My name is Andrii Zaiats and this is my first post on my CLM blog. I arrived in Carson City almost three weeks ago and since then I’ve tried different activities that I’ve never tried before. And so, my first post I’d like to devote to one of such experiences – identifying plants in February. First of all, I am really excited about identifying species, especially when it involves magnifying glasses, microscopes, keys, counting different small structures and identifying indumentum type, subjective and objective arguments etc. But I’ve found out that it’s much more challenging to identify herbaceous plant by leaf-shape, rosettes, possibly some stems when there is nothing else to base your judgment on. At first it was frustrating, but I guess that sharing experience, having some field excursion and practice, practice, practice are the best choices to get a grip on identifying “plants youth.” Another thing that is really helpful in the field is dry plants, and everything else that have remained from previous years (seeds, glumes, prickles, phyllaries etc.), and gives you an imagination of plant appearance.

So far, we’ve spent three days in the field and I find fascinating types of activities we are involved in and work organization here in Carson City BLM Field office, and on BLM lands as well. In addition I’m grateful to be a part of the team I currently work with and, of course, as a part of CLM program!

Until next time,
Andrii
BLM District Office,
Carson City, NV

Poa secunda -Sandberg bluegrass’ leaves

Bromus tectorum – cheatgrass

Holodiscus dumosus – oceanspray bush

It is incredibly rainy here today in Big Bear Lake, CA. Unfortunately it is not even close to being cold enough to snow. Temperatures are supposed to drop tonight and tomorrow so hopefully there will be some snow in time to go snowboarding on Sunday! It feels really good to be getting some precipitation in CA. It has been so dry, this rain is really needed. Not to mention I love being able to sit at home and listen to the storm.

Since my last entry most of my time has been spent working on the invasive plant species identification guide. Our goal is to have it essentially finished early next week. A lot of my time has been spent finding more photos to fill the blank spaces and better show the traits necessary for ID. I’m ready to be done resizing photos and text to make the best possible use of space! I am really excited about how the guide is looking and am proud of all the work I have put in because writing is definitely not my best skill.

Our next project after the guide is completed will be working on determining sensitive species legacy data to be entered into the Natural Resources Information System (NRIS). The legacy data is made up of sensitive plant element occurrence data that was recorded before the time of GPS and digitization. Our job will be to determine whether or not the legacy (historical) data should be entered into NRIS. Some occurrences shouldn’t be entered because of developments that have probably wiped out the occurrence, or they have not been found when someone went out to do the ground truthing. Most of this detective work will be done in ArcGIS, so I will utilizing all the skills I have learned in the ArcGIS webinars I have completed lately. I am optimistic I will learn a lot and improve my computer skills greatly. This was one of my original goals for this internship.

The next post I do will have pictures from the awesome soil crust workshop I am attending next weekend in Joshua Tree National Park! Also, we are planning on putting the invasive plant guide on the San Bernadino NF website so I will include a link to that when it happens.

Hello again from wonderful Kemmerer, Wyoming. Winter still has its grasp on this high desert town. Even with winter’s grip still holding strong, we were finally able to make two field visits in preparation for Sage Grouse Lek season that will be starting soon. I was able to get a quick tour of some grazing allotments that I didn’t get to visit while working with the BLM last summer. Getting out was sure a nice change of pace. We did some hiking to look for some geophagy locations; these locations are where grouse gather during the winter, to basically eat dirt. The BLM is not entirely sure why this occurs, hypotheses include eating for mineral supplements, or to help buffer the tannins in the sage brush that is consumed. This practice could also occur during the summer months, but with the lack of data on the particular phenomenon it is unknown if geophagy occurs in the summer months or why Sage Grouse even eat the soil.  We were unable to identify any of these locations on our first trip to actually look for them.

Our second trip to the field was to Pinedale, Wyoming on February 24^th . This little town is about two hours north of Kemmerer situated along the Wind River Range. It is a beautiful town where I was able to spend much of my childhood.  We met up with wildlife staff from the Pinedale field office.  The plan was to go look at some of these geophagy sites to help our field office in the identification of these sites. We were able to visit 7 of these locations. We looked at soil type, vegetation type, and amount of bare ground visible. I have to say I should have remembered my camera because the ride into those locations was epic. We didn’t get stuck, but the amount of snow we had to drive through was amazing. After this second trip, the wildlife biologists at the KFO are certain geophagy sites do exist in our field office; it will just be a daunting process of finding them.

