Hitting the books– keying out species– pretending I know what I am doing Photo credit: Chloe Battista

June 2018

I graduated from my small liberal arts college in Ohio about a month ago and then almost immediately packed up and moved to Rawlins, WY to intern with the BLM for Seeds of Success. In my first few weeks here, I realized pretty quickly that I had a lot to learn. While I took plant taxonomy and botany classes as a part of my biology major at Oberlin College, I would not consider myself an expert in seed biology and plant identification. I guess in the next five months, I am going to become much more knowledgeable on those topics. Fortunately, my awesome mentor has been here to help, my amazing co-intern, Chloe, is incredibly  capable and knowledgeable, and my funny and sweet boyfriend, Miguel, is cheering me on from Miami.

I get to work in a pretty place!!!

So far, my time here has had me thinking a lot about conservation, natural resources, and local versus global spheres of each. My project– collecting seeds for restoration– is very focused on the local scale. When habitats within our field office are disturbed (by oil and gas, wind fields, fires, etc), the seeds we collect will be used to assist in the restoration of those habitats. Seeds could also be used for research on the flora that grow here, or may just be banked. All of this is focused on conservation within the High Desert District of Wyoming. Considering the importance of restoration with native plants and how different populations tend to support individuals that are most adapted to their specific environment, our project is crucial for local conservation.

Helping with that local conservation… Blowout Penstemon is an endangered species and we were assisting with surveys to assess its population in Wyoming. Photo Credit to Bonnie Heidel

The global sphere within conservation, however, is also extremely important. It is becoming increasingly laughable to deny that humans actions, specifically greenhouse gas emissions, have lead to a global change in climate. With more severe weather, higher average temperature, and increasing extinction rates, we are at the beginning of what looks like will be Earth’s sixth mass extinction. Marine organisms that are indicators of healthy oceans are now quickly falling in number, as are amphibians and other vulnerable groups of organisms. These major global patterns are a result of the enhanced Greenhouse Effect. Human use of fossil fuels for energy since the industrial revolution have a major hand in disrupting the balance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Restoration botany can, in some ways, work to mitigate climate effects because plants can act as carbon sinks, but it would take a lot of planting to solve our problems and local communities can only do so much when large corporations are to blame for the grand majority of emissions. This is why, as I work in the local conservation sphere, I cannot forget about the global scale as well.

Blowout Penstemon

Global issues like climate change are hard to combat as one person who just graduated from college. However, our planet is a global community. What we do can affect everyone, so while it is easy to feel helpless and ignore what is happening at a global scale, we are responsible for maintaining awareness. We can encourage greener energy sources over fossil fuels, call government officials, and inform friends and family. I am going to hold myself accountable in doing those things, while I collect seeds for local restoration projects. 

These last couple months have flown by. There is only one month left. The last couple months have been spent mostly on seed collection and treatment of invasive species. My grass identification skills are growing stronger and I am starting to recognize key differences in different types of grasses. Pictured below is bundle of Danthonia Californica which is a native perennial oatgrass.  My favorite part about this plant is that it can produce seeds in its stem as well as at the top of the plant.

The day after the 4^th of July, we were able to have a relaxing day on the Umpqua River rafting and pulling weeds. We were controlling the spread of False Brome which is an invasive species from Europe that can outcompete native plants.

We had the pleasure of working with the Phoenix School Crew here in Roseburg. They helped us on a couple different projects. One of the projects was to pull tansy ragwort at the North Bank Habitat Management Area. They crew did a great job and we ended up with a few truckloads of tansy ragwort to dispose of! The other intern and I were lucky enough to have them help because it would have taken us weeks to do the work.

We have also been focusing more on forbs seed collection. Pictured below is Achillea Millefolium, also known as Common Yarrow.

We wrapped up our final seed collection on a population of Canada Goldenrod. We will be transitioning to spraying noxious weeds for the remainder of our internship.

I have learned a lot about plant identification and invasive species management so far and have appreciated all of the gorgeous views along the way.

August, 2018

Thanks to my mentor Dirk, at the end of July I was able to go out on a backpacking trip with 2 fish biologists from the forest service. With 3 other ladies from California fish and wildlife, we hiked 16 miles to Stella Lake. This lake is right on the eastern border of Yosemite and is right on the PCT! The purpose of this trip was to continue an ongoing project called the high mountain lakes project that is designed to remove fish from alpine lakes in order to help restore populations of the endangered Sierra Nevada yellow-legged frog. This frog is endangered due to a combination of factors including predation by invasive fish and due to outbreaks of the Chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis). Our team spent a week at Stella putting in gill nets in order to catch and remove rainbow and brook trout. During our time up at the lake, there was an active forest fire in Yosemite called the Ferguson fire. This made the visibility pretty awful and sometimes made breathing a little difficult.

