known prickly, pokey, spiny, sharp, jaggy, scratchy, angry plant you could imagine to get to the sotol, which isn’t much of a friendly plant either. Lesson one of the day: Wear clothes you don’t care about messing up and tearing, and if you have a problem bushwhacking through the prickly flora, then you need to get out of there! I was so incredibly tired and scratched up by the end of the morning, but despite the unpleasantness of it all, I would probably do it again.

Practically no “friendly” plant in sight here. But Meridith and I suffered through with smiles on our faces…most of the time…For Science! Photo taken by B. Palmer

Lesson two: If you don’t know what exactly you are collecting, DON’T COLLECT IT AT ALL! Meridith and I were collecting “seed” from these plants, climbing up infructescences of the so-tall stalks to get up to the fruits, when I got to one and realized: we weren’t collecting seed, we were collection old papery remains of old flowers that never fruited! I realized this after nearly an hour of bushwhacking and climbing, because I finally got to a stalk that finally had real fruits/seeds on it. We had no idea what we were collecting! We found out later with some advice and some extra research that Dasylirion will not be ready to collect seed from likely until October. It is rather embarrassing to admit such a fault, but again, it is trial and error. What better way to learn than to bash into your brain that you did something so horribly incorrect the first time around! And now we are forced to try, try again next time, and hopefully with a little more knowledge and wisdom behind us!

Here I am, trying to reach some of the inflorescence of Dasylirion leiophyllum. I will be attempting this yet again in the near future! Photo taken by M. McClure

In a way, I believe that loosing our Carlsbad mentor may have been a blessing in disguise. Being thrown into a position where you are required to rely on yourself is likely one of the best ways to learn. I have to rely on myself to figure out what the species are here. I have to be the judge of when the best timing is to collect certain seeds. I have to plan accordingly to make the best use of my time here in Carlsbad, and be involved in other projects in the office! I honestly thought about quitting this internship early for a number of reasons, but I realized that it is so astoundingly important to finish this out for the SOS program, for the city of Carlsbad and its hidden floral treasures, but most importantly for myself. I have not been known in the past to quit even when I am uncomfortable with a situation, and I cannot start now! In the meantime, I will be forced to enjoy the wonderful array of plants that are popping up all about, and do what I came here to do: botanize!

Tiquilia hispidissima: a Chihuahuan desert and gypsum soil endemic. This is a plant I will never see anywhere else in the world, a good reason to stay in Carlsbad for now! Photo taken by B. Palmer

Another fun species of the Malvaceae family found in the wetter soils and near the hardly existing rivers of the late summer desert: Sphaeralcea angustifolia Photo taken by B. Palmer

Some of a botanist’s more powerful tools: A plant press, and a place to record everything in. Photo taken by B. Palmer

Best wishes from Brooke Palmer of the Carlsbad, New Mexico BLM Field Office. I am officially halfway finished with this internship…until next time!

This will be the final blog post of my internship.  One of the more interesting recent developments for me is finding Ptilimnium nodosum (Haparella) in the park in late July.  This is a federally-endangered plant in the Apiaceae (Carrot Family).  In the 2000s there was a major re-introduction effort within the canal between a professor at George Washington University and the National Park Service.   From my understanding this re-introduction was not successful at establishing new populations, but some useful knowledge was gained through the experience and seeds from it were acquired for long term preservation.  The last time a natural population was found on the main stem of the Potomac River was around 20 years ago.  I hope I am giving enough of an overview while practicing a fair amount of discretion due to the sensitive nature of this information.  I went to that location where it was last seen (a well-developed scour bar) and was surprised to find a decently-sized population in full flower.  I think one could describe this as a meta-population.

Ptilimnium nodosum. Each umbel was rarely larger than a dime.

Ptilimnium nodosum. Even in flower these plants were hard to see. They grew alongside numerous wetland graminoids such as Juncus spp.

Ptilimnium nodosum. The leaves are referred to as phyllodes (reduced leaf petioles). They are hollow and segmented.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, the Potomac at this time of year is usually at its lowest point.  I was able to walk out into the middle of the river and could have crossed into West Virginia on the other side if I desired.

From the middle of the Potomac in late July. The green is Justicia americana (Water Willow)

Another interesting plant I ran into with the help of a lady who has voluntarily been doing plant surveys along a portion of the canal for several years is the state-endangered Trachelospermum difforme (Climbing Dogbane).  Not only had I never seen this plant before this summer, but I had never even heard of it.  This plant is of particular interest to me because it resembles Japanese Honeysuckle morphologically and in growth habit.  As I discussed in a previous entry, the canal is very interested in developing a robust volunteer Weed Warrior program.  Part of my responsibilities involve educating these Weed Warriors about native look-alikes, especially state-listed species.  I must admit that this one is tricky at first and would especially be difficult to less experienced eyes.  Fortunately once you are aware of the plant, it is easily distinguished from Japanese Honeysuckle by its milky sap when leaves are present.  On the other hand I can imagine some difficulties for volunteers because the two can grow intermingled in each other.  This would be particularly hazardous if they are growing together, it’s late in the season and Japanese Honeysuckle is still green while Climbing Dogbane has gone dormant.  The “hazard” being that dormant Climbing Dogbane is mechanically treated by someone thinking it is part of a honeysuckle clump.

