Hello! Greetings from Montrose, CO one last time…

So I have good and bad news. The good news is that I got accepted into grad school! (My poor advisor, he has no idea what he’s gotten himself into by accepting me into his lab…) I’ll be attending the University of Northern Colorado where I will be doing conservation genetic work on the DeBeque Phacelia (only the cutest endagered plant in the history of the world).

DeBeque Phacelia

See!? See how cute it is?? It’s as big as that quater!

Aaaaaand the bad news.. I’ll be leaving my internship and the beautiful town of Montrose far too soon. 🙁

Before I get to the mopey part where I write about how sad I am that I’m leaving I’ll update you real quick on what I’ve been doing. Let’s see…since I last wrote I:

+ Attempted to hike into a magical and mysterious place called “Rose Creek” to do owl surveys with my mentor and the wildlife biologist..alas, the best laid plans fall apart and we never hiked further then the Forest Service boundary (I could go into all the details but I think it deserves more then one blog post)…Rose Creek eluded us and I guess we’re waiting until early next spring before we try again (and by “we” I do mean “them” because I’ll be in Greeley doing the school thing).

+ Attempted to do bat surveys in Tabeguache (Tab-i-watch) Creek and Mesa Creek in the west end. First night in Tabeguache – a million bats flyin’ around, but none dumb enought to fly into the net. (Also, an absolutely perfect night for star gazing, saw about five shooting stars.) Second night in Mesa Creek – harassed by a very bold bear cub (I have a pic of him but it’s on my personal camera, sorry guys!) and forced to break down camp in the dark and move before we could really get started (we would’ve caught bats too, one almost flew into the net as we were taking them down). Alas. The best plans fall apart.

+ Went out with the hydrologist for a few days to do water quality sampling and macroinvertebrate surveys in the west end. Some of the best days ever. Just got to play in the water!

+ Aaaaaand, last but not least, I just finished entering my last HAF data sheet EVERRRRRRR!!! into the computer. 🙂 Big day and I feel very accomplished.

SO that’s that, just about two weeks left here and I’m not sure what the game plan is, though there are rumors that I’ll be electroshocking fish (!) in the west end!

Now time to get a bit mopey..this is my second season in Montrose and it really feels like home now. I work with/for the BEST people ever, and they have really pushed me to be a better biologist/botanist – they challenge and encourage me and were really the impetus for me applying and getting into grad school. I’m not sure I would’ve had the guts to do it without the kick in the butt these people (especially my mentor, Ken) gave me. And along those lines, dear everyone at the CBG – keep up the good work!! Without this intership I’d probably still be a telemarketer/liftie in Gunnison/Crested Butte instead of on my way to being a professional botanist (finger’s crossed anyway). Really, thanks so much for this program and all that y’all do.

And since I’ll be leaving soon I’ve been enjoying the mountains (and my friends) here like crazy before I leave and am stuck on the soul-crushing front range of Colorado (hmm, I’m sure it’s not that bad). I’m proud to say that last Sunday I accomplished a goal I set for myself last summer but was unable to accomplish due to vehicle constraints.. I climbed Mount Sneffels (the silliest sounding 14er in all the state, and one of the most recognizable peaks in Colorado)!!! It was my 6th 14er, and my first one since college. I will now proudly post some pictures of the expereince.

On my way up – I’m on the right looking so ridiculously happy it hurts.

On top of Sneffels – 14,157 ft – with one of the coolest gal pals I know!

The best hiking buddies ever!

I can’t believe that I’m leaving – and so soon! I’m going to miss Montrose so much but I’m looking forward to all the new and exciting things grad school has to offer!

Officailly signing off on my last CBG Internship blog ever –

Brandee Wills
Uncompahgre Field Office – BLM
Montrose, CO

I recently finished my internship with the USGS in the Mojave Desert. My final weeks were spent doing fieldwork at the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley National Park, and wrapping up data entry and analyzing the data we (my fellow interns and I) collected throughout our internship. As we tried to piece together our results into a coherent narrative of the workings of desert restoration, I frequently thought about my experience there and what I would take away from my time in the southwest.

