I pulled into Alamogordo, NM, my Honda Fit stuffed with everything I had to my name (which admittedly, is not a lot), ten days unshowered and racing to my second-dose vaccine appointment. I had been driving since 4am, just coming off an extended road trip routing that included the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Escalante, Joshua Tree, Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, and down Highway 1 on California’s coast (my first time seeing the Pacific!). I’d just finished a 6-month term in Americorps’ ACE program based in Flagstaff, AZ, and took advantage of the time in between my end date in AZ and starting here in the Lincoln National Forest to do some solo-travel and live the #van (Fit) life. After 6 months of hard manual labor consisting mainly of trail construction, much of it backcountry, I was excited to get back into the world of botany, data analysis, and actual beds!

Coming from rural north-central Indiana, a flat hunk of land consisting mainly of corn and soybean fields, the West has been an entirely different planet full of jaw-dropping vistas and crazy conservation corps misadventures. This is my first time in New Mexico, and I’m excited to see what new experiences the Chihuahuan desert has in store.

 Here in Lincoln NF, my co-intern Natasha and I are going to assist a small part of the ongoing South Sacramento Restoration Project by conducting rare plant surveys that will contribute to the project’s database of federally listed endangered and threatened plant species, as well as regionally sensitive species that exist in the forest- this data collection will also help with building a dataset for a habitat sustainability model that is being developed for the Lincoln NF. Although we’re in the Chihauhaun desert, much of the Lincoln NF consists of sky islands, isolated areas that are ecologically radically different from the surrounding desert, often found in mountain ranges such as the Sacramentos. This leads to an extremely biodiverse region, with high species richness and many endemic species. 

While waiting for our rare species’ to flower so we can accurately identify them, we’ve had several different learning opportunities working with different Forest Service employees- we’ve been helping the natural resources crew here build one-rock dams to control soil erosion in riparian areas, as well as learned about local wildlife through some birding with a local expert. We’ve also been collecting plants to practice keying them out and refamiliarizing ourselves with botanical terms and plant families, and have been practicing driving out to sites and using our GPS units to track and find points. My favorite find so far has been Viola canadensis, which is not one of our rare species, but a familiar sight to me after having done research on prairie violets during my Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) internship at the Chicago Botanic Garden itself. I was excited to see Viola again for the first time in the West! 

Working with Aurora, the forest’s botanist, as well as the other Forest Service seasonal techs has been great and I’m already learning a great amount from them! The flowering season here is almost upon us, so we’ll soon start our rare species’ data collections. I can’t wait to update everyone on how they go!

Hi! My name is Megan Crapo, and I am so excited to start sharing about my time as a CLM intern working with the US Forest Service at the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. To start, I am from Phoenix, Arizona and went to college just outside of Chicago, Illinois. Coming to West Virginia has pushed me farther east than I could have ever imagined and these first three weeks have exceeded my expectations. I can’t wait to see how the rest of my time here will turn out!

These first three weeks have been filled with many adventures. Since my co-intern Katie and I are still waiting on our federal driver’s license and other trainings like pesticide application certification’s to be completed, we have been able to tag along on other USFS projects. This has allowed us to meet our other co-workers and learn about different projects and maintenance needed to help preserve the ~1,400 square miles of the Monongahela National Forest. Some of the projects we have helped with have been botany surveys to keep track of rare and threatened plants in the forest, salamander surveys to help with a local research project on the effects of large woody debris on salamander abundance and species richness (pictures 1&2), and helping with a local restoration project with CASRI by planting red spruce, red maple, and other native plants with the Appalachian Conservation Corp (pictures 3&4).

These first three weeks have shown me just how much work goes into maintaining national forests and I am excited to see what there is in store for the next five months! Soon Katie and I will be able to go out on our own to work on projects such as invasive species management, habitat monitoring, and more!

Hello and welcome to my first blog post as a CLM Intern! My name is Katherine Sparks and I am currently working with Megan Crapo at the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. I am so grateful for this amazing opportunity and am super excited to gain such valuable experience!

My journey to becoming a CLM Intern was an adventure in itself. Through a frenzy of trying to complete final projects for my previous internship with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, recovering from the stomach flu, and applying to graduate programs, I came across the CLM program entirely by accident. After spending 40 hours a week staring at a computer screen for the past year, working outside in a national forest seemed almost too good to be true – but I am so glad it was true! I have now made the long journey from Missouri to West Virginia and am living amongst the beautiful Allegheny Mountains.

