Well, I suppose I’m a little late on the blog for July but I got priorities and let’s be real, is anyone reading this? For those of you still feigning interest I will now list off the collections we have done since my last blog: Hesperostipa comata, Elymus elymoides, Artemisia arbuscula, Poa secunda, Atriplex gardneri, 2 Purshia tridentata, Oenothera pallida var. Trichocalyx, Achnatherum hymenoides, Eriogonum ovalifolium, Eriogonum umbellatum, Pseudoroegneria spicata, Psoralidium lanceolatum, Sporobolis airoides and we have started a Geranium richardsonii collection. So, needless to say we have been super-duper busy especially when some species’ seeds need to be counted one-by-one such as our antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) and the lemon scurfpea (Psoralidium lanceolatum). I hope you enjoyed my list. We are up to 18 collections now and are getting close to our goal of 25.

We did find time for one other project helping our fisheries biologist break up some beaver dams on one of the tributaries to the famed Muddy Creek, an area of conservation importance in part due to the concurrence of 4 native fish species endemic to the Colorado river basin: Colorado River cutthroat, bluehead sucker, flannelmouth sucker, and roundtail chub. This area is highly affected by coal bed and natural gas development both of which use large amounts of water which then becomes polluted and must be disposed of. Second to the threat of energy development is the threat of invasive species which prey upon and hybridize with our native species. It was a welcome break from seed collecting to grab a Pulaski and slap on some waders and just raise some hell for the beavers.
In other news: I went to Colorado to visit a friend and do some hiking and camping. The wildflowers were going crazy in the mountains and when we reached our destination we came upon a community of marmots and pikas. The marmots were quite friendly while the pikas were a little shy. On one of our collections I found a giant ram skull with the horns completely in tact. I nabbed that baby up, as you can see, and am thinking of ways to strap it onto my head for a Halloween costume. Ooh yeah, and some great news for the environment, Germany put a 7-year ban on fracking!

That’s all for now folks, running on comp time.

Life up north has been progressing quite wonderfully.  After a week getting friendly with the gold miners on the Fortymile river and a June and July full of record breaking rain (http://www.alaskapublic.org/2014/07/11/fairbanks-rains-approach-record-levels/), August has arrived bringing with it some dryness (hallelujah!) and color.  While the lower 48 is still solidly in summer, leaves are beginning to change up here: aspen leaves turning bright yellow, fireweed red and dwarf birch an alarming shade of highlighter orange.

Fall is coming…

In my last post I mentioned starting on a post-fire community monitoring project in Nome Creek.  This plan was put to action a few weeks ago by myself, Jim (wildlife biologist) and a fellow intern, Emily.  Jim, Emily and I drove to Nome Creek, arriving too late to complete a site that night.  Plus it was raining (ok maybe August hasn’t been THAT dry).  Instead we took a short stroll behind the field station to practice plant ID and test out our rain gear.  Jim had a solid knowledge of different mosses and lichens as he often works with caribou.  This is something I have not had much experience with, so I am looking forward to getting better at moss and lichen ID as this project progresses.  The 30+ bags Jim has of just ‘common’ mosses that look exactly alike is not an encouraging sign, however.

The next morning we navigated to two different sites in the Nome Creek area.  The first was ¼ mile from the road.  This seems close but tussocks, hummocks and sphagnum considered, it took quite a while to navigate to the site using GPS.  Once there we had to locate the part of the area that was actually surveyed by British students back in 2001 with only 2 grainy disposable camera pictures to aid us.  Keep in mind these sites burned in 2004 so we were often looking a rather different scene.  We eventually matched up ridgelines, clumps of dirt and the charred remains of trees and laid down a transect along what we hoped was close to the original transect.  For the first site, Jim walked us through the protocol: recording extensive site information, doing a point intercept transect, collecting soil samples, estimating caribou browse, denoting burn severity, measuring amount of organic matter burned, counting saplings, taking photos and installing site markers so that these sites can be more easily found in the future and used for long term ecological studies.  Our current goal for the data is to investigate levels of spruce regeneration among plots and analyze how this relates to burn severity, pre-fire amounts of organic matter, site soil moisture and amount of organic matter burned.  Jim (and others) have noted that often sites that were previously spruce forest will regenerate after particularly severe fires as deciduous dominant forests (or simply shrublands), see: http://www.firescience.gov/projects/briefs/05-1-2-06_FSBrief10.pdf

All said and done, surveying one site took upwards of four hours.  Quite the procedure.

