I am writing from Carson City, Nevada, where I am participating in a soil and plant ecology workshop.  The workshop has focused on interpreting the geomorphology of an area, understanding how that geomorphology affects its soil composition, and how its soil composition determines what type of ecological communities it can support.  The course has been taught by both academic and resource management professionals, who have done a great job of explaining how this information is used to make critical management decisions.  I am grateful for the new perspective, and am excited to dig some more holes!

In the spirit of my previous blog post, I would like to tell you about another one of my favorite days this summer.

I woke up early on Wednesday, July 2^nd, stepped outside the trailer, and celebrated under the stars.  The Milky Way formed a rainbow over my head, and I stumbled around in an awestruck, sleepy stupor staring up at it.  I woke up later that morning to an alarm, the sounds of the rest of the monitoring crew getting out of bed, and the trumpeting of Sandhill Cranes.  I drank black tea and watched the purple sky turn pink and blue.

A coyote – the first I had ever seen in the sunlight – lunged in front of our trucks as we drove lupine-lined two-tracks to our last two HAF sites of the season.  HAF stands for Habitat Assessment Framework, and outlines a methodology for assessing the suitability of Sage-Grouse habitat.  We have put a lot of effort into reading these sites, and so it was bittersweet to complete the project.

We were rewarded for our commitment to the project.  While conducting wetland inventories later that day, we flushed out about 20 Sage-Grouse.  These were the first Sage-Grouse I had ever seen.  We saw almost 100 more Sage-Grouse the following week while conducting more wetland inventories.  It was very special to see such large numbers of the birds we had been working so hard to conserve.

I could not be more grateful to work in the remote and wild Jarbidge Field Office, and I look forward to continuing to conserve it.

Jonathan Kleinman

Jarbidge Field Office

Bureau of Land Management

I may sound bitter in this post, but something has really been bugging me lately.  What’s bugging me, you ask? The whole collection of bitterbrush seed I’ve harvested is infested with bugs!  Or maybe I should be upset that my bug collection is infested with bitterbrush seed, it’s hard to tell.  I spent several days this week, along with fellow CLM intern, Natalie, harvesting bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata) seed at different locations of the BLM Eagle Lake Field Office.  We have been monitoring these populations for over a month, waiting for the seeds to mature from a soft red seed into a dry black seed.  With the wait finally over, we went to work harvesting the seed.  Harvesting bitterbrush seed has been different than any of the other Seeds of Success collections we have done.  Instead of harvesting the seed by hand, it is more efficient to collect bitterbrush seed by placing a hopper (handmade by my mentor, Valda) under the bush, and smack the bush with a stick.  The seed then falls into the hopper along with some other plant matter, and to our dismay, thousands of large, black bugs.

Collecting bitterbrush seed

Most of the bugs that fell into the hopper were Say’s stink bugs (Chlorochroa sayi), although there were several different species of stink bugs being accidentally collected.  These bugs are pests, and feed on the bitterbrush seed by using their sucking mouth parts to extract the nutrients out of the seed.  The bugs were hard to notice when they were on the bitterbrush plants, but several fell into the hoppers every time we smacked the bushes.  Although the bugs could fly, most did not attempt to fly from the hoppers. There were so many bugs in the hoppers that it looked like the whole contents was moving.

Say’s stink bug

Knowing that we could not send the seed collection in to be cleaned in this state, we needed a way to get the bugs out of the seed.  We shoveled the seed into several paper shopping bags, and allowed them to sit overnight outside the BLM office building.  We returned in the morning to find bugs crawling all over the bags, the walls, and the sidewalk, as well as some disgusted coworkers.  We decided to move the bags to “The Yard”, the area where BLM keeps many of its vehicles and heavy machinery.  We left the bags there over the weekend, and returned on Monday to find most of the bugs gone.

Today we boxed up the seed (insect traps included, of course) and shipped it to the cleaning facility.  Hopefully enough of the seed is still healthy despite the infestation, and the Eagle Lake Field Office will get some bitterbrush seed back to use in fire rehabilitation.

Remember, fellow CLM interns: Just Say No to Bugs.