All the hiking that has occurred in the past two weeks makes a person start to think about how out of shape they are.  With that realization of being horribly out of shape I decided to start exercising. I am hoping to be in decent shape in time for the full onset of field season. I will hopefully be posting pictures next month of Sage Grouse strutting on their lek locations. I am very excited to see this phenomenon. Till next time, I hope everyone has fun.

Kind Regards,

Jeremy Sykes

Kemmerer Feild office, Wy

Bureau of Land Management

I have only been in Carson City for a few weeks and I have already begun to learn about the land and plants that are found within this beautiful area. The main focus these first few weeks of our internship has been invasive noxious weeds, as well as graze land utilization allotments. Since the Carson City area has been in a drought for many years the amount of land utilization by grazers (cattle, deer, ect..) has become increasingly important. If a grazing allotment becomes over grazed and the plants are not able to re-establish or recover, then the land has an increased chance of being invaded by invasive plants and noxious weeds. An example of a current invasive plant that has a drastic effect on grazing allotments would be Medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae).

 (Image obtained from google images)

Medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae) is an invasive and aggressive species within Nevada as well as other surrounding states. This grass will infiltrate an area where the native plant life has been eradicated or reduced from overgrazing, fires or cultivation. The presence of medusahead can reduce the carrying capacity of a lands livestock by 75%. The grazers within an allotment find medusahead to lack palatability. The lack of palatability is a result of the grasses’ rich silica content, as well as having a seed head with long awns that are stiff and slightly barbed, which cuts the mouths of any grazer attempting to eat it. Ouch, I am sure that if I were a grazing animal I would find this grass unpalatable as well.

With this invasive grass in mind it is then apparent how important it is that we as individuals become more aware of the cause and effect of land utilization within the whole country. It is also important for some individuals to realize that the BLM is not evil and does not reduce land utilization because it feels like it, there is a valid reason. All decisions are carefully discussed before any action takes place.

Hello from Provo, Utah.  Since my last post, my research has progressed with some promising results. I am preparing these preliminary results for a presentation at the Great Basin Native Plant Program (GBNPP) next month. That makes me excited, but anxious. The snow is finally gone, and I feel like we are close to starting our visits to the mountains again. We are still processing the bunch of samples that we collected during fall 2013 and this winter. One thing that I want to share is that I  appreciate that my mentor encourages me to think of new research questions to complement our experiments. I look forward to sharing this information with the research community and managers. Hopefully, my research will be a useful application for the restoration big sagebrush ecosystems.

I want to remark that I feel very thankful for all the support of my mentor and companions at the lab.  It is nice to work in a place like the Forest Service, Provo Shrub Science Lab. I am learning many things from my mentor, but the most important is how to improve every day in the things that we are doing.

Thank you CLM for this opportunity

Hector

Provo, UT

Forest Service, Provo Shrub Science Lab

Hello!

This is my third CLM internship. Third time’s the charm- this is the most feel good job I have ever had. I am doing native plant propagation at the Redding BLM office. After two wonderful years in Oregon, I am enjoying the sunshine in Northern California.

Instead of cattle or timber, the focus of the office is recreation. I have been working alot in the greenhouse- planting native seeds, weeding, watering and transplanting. The nursery contains anything native- trees, shrubs, sedges, rushes, grasses, and forbs. I also have been processing some skunk bush seeds as homework. Tomorrow, we will be planting some blue oaks at a restoration site.

This is my third week on the job and I am learning so much as I go. I am excited to learn about every aspect of growing plants for restoration projects- from seed collection to propagating to planting. I’m interested in learning the native plants through this process.

Until next time,

Caroline

This is the greenhouse we share with Happy Valley Elementary School

Here on the front range in Colorado it seems like a very mild and sporadic winter.  One week we get anywhere from 2 inches to 8 inches of snow and then the next day or the next week the snow is gone and it is 60 degrees out.  I’ve been told that the spring along Colorado’s front range is when the snow comes in feet and it is a heavy wet snow, so I am looking forward to seeing how my mountain bike handles those commutes.

At work I have realized that model building in excel will be somewhat helpful to a certain extent, but after that I believe a more robust modeling program will be require to produce the results that I am looking to find for the species I am studying.  For a week and a half I was scouring every biostatistical text that my mentor had, trying to figure out how to apply a McNemar’s sample size specific equation to the data for the Phacelia I’ve working on and did figure it all out.  The issue was the results for the sample size, which was considerably higher than excepted.  Since I am trying to establish an easily followed monitoring protocol, a high number of transects might introduce a risk of misidentification due to fatigue possibly and the fact that it won’t be as quick.  So I have decided to find a different method to monitor the Phacelia that is quick and results in data that is robust enough to hold up to scrutiny from peers.