Emily and I visited more sights after Jim departed, noticing low spruce regeneration on all.  I am excited to collect more data and see where this project goes.  As summer is coming to an end, data collection will have to resume next May.  I’ve just received word that I will be staying in Fairbanks through next May and hopefully into the field season so with any luck I will be able to follow this project along and collect data next summer.

Transect line ready at top of Nome Creek Tabletop Mountain Trail

Some Populus tremuloides regeneration

Odd fungus found at Nome Creek Campground. Any fungus nerds out there that know what this is?

Other exciting August happenings include a second trip to Denali National Park to meet up with some fellow Tar Heels who came up to visit and backpack through the backcountry, and a trip to central Alaska’s beloved bird inspired towns: Chicken and Eagle.

Teklinika River, Denali National Park

Hiking in Denali’s trail-less wilderness backcountry

My supervisor Ruth and I conducted NISIMS surveys (for invasive plants) on the way to and around Chicken and Eagle and attended National Public Lands Day in Eagle.  The weather was perfect for National Public Lands Day—crisp fall air, clear skies, cool temperatures, abundant sunlight—and Eagle is an adorable little town.  Eagle residents, BLM employees and more gathered to celebrate public lands.  A knowledgeable local resident led young-uns and others on a nature walk, the local history expert conducted a tour of the abandoned military fort (Ft. Egbert) established in 1899, children collected pressed and displayed leaves, a Ketchikan artist led a workshop on loop weaving, BLM employees grilled burgers and dogs, root beer floats were served and a good time was had by all.  The whole scene brought me back to autumn in the Midwest with its abundance outdoor activities, festivals, crafts and food.  My favorite season by far.  Around a fire later that evening I learned more about the residents of Eagle—many of them live a subsistence lifestyle meaning they hunt and gather for all their food (save perhaps one Fairbanks Fred Meyer run per year for non-perishables).  As such they are incredibly knowledgeable about flora, fauna, weather, soil, water etc. of the surrounding area and completely in tune with the environment.  It was quite impressive.  The fact that they depend so much on the land also means that the stakes are high.  A failed caribou hunt can mean a hungry family–no grocery store to run to for supplemental food (nearest decent grocery store is in Fairbanks, 6 hours away).  Each family that lives this way knows exactly how many caribou they need to make it through the winter, so changes in the environment that disturb or change the migration patterns of caribou have dire consequences for them.

With only a month and few weeks left in my internship, I am making the most of my time here in Colorado. This past month has been a rainy one, which has made scheduling a bit hard. We got a late start on spraying along the river this year because of the high flows. This put us behind schedule already and the rain has made it hard to get down the river. However we have had five or six good days on floating the river so far, including a two day camp out. Luckily our section of the river is looking pretty good compared to other sections of the river in other BLM districts. We mainly have to worry about Musk, Bull, Canada, and Russian Thistle along the river. We don’t have any Tamarisk in our section, which is something to be thankful for.

Along with river spraying, we have been doing some line transects monitoring for rangeland utilizations and post fire monitoring. It is good to get away from spraying for a bit and get back to more science based work. Next week it looks like we will be meeting up with State Botonist, Carol Dawson, and her CLM interns to do some more rare plant monitoring. It looks like we will be gathering data on Phacelia spp. Working with Carol is a great opportunity to learn my western plants, as well as gain some valuable field research experience.

Work is great, but the weekends here in Colorado are amazing. There is so much to do here and it seems as though wilderness is everywhere you look. Not only that, but the music scene is unmatched (great free concerts). I love it so much that I have decided to stay here over the winter to work at Keystone resort as a ski instructor. If you haven’t been to Colorado, start planning a trip.

Railroad Earth at Red Rocks

Never Summer Wilderness

Eagles Nest Wilderness

Never Summer Wilderness

Over night work float down the Colorado

Devils Causeway Hike (500ft drops on each side. 4ft wide)

It’s been a busy summer and hard to believe it’s mid-August. Life in Buffalo has dramatically changed in my eyes since first moving here in June. Most of the snow melt from the mountains is gone and the rivers are lower. A town I didn’t think had much to offer is filled with outdoor recreation opportunities that makes me think that I could be here awhile.

