I’m pretty sure it’s physically impossible for a month to pass so quickly, but here I am!  I’m pretty sure I blinked about twice before July was upon me.  I’ve had a quick, somewhat stressful, and really rewarding month.

My crew mate and I haven’t slowed down one bit, having just completed our 22nd collection (which takes us well over the halfway point to our target number)!  We’ve gotten a ton of good forb species, as well as some grasses and shrubs.  Things are just starting to slow down, with the desert turning brown and crispy.  Some of the later blooming asters and buckwheats will round out our forb collections, and the grasses are starting to seed out like crazy.  I think we will have a strong couple of months ahead of us!

Aside from seed collecting, my crew mate and I are also performing botanical clearances for proposed developments (troughs, water pipelines, etc.) on BLM land.  Essentially, we take a species-level inventory of the flora present at the project site.  The presence of special status species or noxious weeds at the site then informs how the project is implemented; if either are present, mitigation may be deemed necessary before the project can take place.  These clearances have really helped me brush up on my ID skills and they have helped us discover good collection sites as well.

Calochortus macrocarpus – sagebrush mariposa lily

With so many populations seeding out between several sites, I’m sure I will have an equally busy, wild, and wonderful month before my next post!  I’m still astounded at how much I’ve learned in such a short time.  This experience is exactly what I needed, and I’m excited to see what it keeps bringing!

Smith Rock, outside of Bend, OR

Brennan Davis, BLM – Lakeview, OR

Hello again,

Vernal in July, like most places in this part of the country, has been very hot and very dry. Fortunately, we got to spend this past week rafting on the white river! But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’m going to rewind back to 4th of July weekend when I met up with some of my fellow CLM interns in Lander, WY. It was so nice to be able to take advantage of our awesome network. We camped and went to a rodeo and had a killer BBQ. Lander, WY, great place for the 4th of July! Below is a picture of our epic BBQ grocery shopping spree:

We also spent a lot of time last week collecting Oenothera species for Krissa’s research! We were able to find Oenothera acutissima, cespitosa, howardii and pallida. Our search brought us up into the mountains to see some big and beautiful Ponderosa Pines. 

Last week we scouted more populations and did some more seed collecting. Up on Blue Mountain we found Lomatium triternatum and Lupinus argeneus. When we’re not in the mountains, we spend most of our days at work near drill pads and evaporation ponds, but in the evening we get to escape and explore the beautiful hidden gems of northeast Utah. One evening last week we hiked up to Moonshine Arch . You can’t find this stuff on the East Coast.

But now back to our latest excursion. We spent this week on the White River doing some invasive species monitoring, specifically Russian Olive and Tamarisk, which are both huge problems here in Vernal and all over this part of the country. I wish we had a machete with us, cause this bush is nuts! The BLM has already done some weed removal work along the White River, but it has barely made a dent and it has already cost millions of dollars. Even the areas that have been treated have a significant number of resprouts and new seedlings. Invasive species removal is no easy task. It is costly and requires a lot of attention. The field office here does not have enough time, money, or staff to come back year after year to treat and retreat these invasives, but if nothing is done we will lose our cottonwoods and our native understory completely. Though, this trip was a bit of a depressing reality check we had a lot of fun, rafting, kayaking and camping and of course eating. This is a picture of us trying to fit all of our gear, but mostly our food, on our raft:

More exciting Vernal, UT adventures next time. Thanks for tuning in.

Hannah

There is a myriad of Latin binomials swirling through my head. My hands are callused from digging soil pits and my elegant farmer’s tan has made a strong comeback. It’s official, field season is really here. We got a late start here in Meeker, CO, doing AIM monitoring for the Bureau of Land Management, but are surely making up for lost time. There has been a plethora of exciting experiences my first few weeks, and I will do my best to highlight a few.

Big skies and pinyon pines (Pinus edulis)

This ecosystem is arid, hot and at times unforgiving, at least to us humans. Yet all sorts of flora and fauna are uniquely adapted to such challenges and make life here look easy. The majority of our plots are in sagebrush, wherein we collect supplemental vegetation data to assess habitat for Greater Sage-Grouse. At various elevations, different subspecies of sagebrush, Artemisia tridentata, are dominant. Luckily, we also get to experience working in pinyon juniper, quaking aspen, cottonwood forests, and salt-desert shrub lands. It’s remarkable to see the diversity of ecosystems in such an immense range of this beautiful state. The greatest challenge of this position has undoubtedly been learning all the plants. Since vegetation monitoring means identifying any species we may encounter on a transect, there has been a pretty steep learning curve getting started.

Common sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) in a recently burned meadow

The vast openness and big skies of Northwest Colorado have stolen my heart. Having never lived West of the Mississippi, almost everything is alien to me here, but I am quickly acclimating. The plants (of which there is an overwhelming diversity), the birds, and mammals are all slowing revealing themselves. To live in a place where you can drive for hours in any direction and see predominantly wilderness is a true privilege. Sometimes when approaching a plot, we are hit with the strong scent of sagebrush as we hop out of the truck. Just yesterday, I saw my first Golden Eagle on the wing, graciously allowing us a peak at her power and beauty. In my experience, it is these tiny moments of sensory pleasure that make being a field biologist the greatest job in the world.

