For the last Eighteen years of my life I have lived in the state of Massachusetts so the prospect of moving halfway across the country to start my first job after graduating college was daunting. Also, the idea of living alone for the first time was a little haunting. But after my first month here the time I’ve spent at Midewin has been quite rewarding. Life at Midewin has been anything but mid, it has been quite fun! I had to start by learning the lay of the land (which is overall quite flat) which included dangers to avoid such as the Wild Parsnip (Pastinaca sativa), that upon touch and upon the sun’s rays hitting you will cause a reaction that causes your skin to burn and create a rash. When encountering said plant while walking through the prairie one needs to either steer clear or raise their arms above their head so that their arms don’t come in contact with the phototoxic plant.
Pastinaca sativa
Vegetative villains aside, my overall orientation to the prairie was swift and informative. We went over good places to collect seed, the history of Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, all the various facilities and operations they have, and much more. As we got into the swing of things, mornings became essential hours in which to do field work so we could escape some of the most heated hours of the day. In the AM was when we found and collected many plants that had seed such as Carex stricta and Carex bickenellii.
Carex stricta
Carex bicknellii
A majority of seed that we are looking for come from sedges, a grass-like family of species that is slightly tricky to identify so we were put through a workshop of how to tell what a sedge is as well as what sedge is what. In that workshop one person gave us a helpful rhyme which goes like “sedges have edges, rushes are round, grasses have joints all the way to the ground”.
Besides seed collection we have had the joyful opportunity to partake in other projects that happen at Midewin such as bird surveys and hydrological testing. With those experiences we learned a lot about the different bird species that make a home at Midewin and why certain birds prefer certain grass heights as well as the great importance that hydrology plays in the health of Midewin as we tested streams and ponds for various characteristics. All along the way we have familiarized ourselves with the prairie and its characteristic species that make it different from other places in America, including two of my favorites the prairie dock plant (Silphium terebinthinaceum ) and the compass plant (Silphium laciniatum). The dock plant has an ingenious self cooling system that pumps refreshingly cold water up its stem. It’s always fun to go up to a dock plant and lay your hands on it to feel how cold it is relative to the plants around it!
Silphium terebinthinaceum (left) and Silphium laciniatum (far right)
Cannot believe I have already spent a month working at Midewin Prairie. I came in knowing how to identify literally only two tall grass prairie plants, now I walk around my community prairie and have fun pointing out all of the different plants that they have included! My dog is not as enthusiastic about the frequent stops in the sun to look at plants… but he gets over it quickly with a belly rub.
Here’s some highlights from the first month at Midewin:
Funny Puns
“How do you tell the difference between an alligator and a crocodile?” … “One you see later and the other in awhile” – Harsha Pandaraboyina
One of the best jokes I have heard in awhile, especially when it comes out of no where as you are marching to a site through tall grass and are concentrating very hard not to twist your ankle. Working with this group of guys is honestly one of the best parts of the job, they are all so knowledgeable about different things, are great jokesters in tiring situations, and let me be in charge. Plus they have great tastes in music so we can jam out while planting seeds or watering our thirsty plants (the Midwest is in a serious drought at the moment). I am looking forward to working with them for the next few months!
From left to right, the CLM interns for Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie. Harsha Pandaraboyina, me, Dade Bradley, Nathan Augustine.
Seeds, Seeds, and More Seeds!
Wow have we been collecting and identifying a bunch of plants and their seeds! We have collected what we have but unfortunately we have been in a terrible drought here so our mentors say the seed might not be as viable this year as in years past. My favorite plants to identify thus far are Spiderwort, Penstemons, and Silphium because one of them (prairie dock plant) has a neat cooling system inside it so when you touch it one side is colder than the other! So now we all live to touch both sides when we see it.
Look we are Birders now!
Fun fact: 27 years ago researchers noticed an influx of native grassland bird species in the Midewin area(which at that time was a US army base). They realized that these tall/short grassland prairies were unique to the area that had become largely agriculture fields. So Midewin National Tall grass Prairie was established, for the birds! Makes sense as to why the biologists conduct at least three bird surveys year here.
