Hello from the BLM in Prineville, Oregon! So far, I’ve worked about 3 weeks, and Oregon has been quite a new experience for me. I’m a born and raised Jersey girl, and most familiar with deciduous woodlands of the Northeast; transplanting to the high desert of central OR has been a great change of scenery. Everyone here has been extremely welcoming and friendly.  The view of the Cascade Mountains seems to never get old  (although a little unsettling being so close to “The Ring of Fire”… )

In between all the office training sessions, I have been getting a crash course in sagebrush habitat by going out with a greater sage grouse habitat assessment team.  Every time I get in the field, I become a little more familiar with the brand new plant and wildlife species.

I have also gone to monitor a seemingly inactive bald eagle nest on three occasions, situated on the side of a mountain. The nest was empty the first two visits, but on the third visit, two subadults gave me quite a show. They are approximately 4 years old and appeared to be exploring the area around the old nest as a potential new territory.

Subadult bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

In the near future, my main task will be to conduct wildlife clearances in areas overrun with Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis). These areas need to be thinned out to create healthier sagebrush habitat for species that rely on sagebrush, such as the pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) and greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus).   I’m very excited for the months to come!

Planting trees with wonderful volunteers from the Oregon Hunters Association

Friday marked the completion of my first full week as an intern with the BLM in Twin Falls, Idaho. Although the city of Twin Falls only has a population of roughly 46,000 it is bustling with activity and, in my opinion, has the atmosphere of a larger city. As soon as you get a mile or two out of the city limits the landscape is mainly made up of farm fields, cattle, and horses. The BLM’s Jarbidge Field Office, which includes the expanse of land that we will be conducting our field work on over the course of the internship, is desert dominated by Artemisia tridentata (Basin Big Sagebrush) with an under story of mixed grasses and forbs.

My view of the Jarbidge Mountains in Nevada while working out in the field.

The very first day on the job, my fellow interns and I were shown how to use the handheld GPS systems and spent time outside getting familiar with the types of plants that we will be working with. The next few days involved learning how to set up transects for the upland trend sites and how to calculate nested frequency.

The other main project that we will be working on will be monitoring Lepidium papilliferum (Slickspot Peppergrass), which is a rare forb that only occurs in a type of microhabitat called a slickspot. A slickspot is a small area containing silty clay soil that is flat, dry and cracked. On Thursday, we went to a spot that contains Lepidium papilliferum and were able to take pictures.

Mature Lepidium papilliferum

Lepidium papilliferum florets

Overall, I am amazed with how much I have learned already in the first week of my internship with the BLM and I am extremely excited to see what the next five months have in store for me here in Twin Falls, Idaho.

Hello from Rawlins, WY! I’m just finishing up my second week working at the BLM under the Seeds of Success Program. The main goal of our particular project is to gather seeds from species that will benefit the Greater Sage Grouse and pollinators. For the most part, it’s still a little too early for things to be blooming, but we’ve managed to collect voucher specimens for Lomatium foeniculaceum (desert biscuitroot), Phlox hoodii (spiny phlox), and Erysimum capitatum (wallflower). I’m sure a few of you guys are familiar with these plants.

I’ve only made it out into the field a couple times, but I absolutely can’t wait to head out again. The Rawlins Field Office is extremely vast, and covers a wide range of landscapes and environments. My favorite place I’ve been so far is the Ferris Mountains. I wish I had pictures so I could show everyone how spectacular this little mountain range is, but I have a feeling those hypothetical photos still wouldn’t do the place justice. Plus, it’s where I saw my first rattlesnake!

Speaking of rattlesnakes, the wildlife here is as astounding as it is prevalent. I can’t go five minutes without spotting mule deer or pronghorn, and I honestly can’t see myself getting sick of seeing these cool animals any time soon. Some other exciting critters I’ve seen include burrowing owls, a mountain plover, a badger, a moose, and a horned lizard, just to name a few.

While the animals are pretty awesome, I have to admit that the plants have me even more excited. I’m a total plant geek, and having been dropped into an entirely new ecoregion with which I’m completely unfamiliar is absolutely thrilling. I’ve learned a solid 20-30 plants so far, and I look forward to learning as many as I possibly can in the months ahead!

Hello,
This is Tobin working with the Groveland Forest Service Office in the Stanislaus National Forest. My first two weeks with the Forest Service have included scouting rare and sensitive native plants and removing invasive species. Rare plants scouted for have included upland meadow dwellers Mimulus pulchellus, Mimulus filicaulis, Clarkia australis, and Clarkia biloba ssp. australis, woodland species Cyperpidium montanum and the aquatic lichen Peltigera gowardii. Invasive species removed included yellow starthistle, tocalote, diffuse knapweed, spotted knapweed, mullein and French broom.