Sam

BLM

Eagle Lake Field Office

I spent the majority of time this past month searching for two species Erigeron decumbens and Horkelia congesta, an endangered  species and a species of concern both endemic to the Willamette Valley.  Unfortunately, Erigeron decumbens vegetative form blends in with other common grasses and forbs, making it very difficult to differentiate.  But when it is flowering, the striking yellow and purple colors are hard to miss!  While this work was very monotonous, I enjoyed the little things, finding various prairie critters, and listening to birds, good tunes, and NPR.   I now have a stronger back, an acute eye for particular textures and shades of green, and a holistic perspective on the crisis in Iraq.

  Erigeron decumbens – Willamette daisy

It has been fascinating observing how the prairie habitat has progressed with the season.  Flowering plants that flooded the fields with vibrant yellows, purples, reds, and blues in May and June are now merely dried up skeletons of carbon, which we now identify as thatch for purposes of habitat surveys.  The lowland prairies, submerged in water just two months ago, are clinging on to the last drops as even the sedges and rushes are beginning to dry out.  The upland, no question about it, wants to explode into a violent torrent of heat and flames and relieve itself of the heavy burden of matted dead grass, although most songbirds and small mammals probably love it.  New flowers are starting bloom, and new pollinators are starting to pollinate.  Grindelia integrifolia, known for its sticky leaves, are beginning to pop out of their spiky buds, and honey and bumble bees are ready to indulge on the sweet sugars they produce.  Ha! Nature happens!  Keep it real!

Eryngium petiolatum – coyote thistle 

Grindelia integrifolia-  Willamette valley gumweed

Our pool of office seasonals has increased from two to five! Hector and I have been joined by two weed technicians, Lisa and Jabus, and a range technician, Daniel. Lisa and Jabus are also under my boss’s supervision so we spend quite a bit of time together. Although we don’t see Daniel as much, we’ve managed to coerce all three of them to help us collect seeds at one time or another.

My mentor had gone to Montana for two weeks of training, so work was a bit different. She left us with a nice list of projects to accomplish in her absence.  Hector and I spent a lot of time collecting seeds. The four of us (Hector, Lisa, Jabus, and myself) teamed up to scout Buck Canyon for Penstemon grahamii (Graham’s beardtongue) and Penstemon scarious var. albifluvis (White River beardtongue). I was grateful for the time I spent earlier this summer hunting for penstemon as I felt more confident independently identifying the white, shaley slope habitat the species prefers. It continues to boggle my mind, though, how important habitat is to species identification here in the Uinta Basin. I’ve never taken such slight habitat differences (e.g. shale color) into account before, only having previously been concerned with different biomes.

I found a whole hillside of fat cacti one day while scouting!

Our view as we scouted for Penstemon.

I’m not usually a negative person, but I have collected what I deem to officially be the worst plant to collect seeds from:  Hedysarum boreale (Utah sweetvetch). When we first scouted the population, we found a nice patch of beautiful, healthy plants with lots of purple flowers. When we returned to collect seeds, though, the nightmare began. Not only had something predated upon a lot of the big, healthy plants we had hoped to collect from, but the seed pods were covered in small, sharp spikes that wreaked havoc on fingers if you tried to pry the pod open to determine if the seed present was healthy.

Spiny seed pods of Hedysarum boreale.

This less than fun seed collection has been nicely counterbalanced, though, with what has probably been the easiest and fastest collection Hector and I have done so far. The two of us were checking out previously vouchered plant populations on Diamond Mountain when we discovered that our patch of Machaeranthera grindelioides (rayless tansyaster) was ripe for the picking! It was late in the afternoon and rather hot, but we decided to get as far as we could on collecting it that day and come back tomorrow if necessary. It took us 30 minutes to collect 10,000+ seeds. As it’s an aster, plucking M. grindelioides was akin to collecting dandelion puffs and each inflorescence yielded at least 20 seeds. It was great!

Our view from Diamond Mountain, looking toward Split Mountain and the Green River.