A typical day in the field may wind down with a pitched tent and some stellar scenery

Cheers,

Coryna Hebert

BLM, Meeker, CO

Well, I’m now two months into my position in the Lander, Wyoming field office and I love it!  This place is amazing and the people are great.  So far most of what I have been doing is monitoring riparian areas by taking photo points, stubble height measurements of two key species, and conducting bank trampling surveys.  These riparian areas are in a very remote location in the field office, and I hardly ever see other people out and about.  Recently, I have also started doing droop height measurements around wells and reservoirs to make sure that those aren’t being overgrazed as well.  The next two weeks I will be working for another lady in the office doing a few different sampling methods that I haven’t done since college.  It will be nice to refresh myself on how to conduct the surveys.

I’m continually amazed at how beautiful the landscape is that I’m working on.  Most of the flowers are done blooming and the grasses are seeding out.  But, that doesn’t take away from the beauty of the land one single bit.  It’s such a diverse landscape!  There are areas that are sandy and have natural lakes, rocky areas with seeps, clayey areas that will get you stuck in a heartbeat, and everything in between.  The antelope are uncountable, the elk are a wonderful sight, the birds are singing beautifully, and the one coyote I have seen had a nice lunch of sage grouse.  Probably the most surprising thing I have seen in the past two months was a six-legged sheep.  Yes, a six-legged sheep.  A picture should be attached to this post.  I have always heard of that happening, but never thought I would see it myself.  I have also attached a picture of a field of Wild Irises.  They were at one of the riparian areas we are monitoring for bank trampling, stubble height, and photo points.  The bugs were about to carry me away, but I couldn’t resist stopping for just a few seconds to snap a picture on my phone of the beautiful irises.

I look forward to continuing my internship for the next four months and learning so much more than I thought I ever would.  BLM Wyoming has captured my heart and I hope to stay here for the rest of my life.  I hope everyone else’s internships are going well and that you are as happy as I am.  🙂

Working for the BLM or any government agency requires many training classes on a myriad of subjects, usually mundane and somewhat self-explanatory. However, this week I did the ATV training class and it was so much fun and different! Nine of us from the field office participated in the day-long course that required us to learn about safely operating an ATV while showing your abilities and proficiency in driving. We learned about important laws and regulations, safety tips and how to avoid dangerous situations, and basic mechanics of the machines. It was a lot of fun buzzing around the designed course and practicing fast turns and going over large bumps. With nine of us on the course at a time we had to get good at looking ahead and reading other drivers. I don’t yet know if we’ll use the ATVs for botanical work, but it sure was a fun training to have! We also experienced  a storm develop and come in as we wrapped up the final driving tests. The clouds and lightning were incredible against the mountains.

Until next time,

Austen, BLM Salmon Field Office, Idaho

From the hum of spring, into the midnight sun the field season at BLM in the Fairbanks district office is concentrated into 3 short months.

This next week I’ll be heading back up the Dalton highway to initiate AIM vegetation monitoring on few mining sites.

I’ll update more after next month once the season slows 🙂

After two months of monitoring rare cacti, my fellow botanists and I have moved on to collecting native seeds for the Seeds of Success program. We began collecting in Great Basin of Western Utah, where we captured a few species of Penstemon just in time before the heat of the sun dried up all of the forbs and turned them into a crisp. Now, it is hard to come by a target species in the low elevations due to the high temperature and dry climate, so, fortunately for us, this means we get to trek through the higher elevations in search for more collections. This has been a bonus for multiple reasons, but mainly because there are trees! When driving on the backroads of the Great Basin the only trees you’ll find were brought there by humans, you know miles ahead when you are about to approach a town because of the random patches of Populous fremontii. Lonely ranchers have expanded the range of P. fremontii into the west desert by providing them with ample water around their homes and agricultural fields. Up in the mountains, it has been refreshing to see trees in their natural habitat and also to have the luxury of keying out plants and eating lunch in the shade.

Every time I work in the field I see a plant that I have never seen before. This week, one of the plants that I fell in love with was Corallorhiza maculata. While collecting Packera multilobata seeds in the Dixie National Forest this Orchid luckily caught the corner of my eye. This plant is easy to miss because it blends in nicely with the dried leaves on the forest floor but it’s hard not to give it your full attention once you have found it. Its red stems and purple-spotted labellum make this plant very unique and adorable. C. maculata also has a special way of obtaining its nutrients, it is mycoheterotrophic. It’s clear that this plant does not photosynthesize because of the lack of chlorophyll in the stems and scale-like leaves. Instead, it parasitizes mycorrhizal fungi. The fungus in a situation like this end up being the middle man in the transfer of carbon from one plant (the host tree) to another plant (C. maculata).

Now it’s time for me to hit the field and collect some more seeds! Thanks for stopping by.

All the best,

Rayna

Richfield BLM