With continued severe drought in California, many sites that are typically inundated with water and habitat for wetland species of interest have been very dry, hosting only the senescent remains of last years bloom. Much of the work of the Groveland Ranger District’s botany crew will be on the site of the 2013 Yosemite Rim Fire. The effects of the fire are dramatic and immediately visible across the landscape, with many areas being standing dead charred trees and salvage logging operations.

It will be interesting to see the combined effects of drought and fire in the Sierra Nevada this spring and summer. I’m also looking forward to exploring the abundant rock climbing on the granite of nearby Yosemite, Tuolumne Meadows, Sonora Pass and throughout the Sierra on the weekends!

Looking towards the Rim Fire

Mimulus pulchellus

Bouldering near the town of Columbia

This past month, we finally got to the point where the majority of our time was spent in the field!!!

The first week of April, however, was a week full of trainings. Days one and two were spent at ArcPad training and day three was GeoBOB Mobile training. As someone who has spent countless hours entering GeoBOB data and trying to decipher handwriting, I am excited to be able to put this new technology to use so, hopefully, all data can be input in the field which would save so much time!

After our GPS trainings, we took a defensive driving course and, finally, on day five, we got to practice driving off road! We didn’t do much plant monitoring, but it was so nice to be outside after a week in the office!!!

The next week was a little more exciting! First off, we got to organize and put away our herbarium which had been returned after being scanned for a digital herbarium database.  Ok, I guess that wasn’t super thrilling, but it was nice to finally be able to look at our local herbarium sheets to visualize the species we would be seeing in the field.

Later in the week, we finally got to go back in the field!!! Our first task was to monitor a sage grouse lek and, since we had to make it there before sunrise, our day started bright and early at 3:45 AM. Sadly, we did not see any of the little guys lekking, but it was to be expected as it was the end of the lekking season. Don’t worry though, that wasn’t the end of our adventure that day! Next on the agenda was a spotted frog survey! This involved walking two miles of stream bank and capturing GPS coordinates of any egg masses or frogs that we came across.

A beautiful, slightly frozen, egg mass!!!

The day started out with few egg mass spottings but, as we made it further down the stream, we started coming across hot spots teeming with frogs and covered in egg masses!

What a beautiful day!

Friday was driving test and tire changing day!  Bill Lutjens taught us how to change the tire on our rig and then each of us had to change a tire by ourselves.  I learned that I am a weakling and F350 tires are super duper heavy, but I am so glad I have experience changing the tire now, so if we were to get a flat in the field I would be way more confident!

Lauren removed that tire like a pro!

Tire changing was followed by our driving test, which involved driving around on some steep sandy hills outside of town.   Bill uses this course because it looks really scary, but is actually quite safe.  After our driving adventures, Bill gave us the thumbs up and we are officially signed off on driving now!!!

This past week we were finally allowed out on our own, which worked out well since our mentor was out sick most of the week.  We were pretty much given free reign over what we wanted to do for the week, so we would choose a different spot with some sensitive species we could monitor each day and practice driving and navigating to the areas and surveying the sites.

We even found a site of flowering Lewisia sp.

Last week gave me a taste of what the rest of the summer will be like and I am super pumped and look forward to the months to come!

I was fortunate enough to attend the National Native Seed Conference in Santa Fe this month, which focused on the benefits and challenges of using native plant materials in restoration. As I always do after a conference, I feel invigorated by all the new information I learned and excited to figure out how to incorporate some of the great ideas into ongoing or upcoming projects. The conference highlighted the importance of approaching restoration projects with the goal of maximizing the use of native, locally adapted plants and avoiding exotic species that may negatively alter the community composition of the site.

Maintaining or increasing local and native biodiversity should be a key goal in restoration as ecosystem functionality, resilience, and adaptability are all heavily influenced by the plant community and its interactions. Utilizing local species increases your chances of long term planting success as these populations are adapted to the local environment, show a greater fitness over time, and promote healthy ecological relationships. The Plant Conservation Alliance (PCA), chaired by the BLM, has proposed a National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration that specifically addresses the need for using native and local planting materials in all restoration projects and aims to identify the seed and research needs to implement this directive as well as develop the tools that land managers would need to achieve native restorations effectively. This strategy is a great step forward for strong science based restoration that takes into account genetics and adaptation, climate change, ecology, and phenology. The need for a strategy like this cannot be understated as our world faces massive climate changes at a rate and scale that is unprecedented, and I was pleased to be able to participate in a planning workshop regarding it at the conference.