I really valued my time with these women because they didn’t mind me asking all of the questions that I could think of! I learned so much about the project and about their jobs in general. I am very grateful that this internship has allowed me to meet such a diverse group of people.

Dawne Emery and Rachel Van Horne out on Stella Lake, setting up the gill nets.

Making me feel like I’m back in the Rockies! This Alpine Gentian looks an awful lot like the Arctic Gentian that I sought out in CO.

Thanks to the high mountain lakes project, we found frogs all around this lake and didn’t spot any fish!

Marmot friend 🙂

Bee enjoying Ranger’s button (Sphenosciadium capitellatum)

Zoë Moffett

US Forest Service, Sparks NV

I am situated in Mesa county Colorado. The entire county is inundated by extreme drought conditions, which has resulted in many plant species failing to produce viable seed or only producing small amounts. I have seen large populations of Gutierrezia sarothrae and microcephala beginning to die back to their caudex before reaching antithesis. I assume the plants are still alive below ground but couldn’t afford to nurture their above ground foliage. There are multiple forbs that have dried without maturing to seed, such as some Packera, Heterotheca, and Grindelia species. While some plants may still complete their life cycles, there seems to be an exceedingly high proportion of plants that are struggling, especially as the summer comes to a close. When I first got to this area in mid-May I was surprised by the drought conditions and found a charm in seeing how different populations were able to handle it and the phenotypic nuances that were exhibited dependent on soil, cover, and water. However, as the summer has gone on the majority of plants have shriveled and left behind their standing dead with few characteristics to determine what they once were.

Antithetically one of the most valuable things I will take away from my experience here is my love of mesic, riparian, and wetland areas. Before coming here I was on the fence about what I wanted to focus on and study ecologically, yet being in the desert I find that I can’t help but be drawn to the seasonal springs, seeps, playas, and rivers. Many of these spaces have dried by the time I reach them, but I can still read the space through the landforms, plants, animals/amphibians present and get an idea of what this area is like during different times. A salvation for me from the desert heat/dryness has been to visit the wet montane meadows and riparian areas of the San juan and Weminuche wilderness. It has been a fabulous and increasingly interesting experience to learn about the local ecosystems, and I find myself wishing I had been here in the spring to see the full circle of the growing season.

Our seed collections have been rolling nicely along here in Rawlins! We are over halfway done with our collections for the season. Now that we have a better grasp on the phenology of the plants here coupled with the dry year, it’s been easier to understand how to prioritize our collections between the forbs (especially the asters!) and grasses.

Collecting bottlebrush squirreltail (Elymus elymoides) in the Chain Lakes area, which is rich with oil and gas pads.

We’ve also been branching out a lot into other areas of our field office, primarily with the wildlife biologists and interns. It’s been really cool to see the kind of projects they are in charge of and even get to work with other agencies, like we did with Wyoming toad surveys! I mentioned before that I had really enjoyed endangered species work, and that was even more solidified with these surveys.

Anaxyrus baxteri in all her glory.

We spent three days out at Mortensen Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Laramie with biologists from the BLM, USFWS, and USFS from areas in Wyoming and Colorado. We split into groups and took different plots around the refuge; censusing the toads we found and splitting them into groups of adult, overwinter, young-of-the-year, and metamorphs; as well as taking measurements and swabbing for chytrid fungus. We also released tadpoles from enclosures that had recently grown legs and lost their tails, and were therefore (hopefully) developed enough to survive on their own in the lake.

Hanging with a beautiful toad

About to release a bucket full of newly developed baby toads

We’ve also gotten to go out with the other wildlife CLM interns in our field office who are doing a herpetofauna study with their mentor. They do intervals of 10-day trapping, and we got to help check their plots around the Ferris Mountains and record and measure anything they’ve caught. Although the study is centered around herps, we’ve mostly seen some smaller snakes and a couple small mammals. As an aspiring botanist I haven’t gotten to handle much wildlife, but as you can see from the following photos I was pretty excited about it.

This vole kept trying to bite me while I measured his ears but I admired his sassiness.

