Eriogonum ovalifolium var. vineum

Pholisma arenarium

Mojave paintbrush

We’ve been doing surveys for carbonate endemics and other sensitive species at two mining claims, out towards the desert side of the forest.  There’s a lot blooming right now, including the adorable borage above (Pholisma arenarium) and the federally endangered Cushenbury buckwheat (Eriogonum ovalifolium var. vineum).  I headed down to the chapparal for a backpacking trip over the weekend, for a taste of another part of the San Bernardino Mountains flora.   

We finished surveys on the north side of the forest, as part of a project to close some unauthorized off-road vehicle routes, while designating others.  Mojave paintbrush (Castilleja plagiotoma, pictured), a hemi-parasite on buckwheat and sagebrush, was one of our target species.  We’ll be conducting surveys in the southeast part of the project area in May; since this area is at a higher elevation, the phenology is farther behind, and we’ll be focusing on a different suite of species of species. 

In mid-April, we attended a Forest Service sponsored Poaceae workshop at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.  It was a great introduction to CA grass genera, grass morphology, and more difficult and subtle key steps and characters.

Mountaintop RD, US Forest Service

Big Bear Lake, CA

The maples were almost in bloom when I left the city of Buffalo to begin work as a botany intern in the Vale district of Oregon. Soon their fruits will mix with the urban sounds in the air and perhaps land gently on the waters of Lake Erie. I’ve lived in Ontario, Oregon for a month, yet, the torrents of Niagara River escaping the glassy waters of Lake Erie persistently occupy my consciousness. Personal relationships formed and disappeared within that industrial environment and memories of those now guide me through a new land void of my personal narrative.

My main interest concerns the ecological relationships within a social and natural system that constantly places us within a complex narrative full of diverse elements. However, despite my best efforts, my descriptive abilities fail as I try to explain the layers of relationships occurring within the public lands and sagebrush steppe. A long history of use sits heavily on these lands and it appears on the landscape as some indecipherable script.  As I try to write something of this hidden language for the entry, I come in contact with a photograph of two men near Steens Mountain. Both men wearing denim jeans and layers of cotton flannel stare into the camera with a dejected aspect to their faces. Behind them a vast steppe stretches to the foot of the mountain and a startling gray looms in the sky.  A shovel sticks out from the ground and one of the men holds a cheat grass bouquet. I mention this photograph because it captures a moment in the ecological transformation of the sagebrush steppe. A change sparked by the grazing of cattle and continues to this day. Perhaps after staying out here and listening to more stories about the land I will be better equipped to explain these relationships, but this is all I have for now.  

After working as a botanist and environmental educator in Oregon for more than 7 years, my present stint at the BLM Ridgecrest Field Office feels a bit like a sabbatical. What a learning experience and adventure it is proving to be; less than 2 months into my internship here, I have already experienced a tremendous variety of work projects and outings, here in the Western Mojave.

Wildflower display in Nine Mile Canyon, Sacatar Trail Wilderness

Taking advantage of recent spring rains in the Western Mojave and Eastern Sierra Nevada, and the amazing blooms that have followed, the Seeds of Success program is once again a major focus for me. The combination of sufficient precipitation and our team’s dedication has resulted in more forb-species seed collections than have occurred here during the past several years.

Caulanthus inflatus population, Grass Valley Wilderness

In addition to the native seed collections I have taken the opportunity to involve myself in several other aspects of botanical work, at the Ridgecrest Field Office, and elsewhere in the California Desert District. Highlights include:

• As part of an interdisciplinary team, I helped conduct rangeland health assessments in the Bright Star Wilderness, where we performed quantitative toe-point vegetation transects, as well as qualitative proper functioning condition (PFC) assessments of a grazing allotment.

Interdisciplinary team, hiking into the Bright Star Wilderness

• Another exciting aspect of the internship has been several days of rare plant monitoring, tracking the progress of populations of Astragalus magdalenae var. peirsonii (Peirson’s milk-vetch), Cymopterus deserticola (desert cymopterus), and Mimulus shevockii (Kelso Creek monkeyflower). Other BLM special status plants that I have had the pleasure to encounter in the field include Erythranthe rhodopetra (Red Rock Canyon monkeyflower), Phacelia nashiana (Charlotte’s phacelia),  Eschscholzia minutiflora subsp. twisselmannii (Red Rock poppy), and Pholisma sonorae (sand food).

Rare plant monitoring in the Algodones Dunes

Phacelia nashiana, a BLM special status plant

• While perhaps not quite as much fun as finding rare plants, another important project has been working with invasive plant inventories. This has included becoming familiar with the NISIMS (National Invasive Species Information Management System), using mobile GIS tools to record, map, and report weed infestations and treatments.