One of our last work days in June was spent completing ATV training. I was rather skeptical of the training at first as we were required to complete a 2-hour online course on ATV’s as well as read two packets of information and regulations which, to be honest, were rather dry. Actual ATV training, though, was fantastic! Although we were required to be dressed in pants, long sleeves, and helmets, the BLM shares an RV with other local government agencies and, as the Vernal Field Office had signed it out for the day, we were able to duck inside of its air conditioned confines during any textbook parts of training. The hands-on component was by far the most fun, though.  In high school, I worked for an agricultural crop consultant and it was my job to ride an ATV around farmers’ fields, documenting weeds and taking population counts. I loved riding an ATV, but most fields were pretty flat and boring. For our training, though, we had a course set up for us that included weaving, swerving, U-turns on a slope, and side slope traversing. The last session was a ride along with the instructor who took us over terrain we hadn’t been practicing on so it was a nice test of the skills we had just learned.

ATV training!

Hector, myself, Lisa, and Jabus in front of the RV.

The final blog-worthy experience I’ve had this past month was rafting down the Green River. I’ve been down the White River two times now and have camped both times, but one day on the Green River was definitely superior. The White River is rather murky and isolated while the Green is nearly crystal clear and much more popular. The “B section” of the Green River also boasts a bona-fide set of rapids so our botanical team was accompanied this time by two Forest Service river rangers and our office’s two Recreation guys who safely rafted us through the rocky rapids. Hector and I scouted for potential SOS collections while Lisa and Jabus surveyed the weedy spots.

Stay cool, fellow interns.

-Dani

Vernal BLM

We made friends with some wild horses.

Lovely cattle sitting on our road on top of Blue Mountain.

“None of Nature’s landscapes are ugly so long as they are wild.”

-John Muir

Hey there! I’m a bit late posting this. And by late I mean like 3 or 4 weeks, so my bad CLM internship. Guess you know who’s busy working! So much has been going on lately. Fire monitoring, a lot of seed collecting, and educating high school kids, which is what I’m going to talk about, but I warn you, this blog will not be as long as my previous blogs.

So late June and early July, we were working with “Dean’s future scholars,” or, the DFS students. They had been working with the Carson City botany team, as well as other BLM specialists. We took them on a variety of trips with us, each day showing them different aspects of our job. We took them seed collecting in Smith Valley and Sand Mountain. Sand Mountain is a beautiful sand dune system about a half hour east of Fallon, NV. Not only are the sand dunes such a unique ecosystem, but the Stillwater range nearby is quite beautiful. It was great to take them there. We also did fire monitoring in Washoe Valley, and got to introduce them to a variety of techniques to assess the impact of fire on vegetation and soil. We also did a utilization exercise with them that none of us, not even our supervisor, had ever attempted prior to this summer. We basically took grass clippings,dried them, got the biomass, and used a variety of formulas to investigate the utilization value. It is difficult to explain in a blog, so I won’t get into it, but we put a lot of work into it, and it ended up a success! This data is actually going to be used by the BLM because the particular grass species we worked with didn’t have a utilization value, so it was great to do that activity and have the students be a part of that. Ultimately It was a cool experience working with the DFS students, and we hope they enjoyed it as much as we did.

Hello!

Finally after weeks of running GUD feeding trials for kangaroo rats I got to get up close and personal with these little guys! Another group of researchers is conducting genetic studies on kangaroo rats and the endangered giant kangaroo rat and they invited us out to lend a hand trapping and of course to hold any that they catch!

They look a lot like a hamster, have the tail of a rat, and hop like a kangaroo (hence the name!) After catching the kangaroo rat they were weighed, tagged and hair samples were taken for DNA analysis.

We didn’t have much luck trapping. We only caught one kangaroo rat (the one being held in the pictures) but that was still quite exciting!

A few years ago, I started keeping a bucket list. Being a predictable person, about half of it is just places I want to go hiking. The rest of the list ranges from the mundane (cook Thanksgiving dinner – check) to the cartoonish (throw something into a volcano – not yet accomplished), and it keeps growing about as quickly as I can tick things off. I bring this up because when I came out to Palm Springs, I made a desert bucket list composed of all the things I want to do before I leave, and I am sad to say I have less than a month left to work on it.