The excitement is apparent here, with a very docile deer mouse

This is the first snake I’ve ever held – a small, slithery garter snake.

I’m excited to continue seeing other parts of our field office and make progress on our seed collections in the next half of my internship!

Things are starting to ramp up as we head full swing into summer here in Rawlins, WY. I am almost two months into my field season and we’re in the middle of our voucher specimen and seed collection. I’m enjoying getting to see so much of the field office collecting and scouting for plants and really being in the wilderness. As of early July, we’ve completed 6 seed collections so far, putting in long days with travel and collecting.

We also got to branch out a little bit this past month from seeds to do some endangered species monitoring with our mentor, Frank Blomquist, and Bonnie Heidel, from the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database (WYNDD) in Laramie. We went out to Bear Mountain, in the northeast section of Carbon County, to monitor the Blowout Penstemon (Penstemon haydenii). Our first day at Bear Mountain included hiking to the sand dunes in the mountains and censusing all the plants we could find, listing them into 3 categories – flowering or fruiting, vegetative, and browsed. We were prepared for a long day in the mountain; we had tried to census the day before and got hailed out so we made sure we had all our rain gear this time.

With P. haydenii

Our second day was on the other side of Bear Mountain running transects to get an idea of how many seedlings and mature plants were present in a different sand dune blowout. This census is done each year to look at the persistence of the seedlings in the blowout and see if they are surviving despite the changing placement of the dunes.

Our little seedlings

Completing transects with my co-intern Anah, our mentor Frank (not pictured), and Bonnie.

I think the endangered species work has been one of my favorite things out here so far, other than getting to seed pronghorn every single day – I’m still not used to it! I enjoyed the deviation from our usual scouting and collecting to go to a different site (this one is actually an ACEC, or Area of Critical Environmental Concern) and complete work that contributes to emerging research.

July, 2018

Still acting as a sort of third wheel, I have gone out with a different duo working out of Reno. This team could not function more differently than the first team that I worked with. While they still of course do a great job, they are much more independent and quiet. This was a tricky transition for me as I came from a team of two who constantly chatted and joked, cooking and walking together even when the day was technically over. It took some adjusting, but I figured out how I fit in with the new team, finding my own ways to spend my solo time in the mornings and evenings. I am learning a lot about group dynamics and team efficiency in a field setting.

We have been scouting out for small, research collections for the Rocky Mountain Research Station. As the summer continues, we have to move higher up into the numerous mountain ranges where plants are flowering later in their phenology and where there is more moisture.

Camping spot south of Austin, NV

I have started to keep a list of reasons why I love the Nevada landscape. Here is a sample:

• So much BLM and USFS land! You can camp basically anywhere.
• The milky way is incredible basically every night.
• Constant night hawks and poor-wills at night.
• A species of mountain mahogany that is new to me! Cercocarpus ledifolius. 

Quick pit stop at Diana’s Punchbowl! There’s a hot spring in this formation that reaches 200°F!

Best,

Zoë Moffett

US Forest Service, Sparks NV

June, 2018

In May, I moved from Colorado to Reno with the help of a good friend. Together we drove west across the state of Nevada, peering at the sage brush and endless mountain ranges, so different from those in Colorado. Every time we passed a sign declaring “Entering the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest”, we would look around, discussing my new “office” for the season.

My internship is with the Seeds of Success (SOS) Program working with the US Forest Service. However, I have realized that this internship is not going to function exactly as I thought it would. Unfortunately, I do not have a partner for the season. This means that I will be acting as a “third wheel” with two different 2 person SOS crews from the Great Basin Institute (GBI). In order to scout out populations and make collections, these teams go out for 8 days at a time, camping out in the desert. So far, I have gone out with one of these crews to help scout grass populations and to make a few collections. These two girls have been working together since April, so I was a little nervous to come into a group that had already been so established. It was also tricky because they already had their training and routines down – and here I was coming in with no real understanding of their work or group dynamics. It was awkward to try and learn on the job, asking for clarifications and tasks without wanting to slow them down. Luckily they are two lovely people who I immediately got along with on a personal level.

With the help of a fantastic crew of inmates from the Nevada Division of Forestry (NDF), we collected a crazy amount of Indian Ricegrass (Achnatherum hymenoides)

A few SOS field tips that I have learned right off the bat:

1. Don’t wear nice hiking songs in sagebrush habitat. The cheatgrass will shred them up
2. Podcasts are king when collecting seed nonstop for hours at a time.
3. Gatorade powder can really help out with those 100 degree desert afternoons.