My second month here at the CO state office is coming to a close. Field season has officially started. Last week we went out near Rifle CO to monitor several plots of Astragalus debequaeus, Bebeque milkvetch. This plant is a rare endemic of Colorado, and is found on fine textured, seleniferous, saline soils of barren outcrops of dark clay intermixed with sandstone. A. debequaeus inhabits areas dominated by pinyon-Juniper woodlands, but is found in areas generally devoid of vegetation. I’m going to go into a lengthy description of our monitoring.

Last Monday we monitored one macroplot known as North Webster Mesa, one seedling plot, and five circular plots for presence and life stage. There are two more macroplots closer to Grand Junction that we hope to monitor later this week, weather allowing. The N. Webster Mesa plot was established in 2010 with a total of 613 plants recorded in 12 transects. This year we recorded 55 plants in those transects, none of which were reproductive. In 2014, 19 tags were placed within this plot by groups of seedlings or individual juveniles. This year only 2 tags had living plants and only one with the remnant of a plant. We set out to detect a 10% difference in mean population density between years with 90% certainty, while accepting a 10% chance of making a false-change error. So, this is a significant decrease. We have a few ideas as to why we are seeing this decrease. We think the last few years of drought have played a large roll in this decline. A. debequaeus at this site does inhabit a fairly unstable, highly erodible, steep slope devoid of much vegetation where several cm deep cracks in the soil are common. So, we have also hypothesized that seeds might be unable to establish in these cracks where they fall deeper than the first few cm from the soil surface. We’ve also considered the impact we might be having on the plot while monitoring. Given the erodible nature of the soil, it’s possible our walking through the plot may effect plant growth. This site is only visited once a year, is in a low to no traffic area, and researchers are always mindful of where they step while monitoring.  But it is a possibility that human traffic is contributing to the observed decline. It has been suggested that next year we GPS a few individuals outside but near this plot where we do not walk to observe, in order to compare life history data. Overall, individuals at this site are fewer and less robust than those at the other two macroplots that we’ll measure later this week. My boss believes that the microclimate at the other sites is more favorable due to slightly higher vegetation cover, which may hold moisture better.

Photograph: Peter Gordon. A. debequaeus in flower and fruit. Picture taken near Atwell Gulch, CO.

I did not take any pictures of the species, so this one is from a former intern at one of the other macroplot locations closer to Grand Junction.

The seedling plot was originally established in 2003 to shed light on seedling and juvenile mortality and life history. This site is also a dry-land canyon with steep slopes. This year had the fewest individuals recorded, although there has been variation in the past.

Total Numbers of Astragalus debequaeus in the Seedling Plot from 2003-2015

I don’t know how to make this bigger, sorry.

The circular plots are a few meters from the seedling plot and a few meters from one another. Given the terrain of this site, circular plots were more plausible than one large macroplot. Established in 2004, plant number and age class are recorded within these plots. Plant numbers have varied fairly significantly in each plot over the course of this study. We have also compared total plant number to average annual precipitation using a linear regression. There does not seem to be a strong correlation, but precipitation data is from the Rifle CO weather data location. Location-specific precipitation data would allow for a more accurate analysis, and we are considering purchasing soil moisture readers for instillation at these, or other, sites.

Another exciting part of this past month was the National Native Seed Conference I was able to attend in Santa Fe, NM. This was my alternative training opportunity since I attended the CLM training in Chicago last year. There were so many great talks at this conference, and too many to attend. I want to highlight one of my favorite presentations; one that I’m sure was a favorite of many people.  Spatial climate trends in western vegetation: Implications for restoration by Healy Hamilton discussed the current work by Dr. Hamilton and several others at NatureServe. They have been analyzing climate trends of the past decades in order to predict geographic and seasonal shifts of ecosystems across the west, identify seed sources of plants already adapted to climatic changes, identify populations already greatly affected by climate change, identify populations that are stable and may act as refugia, and identify where certain ecosystems are likely to be lost, remain stable, or expand. On top of all of this, they are also putting together a user-friendly webpage where this information can be accessed. Not only is this very interesting, critical, and highly useful research, the actual presentation was conducted really well. I’m looking forward to the completion of their work and the launch of the webpage.

There were several people from various other countries in attendance too. Dr. Stuart W. Smith gave an interesting presentation on his work restoring peatlands in the Falkland Islands, Laura Victoria Perez-Martinez talked about the work of she and her colleagues at the Bogota Botanical Gardens in Bogota, Colombia where they have created the county’s first native seed bank for the conservation of the tropical high mountain ecosystem, and Kay Evelina Lewis-Jones, an ethnobotanist from the University of Kent, UK, held an open forum  to discuss the future of native seeds as we, the attendees, saw it. These are the only four talks which I attended, but there were many more I was unable to attend (since I can’t be in two places at once) that looked just as interesting and I’m sure were just as educational. Overall, the conference was a great experience where I learned a lot more about the various kinds of work and research going on in the native seed world, and I was able to meet several prominent people in the native seed world.