Workers prepare to remove an invasive salt-cedar from a riparian area in the El Paso Mountains

• Collecting for the plant display at the Ridgecrest Desert Wildflower Festival, teaching botany lessons to fourth graders for the Sand Canyon Environmental Education Program, and helping to document a new species of Claytonia with botanists from Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, are a few more of the diverse botany projects, in which I have participated so far.

Owens Peak Wilderness

Gopher snake near Grass Valley Wilderness

And much remains to come! On the horizon is a NEPA training in Las Vegas, a vegetation monitoring class in Billings, plant mapping projects, writing assignments, and yes, more native seed collections. I will be sure to keep you posted as things begin to heat-up here in the Mojave.

Marcus Lorusso

BLM Ridgecrest Field Office

Carson City is a beautiful place. The ecosystems that surround us are pretty unusual and still new for me since this is my first season here, out in the southwest. Many local people mistakenly call this area a “desert” but I probably should disagree with this statement while observing all the life flourishing and developing right at this moment. This so called desert is getting greener every day. The plants aren’t the only evidence of this gradual but still unconcealed and dramatic change. For instance, last week on the street where I walk almost every day, I saw some bats which I haven’t seen before. They were vigorously hunting around a forest line apparently being pretty hungry after a long dream. Of course they could have just come here from somewhere else, but for me it was definitely a sign of some spring change that affects all the living organisms inside the Morgan Mill St’s ecosystem. Quite the same evidences we all, as botanists, can notice monitoring all the ephemeral plants being in flower stage for only a few weeks. And actually, I must say I’m grateful to have a unique opportunity to see such plants like Erythranthe sp., Ivesia webberi, etc. here in bloom, and moreover to contribute to their study and conservation! That is indeed an amazing feeling. There are actually many more “firsts” I’m doing and encountering here for the first time, even after being here for almost three months, and I think I’ll try to keep this “never-boring” tendency for the future as well.

Until next time,

Andrii

Carson City, BLM

The two native agaves of the Patagonia area are critical nectar resources to the two species of migrating nectar-feeding bat that flies through the area biannually. The agaves and bats coevolved, timing major life-events with each other. As bats fly across the grasslands and desert of Southeastern Arizona in spring and fall, these two species of agaves are timed to shoot up their flowering stalks to lure the bats into moving pollen from one flowering stalk to another with the reward of nutritious and plentiful nectar. Therefore, maintaining healthy populations of these two species of native agaves is critical to maintaining healthy populations of these nectar feeding bats.

Last week, a whole crew of us descended upon a large population (400+ plants) of the Huachuca Agave, Agave parryi var. huachucensis. Many of these individuals were clonal pups, crowding each other out as they continued to grow.

Harvested pups were brought to the Borderlands Restoration greenhouse located on the Native Seeds/SEARCH Conservation Farm to be grown out by Francesca. Eventually these babies will be used to create new patches of Huachuca Agave throughout the landscape.

These special agaves flower themselves to death. As they age, sugars and nutrients are collected in the “heart” of this creatures rosette. With a final hurrah, the agave shoots up a stalk a dozen feet in the air that flourishes with hundreds of flowers dripping with delicious nectar. Many other pollinators are supported by the sugar-packed nectar the agave produces to entice support in its reproduction. Like many plants, the agave hedges its bets. It also produces clones, pups that oftentimes outlive the parent.

Here in the Stanislaus National Forest every day is an adventure in the Rim Fire burn scar! There are sections of the forest wiped out with little regrowth but there are many areas with lots of regrowth or were not touched by the fire. Everyday I am learning more and more species as we do sensitive/ rare species surveys as well as weed surveys. These last few weeks have also taught me a lot about the forest and the incredible amount of recovery work happening this summer.

So far we have spent all of our time doing surveys in the field but come Monday the two other CLM interns and I here in the office will begin taking over data management and map making for the crew. We will all be getting a great refresher in GIS and soon will be pros. I am looking forward to our new responsibility, continuing to learn species in the field, and getting to know the forest and those who work in it.

Cheers, Emily

Erythronium tuolomnense, Tuolumne fawn lily. I have only seen them in one location so far and am hoping we find more soon.

fa

We have been seeing/flagging a lot of Mullin (Verbascum thapsus) these last few weeks, along with bull thistle.

Though some areas are still pristine, there are many areas within the Rim Fire scar that were completely destroyed.

In many meadows we have been seeing this species of interest; Trillium angustipetalum.

It is my first week at the US Fish and Wildlife offices in Klamath Falls, Oregon and I hit the ground running to catch up with the progress of Casey, the other intern who began two weeks before me. Our project for the next six months is to begin rebuilding shortnose sucker (Chasmistes brevirostris) populations, affectionately called “suckers”. Klamath Falls is an area with an impressive history of water management. Most of the land has been modified by levees and dams to create extensive farmland where there were once miles of lake. It’s a situation that has been great for people but bad for suckers, whose populations have declined to endangered levels as a result of limited access to spawning grounds, poor water quality, and entrapment in water control structures.