The majority of my first two weeks here has consisted of reading training materials and studying to become a certified herbicide applicator, but this week Megan and I got a break from our computer screens and joined the botany crew for a training field trip at the Cranberry Glades. The goal was to see several sensitive, threatened, and endangered species in order to properly identify them for botany surveys in the future. We specifically looked at Canada Yew (Taxus canadensis), Heartleaf Twayblade (Neottia cordata), Appalachian violets (Viola appalachiensis), and Winterberry (Ilex verticillata).

While out in the field, we also came across several species that – while not on our list – were interesting to see and fun to learn about! Cranberry Glades has a population of carnivorous pitcher plants and we were able to see them as well as an open sundew plant. It is believed that the pitcher plant population was artificially introduced into the system, but it was still interesting to see carnivorous plants in a “natural” setting.

After we finished learning the species for the day, we went out as a group to Summit Lake to conduct a botany survey and practice everything we had learned. We made it through the first plot without finding any of the species on our list and had made it through the majority of the second plot when the wildlife technician from the Gauley Ranger Station spotted a heartleaf twayblade hiding amongst some beech brush. It was an exciting way to end a fun day!

Hiking through the woods with individuals who are just as excited as I am to learn about plant species and their habits and ecology is a relatively new and undeniably refreshing experience for me. It was a great way to get to know my fellow coworkers better and an even better way to start the field season. I can’t wait to see what adventures the rest of this internship holds!

Hi everyone! My name Liza Chang. Never having visited this part of the country, I am excited to be doing work for the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Boise. Although I’m based out of Boise, I will be doing a fair amount of traveling to places I never would have seen on my own. We have already visited some remote places in Idaho and Nevada, and have scheduled trips to Utah and Washington.

So far, work consists of orientation tasks, data collection from the common gardens, scouting new sites, and lots of camping. I work with another CLM intern named Katherine, under the mentorship of Jessica. For the first couple weeks, we worked in tandem with other biotechs that we will occasionally see throughout the season. Camping together, we very quickly developed a strong sense of community over the first couple weeks. I can only imagine what 4 more months of camping will bring.

We learned the ins and outs of collecting data on forb species in the common gardens. Not only did we learn about the different species, or how to use Survey 123, but we also learned that bur buttercup is painful to weed, and some good stretches to unkink your back!

On our first scouting trip in Nevada, we drove the trucks off the beaten path. It was a good thing they had four-wheel drive because we drove down steep mountain passes and rocky streams, alongside plenty of cattle. There was not a lot of vegetation in flower, but we recorded the first cactus in this specific mountain range!

I made the trek to Klamath Falls in two days, coming from Downers Grove, Illinois. The Saturday before leaving was spent celebrating my sister and her fiancé at their small backyard wedding. Sunday was full of ranging emotions, but I was ready to start my adventure. I hugged my mom, brother and dog goodbye and left at 5am Monday morning. The roughly 30 hour drive consisted of several podcasts, reading, and gazing out of the window admiring the views of states I was seeing for the first time.

I was traveling with my partner, Charlie, who I’m grateful for taking time off work to come with me. Having traveled to Colorado in the past, long car rides were something we were prepared for, but we were clearly poorly prepared for the change in climate when reaching Wyoming. We were wearing Teva sandals and shorts, when it was snowing and 30 degrees outside. But it was definitely beautiful to see the landscape and quick change of weather.

Utah was also a state we bookmarked to come back to, even though we just saw a small portion. Driving through the Great Salt Lake Desert was incredible, except for the fact we were cutting it close on gas. But we made it! Spent a whopping $4.60 per gallon.

Arriving in Klamath Falls and having the rest of the week and weekend to settle in was a treat. We used that time to get myself packed and organized, as well as check out some of the nearby hiking trails and restaurants. Come Sunday night, my nerves about the first day were building, but after meeting Nolan (mentor and FWS Fish Biologist) and Justus (co-intern) the nerves turned into excitement.

Arriving in Klamath Falls and having the rest of the week and weekend to settle in was a treat. We used that time to get myself packed and organized, as well as check out some of the nearby hiking trails and restaurants. Come Sunday night, my nerves about the first day were building, but after meeting Nolan and Justus, the nerves turned into excitement.

This first week has shown me a glimpse of working for a federal organization and the amazing conservation work being done by staff at KFFWO. I’m so looking forward to starting field work next week and gaining any and all knowledge and skills I can!

Let’s set the scene.