In our internship, we worked on several projects all geared toward understanding the effect of restoration techniques in the Mojave Desert, often for desert tortoise habitat. Because we worked in several areas across four states, we were exposed to the extremes of the Mojave and the challenges to restoration in different areas. I learned about post-fire restoration techniques and monitored their effectiveness, examined the effects of fire on habitat suitability for desert tortoises, and studied the effect of source material on successful plant restoration. Throughout all of this fieldwork, I gained experience using dichotomous keys for plant ID, learned several sampling methods, and learned about the intricacies of a delicate ecosystem – all things I hoped I would learn at the beginning of my internship.

Additionally, I had the opportunity to work in a unique and beautiful part of the Mojave that is the Eureka Valley in Death Valley National Park. It takes over two hours to reach once you are inside the park, driving on dirt roads over mountain passes. I went there three times for a week each to monitor populations of two endemic, endangered plants on three different dune systems. I can honestly say I’m not sure I ever would have seen this valley if it wasn’t for this internship, which would have been a shame because it is a fascinating and beautiful place.

While I am sad to leave the Mojave behind, I am grateful for all I’ve learned throughout this internship and the friends and mentors I became connected with through this program. It’s been a blast, but now it’s on to the next adventure – grad school!

A beautiful sunset in Death Valley marks the end of my internship

Cheers,

Rachel

USGS, Las Vegas Field Office

Things have been nothing short of interesting here in the Rogue Valley. The heat has been on as temperatures have been reaching averages of 104 degrees regularly. We got a bit of relief last week as some cloud cover, rain, and storms moved in, but this has only lead to the birth of numerous lightning fires throughout the state. Luckily most of the fires have been to the East of the Cascades so far and we have not experienced much air pollution from the smoke of nearby fires.

As a result of the weather, and the fact that pretty much everything on the valley floor has gone to seed and dried out, we have moved our scouting for plants into the higher elevations of the nearby mountains. Between 2,000 and 5,000 feet elevation, plants are now either still flowering or going to seed. Scouting the mountains has reignited an appreciation for the geology of this region. At the south end of the Rogue Valley the Klamath-Siskiyous and the Cascades encompass the valley like a large bowl. This leads to a wide variety of habitat niches. Some of the mountains nearby are plutons, large rocky bubbles, essentially. Some mountains are volcanic, others the result of the North American tectonic plate shifting over the Juan de Fuca plate. Most of the mountains nearby are basaltic while others toward the Illinois River valley are mostly serpentinite and yield diverse plant communities all their own including many local endemics.

We have now reached approximately 50 collections, so we are merely 10 collections away from our initial target of 60 collections, which we are sure to exceed. So far we have vouchered approximately 130 botanical specimens. As the season starts to enter its final leg, it seems like we have made good progress and I am satisfied with our results.

This all comes in good time as my Environmental Education graduate program at Southern Oregon University starts back up. I am now in a transition period between switching from the seed collecting world to the outdoor education world as I have to reduce my work time in exchange for taking classes and planning lessons in preparation for our Fall in the Field residential and day programs in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in Ashland, OR and the Deer Creek Center in Selma, OR. I have a little over a month to go with the BLM/SOS and I can say that I am pleased with my experience in this program thus far and will look back fondly on this internship. It looks like we will have accomplished what we set out to accomplish and got to explore Oregon’s many wonderful outdoor areas in the process. I suppose I can’t ask for much more than that.

– Jason

Hey!

With fire season in full swing here in Eastern Oregon, the office has been pretty busy this past month. Fortunately, these fires have provided me the oportunity to conduct spatial analyses on what kinds of lands and structures have burned so a rehabilitation plan can be put into place. This involves looking at former restoration plans and determining what the botanists, engineers, etc will need analyzed. Then, I create models using ArcGIS model builder so I can can save the proccesses to be used on a future fire if need be.

In addition to fire analysis, I have been working on creating maps for an Oregon Trail tour an archaeologist in the office is leading. These maps would be for the public going on the tour so they can find their way and also just as an overview of the route. This project has been a test of my cartography skills as I have had to try to find a way to fit a lot of information into an 11×17 map.

In all, these past few weeks have been great and I’m excited to continue my work here!

Vale, OR

Hello, I hope you all are having a fun time this summer. As in my previous post, I am going to talk about our research and my experience at the Provo shrub science lab. Our e-nose research is going well, especially during the summer days. The reason is because we are finding better smell profiles results and a good differentiation between sagebrush subspecies with the hot weather.  Additionally, at this time we are combining chromatographic techniques with our e-nose experiments which seems very promising to complement the identification of smells and chemical profiles of subspecies, and the differentiation between them. I talked in my last post about the plan to present at the SER conference in Redmond Oregon, well, I am finally registered. But we have not just done science in the laboratory this past month, we also starting cleaning some of the sagebrush experiments at Ephraim, Utah. I have to say that my mentor gave me a good lesson on how important it is to just take a break from the lab sometimes, and take a shovel and remove some weeds.