As much reading and research as I have been doing, I have only been able to get out of the office a couple of times.  I went up to Fort Collins for a Landscape Genetics workshop, which was a part of the Colorado Chapter of the Wildlife Society Meeting that was happening the entire week.  At the workshop the subject matter was all wildlife related as expected, but the methods used in tracking gene flow across the landscape could possibly be implemented into a plant population or at least the software could be utilized.  Even though my main focus right now is on plants, I still found the methods use and subject matter quite interesting (wolverine movements, greater sage grouse, a general overview of genetic lab work, how population genetics can help you transfer into landscape genetics).

The group here at the state office also went to silt to a Level 1 group meeting which include personnel from USFWS, USFS and BLM and was a discussion of the current management going on for sensitive species, both plants and wildlife, and updates on listing status and certain projects that have been completed or want to start.  It was an open discussion type meeting where inputs were given on methodology and application and overall was a very interesting day to see the differences in management priorities between the different federal agencies.  It gave me some insight into the type of management that I would prefer doing in my career and then which agency I would like to work for based on those management priorities.

Regards,

Nathan Redecker

BLM CO State Office

Lakewood, CO

The drought continues here in California.  We did have a few small rain events since my last blog.  They brought enough water to create flooding (ironic because we are still in a “drought” and have had less than 20% of average rainfall).  Water restrictions in Sacramento have been increased to 40% and are being called “mandatory”, but because less than half of the residences in the city have water meters, this is virtually impossible to enforce.  Further complicating the issue is that a significant amount of the water used in the state is by farmers and comes  from private farm wells, which from what I understand is highly unregulated.  In addition, many cities in southern California sell water like a commodity, so local governments are hesitant to put restrictions on water usage fearing lawsuits from water companies.  The entire issue seems quite messy but the bottom line is that there is going to be catastrophic consequences in this state if people don’t start taking the issue of water conservation more seriously.

As part of my position here at the Cosumnes River Preserve I am responsible for overseeing some of the restoration projects currently underway.  I have made water conservation and efficiency major considerations in my irrigation system designs for these projects.  We actually just had a very successful workday last Thursday (2/13) and were able to get one of my drip irrigation systems fully installed.  After months of project reports, proposals, quotes, supply ordering, conceptualizing, schematic drawings, meetings, etc. it is always very exciting to finally see a part of your project installed and functioning properly.  This particular site is fully prepped and ready for plant installation.  Most of what we will be planting are cuttings of native species which I identified and collected several weeks ago from my reference site less than a mile away.  The cuttings are a great way to save money when funding is tight and depending on where you collect can also ensure that you are not introducing new, genetically inapt plants to your site.  More details as project progresses…

It’s been an eventful first month here at the Colorado State BLM Office in Lakewood.  This is my second stint as a CLM intern after spending last field season working at the Alturas Field Office in northern California. It is a definite change of pace and scenery to be living and working in the hustle and bustle of the highly developed and urban Denver Metro Area after spending six months in the Wild West of the Modoc Plateau. I am looking forward to working around the great state of Colorado in some of the off-the-beaten-path areas which characterize the western slope.

As the snow continues to fly in the southern Rocky Mountains (and in great quantities) it will be a while before our field work kicks into gear. In the mean time I am working on a report and demographic monitoring design for an extremely rare endemic species of mustard of the genus Eutrema (related to wasabi). The species was isolated in the high elevation alpine tundra of the Mosquito Range in central Colorado as the glaciers retreated post last glacial maximum. The species from which Eutrema penlandii apparently diverged now persists over 1,000 miles to the north on the arctic tundra of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. This ice-age relict is perhaps the most rare and endangered taxa in all of Colorado; consisting of 13 small populations which cling to extremely specified habitat above 11,800ft.

For me it is fascinating to work with a species which exemplifies the complexity of a changing climate and the dynamic processes which shape life and diversity within the biological community. I am excited to spend the next half a year or so working in various capacities with rare and endangered species while developing my skills both in the field and the office. There should be plenty of good stories and photos to share over the coming months; so stay tuned.

Until next time from the Front Range,

Phil Krening

CLM intern

Lakewood, CO

My internship experience was a challenge to be sure. I learned a lot about where I wanted to be and how affected I was by harsh landscapes and living rurally in the Midwest. I also learned a ton of new plants and gained my first skills in collecting seeds and working in a herbarium. I’m glad for all of these things and will continue to be a seed-curious person for the rest of my days.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to be part of the CLM Internship Program and I wish it and its future interns great luck and success!