The date is July 27th, 2020 in Boulder City, Nevada. The air, well over 100 degrees, feels like you’re standing in an oven on full blast. The roads are littered with tumbleweeds, like actual tumbleweeds straight out of a cartoon. Surrounded by a desert filled with coyotes, rattlesnakes, and tarantulas. This is what I walked into as a newly recruited intern for the Joshua Tree Genome Project at the USGS.
After losing an internship due to COVID-19, I was desperate, scratch that, very desperate, to find work anywhere I could. Call it fate, divine intervention, or just dumb luck, I received an email late May informing me of a position open in a little town just minutes away from Las Vegas. So, I packed up my Jeep and made the 26-hour drive from Northwest Arkansas to the Mojave Desert, having no idea what I was in for. Little did I know that it would be one of the most rewarding and enriching times of my life.
Over the past 6 months, me and my fellow interns have put blood, sweat, and tears into the Joshua Tree Genome Project. From breaking open pods and counting thousands of seeds in a basement, to working in a greenhouse until 2 am planting those same seeds, our time on this project has been nothing short of an epic adventure. We have spent countless hours mauling over massive excel datasheets, so much so that we began to dream about data, pivot tables, formulas, and Rstudio scripts. We spent days upon days camping in the desert where, much to my extreme delight, I was able to encounter the Mojave Green Rattlesnake (Crotalus scutulatus) for the first time. We camped under the stars and worked in the blazing heat, assessing the growth of plants that interns in previous years had planted. We met incredible people along the way, but none more so than Dr. Lesley DeFalco and Dr. Todd Esque.
Dr. DeFalco and Dr. Esque, or as we now call them, Lesley and Todd, have been the most amazing mentors I could have ever asked for. Through their guidance and leadership, we have been able to achieve things I would never have imagined 6 months ago, and their attention to detail and effective communication skills have left a lasting impression on all the interns. They have been patient, understanding, unfathomably useful, and a joy to work with.
I have nothing but praise for my fellow interns as well. Moving across the country can be a culture shock in and of itself, but add on three strangers from very different locations, the move can seem much more daunting. However, I wasn’t prepared for some of the nicest, smartest, and most hardworking group of people I would have the privilege to call my fellow interns. They have taught me so much and have been a great “quarantine” squad over the past 6 months. My roommate, Nick, has been a constant source of laughter, inspiration, and random nonsense, I a will look back at my time at 629 Avenue L fondly because of him.
My time in the desert has been the time of my life. I have learned from experts, gained some valuable contacts, and made lifelong friends. I look forward to reading the papers that our work will produce, and I can’t wait to see how our findings are used in the future.
Well, that’s all for me, I have lots of work to do, and my time in Boulder City is limited.

Thank you CBG and the USGS for a wonderful experience

Josh

A final salute to the JTGP is in order. This New Year brings about the end of our six month stint with the USGS in Southern Nevada and the Joshua Trees. We have tracked, recorded, organized and outlined the details and info of thousands of baby JTs and are now handing that package of data over to our mentors and the future group of interns, along with a greenhouse full of growing plants with shiny metal tags, ready for out planting into the common gardens.

This internship experience with CBGs CLM program was round two for me (did an internship with the FS in Idaho in 2019) and while my first internship was a fantastic opportunity in plant conservation, management and all things botany, this JTGP internship has been a superlative introduction and lesson in botanical research. It has been an incomparable hands-on experience involving research design, time-management and troubleshooting, data collection efficiency and a dip into the statistical world.

As an individual who is intending on graduate school (and the inevitable design and execution of my own work), this internship was a much needed segue into the world of big time botanical research. I am now aware of best practices for managing study plants and just how much time and thought must go into all research. I have also experienced the struggles, set-backs and wrong turns, and have learned how to approach them with flexibility and curiosity. And most of all, I have learned the true value of working in a team. My JTGP co-interns have been with me through every one of our planning moments, hiccups, and victories. I have realized how incredibly refreshing it is to discuss courses of action with individuals who think differently and I know that we have been able to accomplish all of the work we did these past six months because of the constant support and healthy challenging that occurred as we worked together with these plants.

I also have to mention that being mentored and guided by top-tier research scientists at the USGS has been so so SO awesome. Receiving endless guidance and confirmation from Lesley and Todd has helped me to better analyze and understand the flow of this research project. I have tucked away many gold nuggets of advice and suggestions for use in my personal and professional life. They have challenged us as a group, and me as an individual, to truly dig in and open myself up to the new experiences and lessons that the JTGP had to offer.

So, it is with pride and excitement that I close this desert flavored chapter of my life. I’ll be checking in over the years to see how the JTs are doing and am so grateful to the CBG and USGS that I was able to play a roll in this amazing research 🙂