Like in my previous posts, I want to say thank you to my mentor, to all my companions and the CLM staff for all the support, and the CLM program for this great opportunity. There is always something to do at the Provo shrub science lab and I feel lucky to work in this incredible place, with such incredible people.

Hector

Provo, UT

Forest Service, RMRS, Provo Shrub Science Lab

Seed collecting within the Great Basin has provided an environment equal to collecting within a sauna. As the sun beats down and the wind neglects to blow it is not uncommon to find yourself sweating spontaneously. After hours of working within this environment I have become increasingly grateful for the wind. The wind is a beautiful force that has so many wonderful qualities. Not only does the wind provide a wonderful and delightful environment to cool you off, but it is also a great pollination mechanism for many plants. If it was not for this delightful entity many plants would not have developed or even maintained the morphology that they have today. Those traits would have been selected against and the world around us would be a very different place. On that imaginative note, I hope you have a great week.

Hi friends,

We just finished our last Nested Frequency Trend plot last week completing a total of 22 plots. There was a 23rd plot for us to monitor but the plot ended up in the middle of the Preacher Fire, a wildfire to the east of Shoshone burning about 34,000 acres, which is considered large for this field office. A few days after the fire was contained Avery and I went out to see what it looked like. I could not believe my eyes, it looked like we were on a different planet. The fire burnt every living plant out there, not leaving a single stump behind. I guess the conditions were just right, low moisture content in the shrubs root system and a very hot burning fire. Due to the wildfire, this allotment cannot be grazed for another 3 years. A new seeding plan will be created for the burned area and hopefully some of the seed we collected this season will be used.

Fire season is in full swing in southern Idaho. The conditions are perfect; temperatures in the high 90s, heavy winds, lightning strikes, and dry climate. There have been 5 wildfires in the last month burning a total of 44,000 acres. The fire crews have been busy and doing a great job containing the fires and minimizing losses.

Preach Fire, right off the highway.
Photo taken from Google

What is left after Preacher Fire.
Photo taken from Google.

Aside from conducting vegetation surveys, our latest task has been conducting bat surveys! I had no experience caving or identifying bats so I was excited and ready for a new challenge. There are 100s of lava tubes in the field office…A little background on Idaho geology:

Southern Idaho has a unique landscape covered with lava flows, cinder cones, and lava tubes. Crater’s of the Moon National Monument was created from lava that erupted from the Great Rift, a series of deep, open cracks, eruptive fissures, shield volcanoes, and cinder cones. This area is still erupting, in 1983 a 6.9 magnitude earthquake occurred rising the highest point in Idaho (Borah peak 12,667 FT) a foot. This earthquake, instead of creating mountain ranges has triggered volcanic activity. Southern Idaho is full of hot springs because the earth’s crust is stretched and thinner than normal in the Snake River Plane and the Great Basin, allowing heat from the earth to be concentrated near the surface.

Craters of the Moon
Photo taken from Google

Lava flows!
Photo taken from Google

Back to bat surveys. I’ve only gone out once so far and went in around 10 caves. We saw Great Horned Owls, a rattle snake, and one maternity colony of Townsend’s Big Eared bats (Corynorhinus townsendii). This colony was found and recorded last week but I wanted to see a bat SO bad that we went back so I could take a photo.

Corynorhinus townsendii

Cheers!
Alexi

Last week concluded my five month internship at the USGS in Las Vegas, Nevada. I have had an incredible, unforgettable experience working here – it’s hard to believe it’s already over and that I have to say goodbye to my fellow CLM interns and the wonderful crew at USGS that I had the great pleasure of working with.

If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you may have read about the diversity of projects that I’ve been working on over the last few months. At the Grand Canyon-Parashant National Monument in northern Arizona, I helped survey experimental plots that had varying combinations of herbicide and seeding treatments, which were being analyzed for effectiveness for use in large-scale restoration. In the Eureka Dunes in Death Valley National Park, California, I helped monitor two endemic desert dune species by assisting with physiological measurements on target plants. I also helped out with a project which involved vegetation surveys to see see how much forage material was available for desert tortoises that were being translocated to a new area.