Trachelospermum difforme. The milky sap I mentioned earlier.

Trachelospermum difforme. In flower. The manuals state that leaf shape is variable. Some of the leaves were quite oribicular with an acuminate tip. They resembled Oriental Bittersweet leaves to my eyes, though that vine has alternate leaves.

Trachelospermum difforme vs. Lonicera japonica (Japanese Honeysuckle). In my hand is Japanese Honeysuckle. As you can see the two grow alongside each other and can easily be confused as one species.

I went through the photos I took over the season and thought I would include some of the more interesting ones here for fun.

Automeris io (Io Moth) caterpillar on the state-listed Baptisia australis. Will sting you.

Eriocampa juglandis (Butternut Woollyworm) on state-listed Juglans cinerea (Butternut) leaf.

My internship still has a few weeks left but I feel the season waning.  The asters will have their time and fall will be here soon. Cheers to a successful field season.

Coleman Minney

Field Botany Intern

With the SOS collections taking a pause for the moment we have found ourselves going out to help with other projects.  We went on two weed treatment trips on the Green River this month and we have another one scheduled in a couple weeks.  We still are making sure to keep an eye on our targets, its just a lot easier to do that now we are focusing mainly on Artemisia species and Sarcobatus we have a pretty good idea of how our target populations are doing just by driving around.

Green River

Even though I still have almost two months left it seems like the internship is almost over.  We are going to start thinking up the target list for next year’s interns next week and I am starting to interview for jobs.  I was overflowing with excitement when I first got here in May because it looked so strange to me, then it started to seem a bit old in July once the temperatures reached into the triple digits and the bugs started eating us alive.  The summer is coming to an end now and the end of my internship is now on the horizon.  When I was out near Desolation Canyon yesterday doing Penstemon grahamii surveys I had a few chances to look out into the vast expanse of desert and realize that I will miss this place someday.

During the week, I am a CLM Intern, but during the weekend, I work as a Lichen surveyor in the Siuslaw National Forest performing lichen community analysis for air quality monitoring.  This is no roadside analysis, this is bushwhacking through thickets of prickly Salmonberry and Himalayan Blackberry for as far as a mile off an old logging road that was decommissioned 10 years ago and has become a temperate rain forest jungle right-of-way.

Two weekends ago I followed the Alsea River East in from Waldport, OR on Hwy 34.  After about 20+ miles, I turned North for several miles up a Siulsaw logging road, and boy did the name fit the description.  Large segments of the ridge sides were clear cut.  I thought “I have to be on private or state land, there is no way the Forest Service would clear cut to this extent now a days.”  Alas, to my che-grin, I concluded that it had to be  USFS land due to the fact that my survey plot was on it (they’re almost always on  USFS land).

Siuslaw National Slaughter

Siuslaw National Slaughter

Some logging began in the PNW as early as the 1830’s, but it did not kick off until the turn of the century.  In the 1990’s PNW timber contributed to 1/3 of America’s plywood and had fed the housing boom since WWII.  Chances are that any wood house built since 1946 contains materials from the PNW.  Douglas-firs are the most valuable tree in the timber commerce worldwide. In the 90’s, the USFS had proclaimed that timber is the nation’s number 1 agricultural crop.  Timber companies obtain logging units from Private, State, and Federal lands. In fact, virtually all old-growth forests on private forestry company lands have been logged.

The Oregon Forest Practices Act is the legislation that Private and State logging operations have to adhere to and compared to California and Washington legislation, it is pretty lax: comprised of minimal regulations for timber harvesting, road construction and maintenance, slash treatment, reforestation and pesticide and fertilizer use.

To give you some perspective of the amount of timber sequestered from the PNW; there has always been focused attention on the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, however according to 90’s statistics, only 15-30% of the ancient Amazonian rainforest has been logged, compared to about 87% of the ancient PNW forest logged, in less than a century.

Siuslaw National Slaughter

Siuslaw National Slaughter

And now Oregon Public Radio just aired that a new study found that over the last decade an increasing amount of Pseudotsuga menziesii trees on the Oregon Coast Range have been infected with the Swiss needle cast fungal disease.  Oregon State University research has suggested that the epidemic has grown by as much as 30% over 1 year.