We will be attempting to rebuild the populations by growing juveniles in several nets on two lakes, and in man-made reservoirs on a wetland habitat. These semi-controlled environments will hopefully give the fish a higher chance of survival by providing protection from predators and aeration to improve water quality. Although other fish populations have been successfully raised in suspended cages or reservoirs, no one has yet applied these methods to suckers.

In my (short) experience with scientific research, I have found that on your first try nothing ever goes as planned. This first week has been no exception. For example, we currently have no fish. None at all. In the two weeks before I arrived, all attempts to catch spawning suckers had been unsuccessful, including suspending a 150ft seine net across the length of the river. On my first day, I was told that we may snorkel three miles of the 9°C river as a last attempt to find the suckers. As an avid SCUBA diver and lifelong swimmer, this didn’t sound too terrible although, it was certainly intimidating. Luckily (or not so luckily, depending on your perspective) my day was instead spent studying the shortnose sucker recovery plan, watching two hours of training videos, and attending my first office meeting before finally driving out to see the reservoirs where we will hopefully be rearing some of our fish.

The reservoir ready to be filled with water and suckers

I returned to work Tuesday with the overhanging possibility of a snorkeling adventure. Instead, Casey, Josh and I took the boat on its first post-winter test run. Upper Klamath Lake is gorgeous and I am so excited to spend the next six months working on it. The lake is sprawling and surrounded by snow capped mountains on most sides, including the steep volcano that hides Crater Lake in its peak. Our nets will be located on the fringe of the Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge, a large, protected wetland habitat made up of tall reeds and home to myriad bird species. When you research Klamath Falls, most of the websites that come up are related to its famous birding. I’m not much of a bird watcher but I may have to pick it up while living here.

Upper Klamath National Wildlife Refuge with Mount McLoughlin

The boat started perfectly from its winter hiatus without any major problems but after that, the difficulties began. We had brought with us one segment of our unassembled dock. We planned to suspend our fish pens from the dock and intended to moor them in place with three meter steel poles in about two meters of water. At first, the poles sunk satisfyingly into the muddy lake bottom, securing the dock in place and I was sure that the sunny, calm day was going to be problem-free. That is, until the poles continued to sink through the holes in the dock and straight into the miles-deep silt layer as if it were quicksand. We were able to retrieve them but it was clear that a new plan was in order.

Our retrieved dock and poles in the boat

The rest of this week has been spent reassessing our original mooring plan (to include mushroom anchors designed for muddy bottoms) and fine-tuning all other aspects of the dock setup. This has mostly involved a large amount of computer research and visits to all the hardware stores in town to create a comparative quote list for the materials we will need to connect anchors, nets, signs, lights, etc. to our docks. In addition to hardware store visits, we trucked the giant metal box that will contain our aerator and small generator to all the wielders in the area, in a weird sort of wielder show and tell. Apparently no one can give you a quote for the price of drilling a hole and attaching a weather resistant air vent to your giant steel box until they have seen your giant steel box.

As a break from all this research, as well as hours of additional paperwork and federal forms, we also took a short excursion to a common spawning location on Wednesday. Naturally, there weren’t any fish there either and the search continues.

Do you have any shortnose suckers?

I do not.

Go fish.

-Alanna

Hi everybody –

Last week I was able to take advantage of the option to participate in an alternative to the CLM orientation in Chicago. Since my internship with the USGS in Henderson, NV started in February the CLM program offered a stipend for me to enroll on a workshop, symposium, etc. of my choosing in my field of study. I was able to work out two alternatives to the CLM orientation–one the Smithsonian Botanical Symposium in Washington, DC which I went to last week, and the other a Jepson Herbarium workshop through UC Berkeley I will travel to next weekend.

The theme of the Smithsonian Botanical Symposium was “Location, Location, Location: Recent Breakthroughs in Biogeography.” The event kicked off Thursday night with a poster session where I mingled with the presenters and other folks. Most were Master’s and PhD students presenting their research–some were describing new plant species, others creating phylogenies to recreate plant family lineages. The symposium continued all day Friday where the invited speakers presented their research. The talks ranged from biogeographical patterns of tropical reef fishes, how to calibrate a molecular clock to create a phylogeny using newly discovered fossils, and the fate of Andean frailejones–some with an entire range of only 4 square-kilometers–under different climate change models. Overall the talks were very stimulating and the symposium was a great experience for me. I even had time to enjoy the museums, art galleries, monuments, and memorials on the National Mall.

I look forward next weekend to touring botanic gardens in the San Francisco Bay area with folks from the Jepson Herbarium. The weather’s heating up here in Las Vegas so after a long week of field work we’re all looking forward to a few days of rest in the A/C.

Sam Somerville

USGS Las Vegas Field Station, Henderson NV