However, the project that I believe I spent the most time working on throughout my internship was our “common garden” experiment. At the beginning of my internship (February-March) we established three “common garden” sites to assess ecotypic variation of three different perennial species commonly used for restoration. Over the next few months (March-July) we went back to these sites several times to water the plants to help them establish as well as take measurements (ex. cover, density, reproductive effort) on each plant. This project was very rewarding because it was the only project we helped out with that was in its first year. We helped out with every phase of this project – from digging trenches for the rodent-proof fencing to planting over 2000 plants to working on data analysis in our final weeks. Data collection will continue for another few years, and it will be very interesting to see what findings come out of this experiment that we lent an initial helping hand with!

Taking the plants from the greenhouse to our “common garden” sites!

Fort Irwin National Training Center, where one of our “common garden” sites was located!

I’m so grateful to have spent these months in the Mojave desert. Before arriving here, I didn’t know anything about the desert really, and now upon leaving, I feel as if I know this landscape intimately and I have grown to respect and admire its extremes. Surviving in this environment was certainly challenging, but I have learned a great deal from these challenges. To all the new CLM interns just starting out – I wish you the best of luck with your internships! Immerse yourself as much as possible in your new environments and enjoy!

Thanks for reading!

— Meaghan Petix

Las Vegas Field Office, USGS

S&G Monitoring and Beyond!

We finished S&G monitoring in the northern Gillette, Wyoming area! After visiting a variety of sites, we managed to do all of the line-point transects, wildlife evaluations, diversity studies, and geologic soil profiles. We have encountered more than sixty different species of forbs, grasses, and other flora! Some areas were incredibly diverse and had many different geologic and biologic processes. There were sites that were very saline that had a nice E horizon in the soil profile. Even looking at the soil profile and different species of grasses, we could understand the ecological significance of each site for many wild and domesticated animals.  I encountered some very disturbed sites that had yellow sweet clover (Melilotus officinalis) and cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) galore! Even with all of the cheatgrass and other invasive plants, we saw a diversity of grasses such as buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides), blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis), western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii), needle and thread (Hesperostipa comata), prairie junegrass (Koeleria macrantha), purple red three awn (Aristida purpurea), green needlegrass (Nassella viridula), sandberg’s bluegrass (Poa secunda) and bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata).

BLM Legends ready to do S&G Monitoring!

After the S&G monitoring, Sara and I went out to different sites south of Gillette. Our goal was to do rangeland health monitoring assessments. This would help everyone with future S&G monitoring when they would come back to the site next year.  We had to do three point line transects that were 150 feet long at 0°, 120°, 240° azimuth. The point was to record the plants that were encountered every 3 feet along the measuring tape. We also had to look at species diversity, measure sagebrush length and height, assess total ground cover percentage, look for signs of erosion, and take notes on grazing practices on the allotment. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are totally ready for the challenge! ^_^

The Osborn Identity

All of the rangeland health monitoring had been going smoothly the last two weeks. Each of the sites we had to monitor were along county roads and took us around fifty minutes to assess. We did encounter one very tricky site known as the Osborn Allotment Site. Sara and I followed the GPS and took many back roads to get to the allotment. The problem was that the local quarries have expanded within the last year and absorbed all of the major roads leading to this site! D: We would make another turn and it would go into a quarry or a man-made valley. When you look on the satellite map, these smaller quarries did not exist. We spent a couple hours trying to find a way into this allotment and we did not want to give up, because we invested so much time into the search. We found a southern route and had to go through a field of cheatgrass and needle and thread. The grass seeds stored themselves in front of the truck and we had to stop to take the seed mass out before it caught on fire. We eventually made it to the Osborn Allotment Site, which was located next to a salt playa near another quarry. There were also a variety of birds that were present on the site such as the upland sandpiper, western meadowlark, lark bunting, lark sparrow, brewer’s sparrow, vesper sparrow, common nighthawk, turkey vulture, American crow, and grasshopper sparrow. Sara and I were pretty happy after finding and monitoring the site. We went on to complete two more sites that day. \(^_^)/

We found needle and thread seeds stuck in front of our truck. We should’ve taken a voucher and collected seeds for SOS. <_<…that was a joke.