Myself and the 3 other CLM interns just got offered an extension till end of December. Some of us may stay and some may go. It’s hard to choose but there is just so much to do at work! I’ve participated in seed collections, rangeland health assessments, habitat restoration, the cutting of Juniper trees, fish surveys, parks and recreation field work, weeding, mapping fence, and so much more to come! I particularly am working on the Powder River Basin Restorations program objective of visiting historic wildfire sites and visually estimating the ecosystem health. Thankfully this project is just kicking off so I will have plenty of field work till the beginning of October. Many CLM blogs written in the fall season mention having limited field work and some desk work. Less work=time slowing down and I am not a fan. I like to go, go, go and do, do, do. This project is just what I need. Buffalo is just what I need.

Other than work, our group of CLM interns went to Thermopolis mineral hot springs and white water rafted a section of the wind river canyon. Great experiences! I won a grill from our local grocery store and am looking forward to hooking that up this weekend, along with a color run, horseback riding, and possibly a 8-mile hike in the Big Horn mountains. Trying to be a busy bee in a small town of Wyoming is easily achievable! (***Get at me if you’re having difficulty in your respective small towns!)

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”
― John Muir

As my internship wraps up I want to give gratitude to Central Oregon in terms of its landscape and its people. Both personally and professionally I feel like I have taken as much advantage of Central Oregon as I possibly could. No evening was wasted and no time was spent wondering what was next on my plate. And what is next on my plate can only be described in one word: epic. I’ll be backpacking the 211 mile long John Muir Trail, which will give me some focus on what I should take on next in my life. I’m interested in the intersection of teaching and science, but there are so many places to wrestle with this nexus that the trail will hopefully give me some direction in which to go.

Focusing on the past, I’d like to highlight some parts of this internship that expanded who I am today. Though I’ve had previous botany jobs, there was always a mentor who knew all the species so my keying skills were not as sharp. My mentor Kristin is new to this area so I spent hours under a microscope looking at the fascinating features of taxonomy. Due to its minute flowers and complex Asteraceae terminology, my proudest moment was keying to species a Solidago canadensis. As part of keying to species, I learned how a herbarium is a valuable resource in verifying my ID skills and I feel much more confident in explaining the importance of them.

Enjoying and protecting nature’s beauty was a large part of this internship for me. From Forest Hills Natural Resource Area, to vast sagebrush ‘oceans’, to the paleontological wonders of the John Day region, there is a large amount of stunning landscape at the Prineville Field Office. I am blessed to have been part of the Seeds of Success program and the weeds infestation program in the Forest Hills NRA because this year a large portion of it was burned. Our data on both the biodiversity and the noxious weed populations allowed this fire to receive extra funding for restoration. The restoration of this gorgeous wilderness area would not have been possible without CLM interns on the ground.

Another project I worked on was organizing the monitoring of a rare plant in the mustard family called Thelypodium eucosmum. It lives on steep, rocky slopes and its monitoring program is governed by multiple agencies with different databases. These two challenges pushed me both physically and mentally which resulted in visiting species that had not been seen for decades. Hopefully the more organized paperwork will enable ranchers and land managers to have a better understanding of this species needs.

Overall I’d like to thank my mentor Kristin Williams, my co-worker Tiffany Druba, the CLM/CBG program manager Krissa Skogen, the staff and the guest speakers that put on the week-long conference in Chicago, and Megan Haidet who coordinates the Seeds of Success program in DC. It’s phenomenal how much coordination is put into this program and I am very proud to be part of it.

Best of success,
Debbie Pattison
Prineville, OR Field Office

Thelypodium eucosmum

TeatersForestHillNRA

Lichen it!

“The Island”

Chicago Botanic Garden Bonsai exhibit

Criterion

Herbarium verification

ATV training

Forest Hills Natural Resource Area

1. Be ready to work hard.

An eight hour work day is a privilege. Be prepared for long, hot, rough terrain work days. Water in mass quantities is a must. Wear long sleeves, not because you think you will be cold, but for sun protection. Smell bacon?

2. Danger is your new middle name.

You will be given 4X4 training. Pay attention, you will need it. Uneven, up a rocky cliff terrain is just the beginning of many unexpected things you will encounter in the field.

3. Be Social.

Don’t get along with others? Have a bad attitude? Take life for granted? Hermit Crab is your spirit animal? This internship may not be for you. Take the time to enjoy and learn from your fellow interns if you are lucky enough to have others with you. Talk with the people in your office. They can teach you lots, not only professionally but for things to do locally.