Month 2 has been fun and educational. I’m looking forward to the month ahead.

Colleen Sullivan

Finally, the weather is beginning to stay warm in Carson City, Nevada. While we are still not making it out into the field more than a couple of times a week due to lots of unanticipated office work (which has composed a little less than half of our time here thus far), the few days we have spent collecting plant specimens and surveying for endangered populations have been both productive and blissful. The bulk of our work has been focused on locating and identifying populations of native plants which would make ideal seed collection sites in the following months to come. Needless to say, this has allowed of us to improve our plant identification, voucher specimen preparation, GPS, and GIS skill sets dramatically!

Additionally, our field work has been supplemented with a couple of public outreach events due to the occurrence of Earth Day. On Thursday of last week we spent the day in Truckee at the TREE program. Throughout the duration of this event we help educate and cultivate interest in hundreds of 4th graders about the importance of invasive weed management and native plant conservation through a series of interactive nature walks and educational games. The Sunday after which we all woke up early and worked a 12 and half hour day at Reno’s Earth Day festival. This was a tiring but rewarding experiences as we had an extremely extended opportunity to interact with droves of people and hear their feedback about the importance of our work as BLM botany interns!!!
Until next month,
J

p.s. It rained twice this month!

Hello! I’ve been in my internship for a full month now, working on a couple different plant monitoring projects for the US Geological Survey. Arriving in Henderson, NV was a bit of a whirlwind, as we jumped right into the field only two days after arriving.

There are three main projects I’ll be working on this summer, two of which I’ve already begun work with.

The first is a common garden project, where seedlings from 6 different climate zones within the Mojave desert are planted in 3 (for now) locations. After this summer’s data is collected, hopefully we’ll be able to tell if haplotypes from different regions are able to survive in other regions, or if they’re sensitive enough to slight shifts in temperature/rainfall that they can’t survive in other regions. This is super important information to know for any restoration efforts, to make sure seeds planted have a chance at survival.

Above is our Utah garden, in the coolest/wettest climate zone. After we did our measurements (canopy dimensions, stem diameters, and pre-dawn water potentials), we zipped down to the second garden near Joshua Tree National Park.

Things were a little further along at Joshua Tree, which is a comparatively warmer site. While creosote is one of the species we have planted in the gardens currently, none were quite flowering yet–the picture above is from a bush just outside our fence.

Our third site is actually located on the Fort Irwin Military Training site. However, on our way there our first trip…

…the car broke down. So we couldn’t make it to the base in time for the mandatory range safety course, and the trip had to be cut a little short.

However! It did mean I got back in time to volunteer on a short trip to near the north rim of the Grand Canyon, to help count and measure pediocacti.

The cacti we were looking at are super interesting–they suck down underground for the winter, and push back up through the dirt in the spring to flower. They mechanism and triggers for this have not been extensively studied as far as I’m aware, but you could really see the way they shoved rocks and things out of their way in order to flower.

They’re also super adorable!

That covers almost all of my first week and weekend in the Mojave and nearby areas. It is definitely a different landscape than what I’m used to, being from the midwest, and a very interesting one to explore.

Jessica Mikenas

Henderson, NV

Hello.  I am back working at the San Juan Islands National Monument for my second year.  Last year I spent most of my time doing botanical surveys following the AIM strategy (Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring).  This year I am very happy to be handling our Seeds of Success program.

Cerastium arvense at Kellet Bluff, San Juan Islands National Monument

Seeds of Success is almost completely new to the San Juan Islands.  Before last summer neither I nor the full time employees of our office had a clear understanding of the program.  That changed when I attended the Chicago Botanic Garden’s CLM intern workshop.  Hearing from Peggy Olwell and Meagan Haidet, I was inspired by what I learned about SOS and was more than keen to get a collection team started for our islands.  Luckily, my mentor shared my interest once I told her more about the program and she was able to get funding to start collecting.  (this was supposed to be a heartwarming ‘we interns can make a difference’ story but apparently I am not pulling it off).

Anyway, I started working for San Juan SOS two weeks ago and have been intensely busy since.  Week one was spent at the National Native Seed Conference in Santa Fe, where I met a number of incredible people, learned a hundred things about seed, and spent days generally not knowing what I was talking about.  Week two I have been meeting with partners, making lists, visiting sites, and teaching school children about monitoring.  All while still knowing minimally what I’m talking about.

The most rewarding part of the past week was talking to a group of 5th graders from our local school.  I am by no means a  skilled educator or kid wrangler, but it is amazing to see and help children think critically about the natural world around them.