The Little Bighorn Ranch Allotment Surprise

The Little Bighorn Ranch Allotment was located in the northeastern section of the Bighorn Mountains, which was located on the Montana-Wyoming border. To enter this allotment, we had to enter Montana and drive down into Wyoming. Sara and I went with BLM Legends Charlotte and Kay to monitor the site. I had to use all of my defensive driving experience when navigating through this valley the allotment was located in. This place was so isolated that it was never monitored before!! O_O We had to go over very narrow bridges and around boulder sites. The marmots were bemused by my twenty point turns I had to do with my truck when we encountered dead end roads.

Bemused marmot.

The valley that we were in was bizarre!! This place seemed like an ecotone for three different kinds of habitats. We had ponderosa forests mixed with many grassland and wetland species. There were huge cottonwoods (Populus deltoids subsp. monilifera) growing along with ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) with many types of prairie forbs and grasses. The river was so clear you could almost see the bottom! This was a trout fisherman’s paradise. On top of that, we encountered a variety of birds that should not have been living there according to the bird guides I always carried around. There were a number of hummingbirds, wrens, warblers, vireos, chickadees, towhees, sparrows, hawks, thrush, blackbirds, and flycatchers that made this valley their home. I really liked the broad tailed hummingbirds and American redstarts!

Female broad tailed hummingbird that is posing for the camera.

We eventually drove to the site, which was located near a Wildlife Management Area. We got out of the truck and looked at the GPS and the satellite map. We saw that the BLM site was located on the cliff and a high ridge. No wonder no one monitored this site before! Most of it was on a cliff and a steep ridge. <_< We looked for any way up, but each way leading to the ridge was too dangerous to climb. V_V After investigating the area, we gave up the search for a safe route to site. Charlotte told us that we would work with the Forest Service later on to monitor this site. Kay and Charlotte theorized that there could be another way to access this plot from the other side of the ridge but that could take all day! D: After doing another fifteen point turn in a truck that had a nonexistent turning radius, we headed back to the Tongue River for a site evaluation before heading back to the office to work on more maps and data entry.

BLM site located on a cliff.

Misadventures

The Rare Sighting on Mt. Elbert 

During a small break over the weekend, I decided to visit my sister Rachel and her family down in Denver, Colorado. One of the goals for the weekend was to go with my brother-in-law, Eric, to climb Mt.Elbert, one of the taller 14ers in the state of Colorado. The long hike up the mountain was amazing! By the tree line there were all kinds of interesting forbs, many of which I have never seen before.

A forb I have never seen before.

When we got to the top of the mountain I noticed a couple of small finches hopping on the ground. I took a closer look and was totally shocked! They were brown capped rosy finches!! OoO I was beyond thrilled to see these very rare finch species. I told Eric and everyone around me. Then I took a large amount of photos of them just to prove to my friends that I have seen this species. We reached the summit and viewed our surroundings before heading down the trail. Reaching the summit with Eric and finding the brown capped rosy finch really made my day at least 20% cooler. ^_^

(/O_O)/ Behold! The Brown Capped Rosy Finch!

Blue Bank Road

One weekend I decided to follow a rock hounding lead to an area near Worland, Wyoming, which was located on the other side of the Bighorn Mountains. Rumors say that there were many fossils and very unusual geologic formations on this BLM land. I decided to investigate this region to see if the rumors were true. I did some research and found out this area was located on Blue Bank Road and was called the Honeycombs. When driving to the location, I packed a lot of water and some food in case of harsh, sunny conditions.

Blue Bank Road was very gravely and would be considered a back country road. I drove up to the first pull off and I was in awe!! The area looked like the Badlands in South Dakota, but they were far more colorful. Red, pink, white, brown, tan, and black could be seen in all of layers of the rock formation. I investigated each formation at every site and found all sorts of bizarre geologic wonders. There were plenty of agates, very colorful chert, degraded fossils of plants, and different gypsum rocks. The formations were quite impressive. I have a minor in geology and there were some geologic oddities that really puzzled me. There were a variety of birds that populated this area such as the canyon wren, rock wren, western meadowlark, chukar, grasshopper sparrow, western kingbird, mourning dove, lark sparrow, sage thrasher, and ferruginous hawk. Overall, the trip to this area was very successful and I found many awesome rocks!

Blue Bank Road Badlands

Treasures of Blue Bank Road!

GIF of the Week!!

When I go out into the field with Sara and monitor different sites for grass and forb species, I always dreamed of seeing one of the land owners in the distance watching us and nodding his or her head in approval for the work we are doing… just like Jeremiah Johnson in this gif.