Until next time,

Zoë Moffett

US Forest Service, Sparks NV

1 July – 14 July 2018

One of this summer’s new experiences includes living in a trailer in Idaho’s Snake River valley. I had difficulty finding a place to live in downtown Idaho Falls before I arrived here in June. However, since I am working with the US Forest Service, I am allowed to live in a trailer at the USDA Snake River Administrative Site. This option was not ideal, but I have found benefits to match the drawbacks of my living arrangements.

I have not tired of passing this view of the Snake River on my way ‘home’ from work.

I have never camped in a trailer before, let alone live in one for an extended period of time, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I decided not to hope for anything glamorous. In fact, I was eager to live in a quaint space. Upon first arriving at my trailer, I was pleasantly surprised with the setup. Sure, the window sills were loaded with fly carcasses, the floor could use a sweeping, and it smelled a bit stuffy inside, but I kind of expected that. Overall, the trailer seemed pretty spacious to me and it was decked out with a fridge, oven, 3-burner stove, and a microwave. There was even a shower in the bathroom! I had not been expecting to have all of those luxuries.

I have had a few battles with the trailer, such as a leaky roof when it rains, lost power, and hot water that lasts for exactly 2 minutes and 30 seconds in the shower (when the water heater decides to work). Maybe this isn’t the most comfortable lifestyle in America, but I really don’t mind. I haven’t quite mastered the art of showering under 2.5 minutes, but if I only turn the water on when I need it, I usually don’t have to worry about frigid showers and I’m reducing my water consumption! I think that’s pretty neat.

I am not fond of the 45 minute drive to Idaho Falls from my trailer – I am burning a lot of fossil fuels just to get to my office or the grocery store. I also have to deal with a plethora of oversized pickup trucks on the highway, none of which seem to be able to get to their destination fast enough. Despite this, I am happy to be in a beautiful area and to have access to numerous trails within an hour’s drive from my trailer.

The Palisades Trail is a 20 minute drive from my trailer – a gorgeous place for a long run!

Fall Creek Falls is three miles from my trailer, making it a great place to cool off during the hot Idaho summer days.

Cheers to many more adventures!

Shannon

USFS Idaho Falls, ID

11 June – 30 June 2018

Last December, as I began to ponder where I wanted my life to head after my upcoming graduation, I decided it would be a good idea to entirely uproot myself from familiar places and faces. That decision led me to apply for Chicago Botanic Garden’s CLM Internship and has since landed me in Idaho Falls, ID. I am from the Midwest. I have only been “out west” twice, so relocating to Idaho fit the bill of moving to the unfamiliar. As the start date for my internship approached, I told myself I was excited to scamper around the mountains of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest, to learn about plants and ecosystems new to me, and to meet new people. This was true, I was excited for this opportunity, but I was also telling myself to be excited in an effort to ignore my anxiety of living in a new place without a single familiar soul around.

Since starting my internship, I have experienced some disorienting excitement. I happily dashed out to the field on Day 1 to help with vegetation surveys. I laughed as my coworker casually maneuvered our rig through a small herd of cattle lounging on the road. I smiled as our crew splashed back and forth across a small creek before ultimately deciding the weather would be good enough to safely conduct vegetation surveys in the field. I found it amazing to be greeted by the sights of foothills, cows, and vegetation. I certainly am not in the Midwest anymore. Yet beneath this joy lurked a slight fear in not recognizing any of the plants around me. My “help” with the vegetation survey mostly consisted of me asking everyone else what all the plants were in that area. Everyone graciously and patiently shared their knowledge with me.

It was great to get out in the field on my first day of work!

The next few days have already begun to blur together. I have spent many hours swimming in piles of paperwork that I hoped would be a little more straightforward than reality seems to allow and I have also happily spent more hours out in the field. I was able to follow a pair of entomologists around the Scout Mountain area as they conducted bee surveys, I have camped out in the field for work, and I am learning to identify the four wildflower species I am responsible for collecting seed from. Through it all, I am beginning to learn a bit about the flora, fauna, and people around me. I would not say Idaho Falls feels like home, but I am slowly becoming more familiar with the area and I am eager to learn more about the ecology of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

Chaenactis douglasii – one of the four wildflower species I need to collect seed from.

Watching the sunset and moonrise from the top of a mountain is one of many perks associated with camping for work.

Cheers to many more adventures!

Shannon

USFS Idaho Falls, ID