But stars must have aligned, because recently I’ve been able to make good progress on my desert list. This weekend I felt my first earthquake (check), which still counts even if I initially thought it was just a particularly heavy truck driving past my apartment. And then the week before, I was lucky enough to get to help our office’s interpretive specialist with some family outings, where I caught a scorpion (check) and saw my first ever wild sidewinder (check). Somehow, the kids were even more excited to find the rattlesnake than I was, and I had to step in and keep them from poking at the poor potentially lethal critter. It was an amazing time, and seeing kids excited to learn about nature never fails to make me smile. Hopefully I managed to get at least one kid interested in botany by showing off how desert willow fruit bursts open and releases a puff of winged seeds into the wind, but my bit on how to identify the features of an animal skull was predictably more of a crowd pleaser.

At work, we got to go out and see the Salt Creek (check), the waterway that connects my oasis to the infamous Salton Sea. I spent a fair while poking at the thick layer of salt covering parts of the creek: as water evaporates, the salt precipitates out to form a surprisingly thick crust – much like a horribly unpleasant crème brulee. But despite that obvious hardship, the water itself is teeming with life: pond skaters, tadpoles, swarms of brilliantly colored damselflies laying their eggs in the water, tiny fish that dart out from cover just long enough to grab an insect. It is absolutely amazing to see that this tiny trickle of salt-saturated water, surrounded by so much empty space, can support so much life. Reading that desert life is dependent on rare water sources is one thing, but it’s entirely another to go to an actual oasis and see first-hand just how stark the contrast is. That’s one experience I am very thankful to be able to tick off my list.

I’ll be taking care of a few more bucket list tasks in the coming weeks (Joshua Tree, here I come), but my work time has been occupied with the usual end-of-field-season duties. I have herbarium samples to prepare and mail, a heap of data to enter and start to analyze, maps to make or update, and a next adventure to arrange. It was great to meet so many of you at the workshop, and I hope you all enjoy your internships as much as I have.

Joe

Hello again!
In case you were wondering, our SOS team here in Lakeview, Oregon has had much more success since my previous post. So far we have about twelve seed collections either completed or in progress and we haven’t had any more cows eating our plant populations. The first part of my internship has been focused on collecting forbs, but now we finally get to start collecting grasses! This past Thursday we made a collection of Achnatherum thurburianum (Thurber’s needlegrass) and next week we plan on collecting Festuca idahoensis (Idaho Fescue). No need to crawl from plant to plant when you can walk by and easily grab a spikelet; it’s the seed collector’s version of a cakewalk.

As for the weekends, I have traveled quite a bit! I got to check Crater Lake National Park off the bucket list along with going to the redwood forest in Crescent City, California and bopping around towns like Cave Junction and Bend, Oregon. I’m so thankful that I work in a place where I’m only a few hours from such great stuff! I’m getting much better at camping and I am continually amazed at how gorgeous this part of the country really is. That’s all I have to say for now and I’ll let you all know how I handle temperatures as they finally approach 100 degrees.

I have recently returned from an excellent training experience in Billings, Montana. The class is titled Measuring and Monitoring Plant Populations and Vegetation.

I attended the class as an alternative to the CLM workshop at the Chicago Botanic Garden. It was during the 2013 CBG workshop, that I first met John Willoughby, one of the primary instructors for the course. In Chicago we had a brief 1-day introduction to the material; In Billings the material was greatly expanded. The class in Montana met every day (including the weekend) for an entire week. In attendance were botanists, wildlife biologists, and rangeland management specialists, from the BLM and NPS, across the Intermountain West.

In addition to lectures there were ample opportunities to work in groups with fellow classmates, both in the classroom as well as in the field. Some aspects of the curriculum included:
• Management objectives and monitoring objectives, differentiating between both, and important aspects of each.
• Vegetation measurements: a range including frequency, cover, and density.
• Data recording and management methods.
• Statistical analysis techniques and which are most appropriate for various types of data.

The technical reference used for the course contains a lot of complex and detailed information, yet is easily approachable. It is available at the following link: http://www.blm.gov/nstc/library/pdf/MeasAndMon.pdf

Technical reference used during course

Back on the job, I have already been able to apply some of what I learned, conducting rangeland trend assessments, and designing a protocol for invasive species monitoring.

Vegetation monitoring transect for rangeland trend study

The class is offered most years. I recommend it to all who enjoyed the introductory experience at the CLM workshop and want to learn more, or for anyone else with a need to design or implement vegetation monitoring programs.

Marcus Lorusso

BLM Ridgecrest Field Office