We listen as a soil scientist explains what the soil indicates for this particular section of land.

Buffalo, Wy is the inspiration for the book and TV series Longmire. Once a year they have “Longmire Days” when the stars of the show visit with the locals.

Well here I am entering my last few weeks as a CLM Intern in Washington. Since my last blog, I’m mainly filled up my time with more rare plant monitoring (Silene Spaldingii), lynx habitat assessments and fire area mapping for severity.

Going out into the shrub-steppe at this time of year can be excruciatingly uncomfortable as I’m sure many of you are aware. Luckily, my field partner, Rosemary, and I have often found ourselves in a number of lush oases, trying to cling onto canyon wall corridors between data collection sites. Wildlife has the same brilliant idea and we’ve noticed these canyons are teaming with all sorts of creatures. In a span of only a few days, we were stopped in our tracks by a badger, porcupine, coyote and great horned owl. I’ve now seen firsthand the importance such corridors between natural ecosystems, particularly in an area so devastated by agriculture and human presence.

One of my recent highlights was trekking up to north-east WA, and exploring some cedar and Douglas-fir forests, searching for Lynx habitat. What a relief from the scorching shrub-steppe!

The Wenatchee field office has been in chaos since the start of the fire season, causing most of our original field plans to be turned upside down. However, it’s been very exciting to adapt to the current situation. Last week I helped map over 6,000 acres of BLM land scorched by the Carlton Complex fire. The best and most exciting part was to actually go out to assess the landscape afterwards for potential restoration measures and fire severity records.

It’s amazing how quickly some of the plants can regenerate, even in high severity areas. Here’s a shot of Asclepias spp., in an estimated population size of 10,000 – Yay for Monarchs!

Good wishes and happy adventuring to you all!

Hello fellow interns,

It is time to blog again. However, I don’t have much new news to report. I am still up to my neck in permits with deadlines quickly approaching. First and foremost, I am trying to finish a draft of a CEQA document to begin construction on the giant garter snake restoration project I am working on.

I recently took a leave of absence as I am also employed separately as a wildland firefighter. The handcrew I work on was assigned to small fire in the El Dorado National Forest later named the “Twin” fire. Access to the fire was a grueling trail that ascended 2200 feet in about 2 miles distance. We hiked in to this location and out every day for two days until the fire was completely contained and extinguished. After securing this fire we moved on to the Bald fire east of Redding. This fire ended up consuming nearly 40,000 acres and took several days to complete our portion of the line.

I returned to the Preserve and was immediately tasked with helping to prepare several or our wetland ponds for a methyl mercury study that is scheduled to begin here in less than two weeks. I am splitting my time between backhoe work in the morning and writing the Bjelland CEQA in the afternoons.

Hope everyone has been enjoying their summer internships!

This photo may ignite memories of a bygone-era, of “The Price is Right”, or some kind of rugged sales pitch for “life is great!” on the range. And yes it is, Summer of Fun 2014. Thank you to my photographer and fellow CLM intern, Brittany King, for getting the lighting, angles, and wardrobe just so. Hair and make-up, yeah right!

Couldn’t have used my time on the land this season in a more engaging way. Worked in 11 Eastern Washington counties and countless ecosystems including Ponderosa pine forest, interior Douglas fir forest along the Canadian border, the rolling hills of the Palouse, Juniper Sand Dunes, steep canyon lands, riparian coulees, countless lakes and wetland margins, and the remains of functioning sagebrush steppe. In addition, we had the worst fire season in WA state history which translated to far less road access, more hiking, and some uneasy moments with fire spotting. If that weren’t enough we wrestled with two flat tires, a badger, black bears, rattlesnakes, and getting caught in a lightning storm. I’m exhausted!

All that travel, all the logistics, and no one hurt. No major bumps in the road. Our rare plants were found and we gratefully contributed to efforts to conserve and restore them. If that wasn’t reward enough a last ditch search effort was made to recover a field friend of ours (Olympus Camedia C-5060 5.1 Mexapixel) last seen while hunting a rare pink, the federally listed Silene spaldingii (Spalding’s silene), near Spokane WA. Goes to show you that “not all cameras who wander are lost,” for long…(yes that is an original quote).
Wishing all you big and bright stars many blessings and transformations, the ability to see the path, know yourself, and always keep pushing out your greatness, your brilliance, your gifts in whatever form. Love and light!

Not All Cameras That Wander Are Lost.