The fungus does not actively kill the tree, but instead clogs the needle stomata and thereby greatly reduces tree vitality.  The effect can slow the growth of commercial timber by up to 50% which results in an estimated $128 million dollars in economic losses per year!  However, it has also been shown that if one plants Tsuga heterophylla, Thuja plicata, and Picea sitchensis with the Pseudotsuga menziesii, then the trees are less susceptible to it.  So, in conclusion, if we STOP clear cutting and treating Doug Fir as a crop and instead replant with a variety of trees and lightly thin over longer periods of time, OH YEA, and not export most of our domestic harvest from private and state lands overseas to Japan and Korea, then we might just save little chunks of our coastal temperate rain forests and still keep Oregon’s economy alive.  And maybe we’ll be able to see more Giant Pacific Salamanders (Dicamptodon tenebrosus).

Dicamptodon tenebrosus, the largest terrestrial Salamander in the World. Found in the Siuslaw National Forest along a creek that cuts through a tiny swath of old growth.

Obliquity — physically used to describe the angle of the tilt of our planet’s axis; a departure from perpendicularity with the planar direction we follow through empty space. Also a description of mystery, of indirectness or obscurity.

There is a certain obliquity that is an arrangement of our existence on this planet. Have you noticed it lately?

Oscillating between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees on a 41,000 year cycle, not a single living creature will come to experience this veering in its entirety. But tilting is the reason for the seasons — and we cannot slight the experience of season. These refractory gateways find their own ways of reminding us of, from the mundane to the grandiose. The seasonal changes we experience not only manifest around our physicality but also within ourselves.

We are here again in the serotinal season. Late summer, where swirling changes are closer than the periphery. Fire, barn swallows out of the nest and into the sky, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, gold grasses with nothing but glumes and the remembrances of vibrant annual wildflowers in their cracking dehiscent fruits. Fall advancing, school coming back on, students returning to Arcata, my next chapter advancing.

Queen anne’s lace (Daucus carota). Arcata Marsh.

In this last month, moving from the inner-bark of July to the serotinal, I have been engaged in my expectedly diverse and open work as a CLM intern. I walked the upper ridges of the King Range to monitor grazing allotments on Johnny Jack Ridge, adding a new experience to my journey at BLM. I took a sort of summer vacation to my heart-place — the big Tuolumne Meadows, were I spent time with friends and family, strolled the high ridges, climbed on feldspar crystals and soaked in the rarefied air. Collecting seeds has certainly been on my plate as well — the collection season is waning and the manzanita berries are nearly ripe!

Tuolumne

I have also been heavily engaged by the Humboldt Bay dunes climate vulnerability and adaptation study (which I will refer to as ClimateReady from now on…), which is a collaboration between U.S. Fish and Wildlife, BLM, State Park (and others), funded by California Coastal Conservancy’s climate ready program. The long-term goals of the project are to understand how climate change will effect the dune ecosystem and to test adaptation treatments. More practically speaking, highly sensitive GPS (RTK, real-time kinematic; think 2 centimeter sensitivity) is used to create dune profiles (measurements of elevation) along 73 transects covering 32 miles of Humboldt’s coastline. These dune profiles are coupled with vegetation data and the entire survey is completed every year in winter and summer! I will be working a good deal with this project in the coming month.

Base station and John, Lanphere Dunes.

King Range, Arcata BLM F.O. Lands

Several posts ago, I explored stewardship in the most practical sense. Pulling broom along the roadside. Collecting native seed. Stepping and living lightly. These beautiful tasks are still a strong stream in my work as a CLM intern. That all said, in thinking about the different facets of stewardship, I have recently come to reflect on a stewardship of another kind.

When we engage in stewardship (acts of care, responsibility and love) we use our complete selves as tools. We use our hearts and minds to design solutions, our communication and connections to implement acts and our bodies to carry them out on an area of land (or sea).

Think of a feature of the land. What does it look like, is it as mysterious as the riparian gulch or as clear and pure as the long jagged scarp of granite?

Perhaps we can agree, that these land forms (or sea-forms) exist within ourselves. You may have already considered this. The peak you stand on within yourself when you have achieved a goal, the dark skulking depths you fear to go, the broad plateau within reaching from one experience to another. Are you in the valley of your life or are you on the shore of the lake of your life?

Thus, we are the tools of stewardship, and within us is the land we wish to be the stewards of (the reciprocality of this relationship should be disarming at the very least). On the path to become better stewards — to give more and love more the land that gives us more than we could ever ask for — this connection seems highly relevant.

The stewardship of another kind I wish to elucidate is moral stewardship, the stewardship of self in which we tend to those inner landscapes. The greater care, love and responsibility we can turn to our inner topographies, the more we will be able to give as stewards.

How can we steward our internal landscapes? These are the slot-canyons of exploration and the endlessly mystifying dune sands shifting. Cooperation, compassion, non-violence, temperance and adventuring to those dark inner riparian areas could be a great place to start.

Yours,

Kaleb Goff

Arcata BLM Field Office, California.