June calls for the grassland bird survey at Midewin. We got to work with the wildlife biologist/technician and go out to different sites around the prairie to identify different birds based on visual and audio cues. Although we did not know much about birds in the beginning we quickly got good at identifying key species like the Dickcissel, Red-winged black bird, and Common Yellowthroat. Now whenever we go out into the field I am quick to point out some of the birds in the area. Which I know Nathan secretly appreciates being the plant guy that he is. Harsha had a ton of fun with the binoculars too! Needless to say, we are now birders as well as botanists in training at Midewin.
Harsha having fun with binoculars!
The Pollinators to our Orchids
Platanthera praeclara is a rare, threatened orchid found at Midewin that has been monitored and hand pollinated for a few years through a program with USFS and US Fish and Wildlife. The interns were able to go out with our botany specialist and a few technicians to learn how to hand pollinate and visually observe the orchid in the field so that we can help with the orchid survey that started in late June. So we learned how to take the pollinia from one orchid and hand pollinate it to another orchid in order to keep the populations consistent in numbers at Midewin. Sadly, because of the drought here the population numbers are lower than normal years, but we did find enough orchids to be successful in pollinating. Hopefully at least a few set seed so they can repopulate in the coming years.
Harsha hand pollinating an orchid with a toothpick, pollen from a different orchid, and a great amount of concentration!
Whatever you do, DON’T DRINK THE WATER!
We got to work with the hydrologic technician and conduct water quality surveys around the prairie which means waders! We got to learn about the role that he plays in the health of the wildlife and prairie, what he wants to do in the future, and the equipment he uses to learn more about the water quality. We took readings with the YSI probe, gathered samples for nutrient composition, looked at the depth of the stream, and sampled for E.coli. Yes that’s right E.coli in the streams. We looked at six different streams around Midewin, some were beautifully clear with fish and crawdads swimming around, some were a little more sandy and harder to see but all were full of E.coli… Long story short, we look amazing in waders, but don’t drink the water!
CLM interns showing off our styling skills with these fashionable waders.
Carex…. Still working on it…
“Sedges have edges, Rushes are round, and Grasses have nodes from the top to the ground”
Exactly what goes through my mind when we have to identify and collect Cyperaceae (Sedges) out in the field. Luckily our mentors have given us a guide to all of the Carex species found at Midewin, but it doesn’t stop the identification process from being very stressful and long. We have started collecting Carex out in the field and wow there are a lot of them to identify in our more wetland habitats. Thankfully our techs and mentors are more than willing to help us identify the sites and species we are looking for. hopefully with time and effort we will be just as good at identifying as they are!
Dade looking to collect Carex stricta at Grant Creek Annex
As June comes to a close, I can’t believe how quickly the past few weeks have come and gone. Time flies when you are having fun…. and by fun, I of course mean keying out plants! My introduction to the Lolo National Forest has been one full of excitement and education. Moving to Missoula from the East Coast has definitely been a big adjustment, especially in terms of learning about all the plants in this region. Luckily, my mentor has been very helpful (and patient!) as he points out each plant and makes sure I can correctly identify the species we come across in the field. As I follow along on rare plant surveys and other important projects that the Lolo National Forest Botany Team takes on, I’m amazed at the beautiful landscape where I get to work every day. Sometimes I have to remember to pick my head up take a look around, even though the plants on the ground are the most exciting part. I’ve been lucky enough to map some Pinus albicaulis which are considered a sensitive species and got to document a rare plant population with my mentor, a group of little Botrychium crenulatum, how cute!
Botrychium crenulatum from a Rare Plant Survey
Another exciting learning experience I had was tagging along with the invasive/weeds team to spray for weeds at a nursery in Plains, MT. Pictured below is my coworker giving a big thumbs up after killing all the Cirsium arvense and choke weed we could find.
This last week of June I had the opportunity to attend the R1 Botany Grass Identification training in Bozeman, MT and got to meet up with some fellow Chicago Botanic Garden Interns. It was great to catch up, learn about Montana grasses and discuss the work we had each been doing in our respective forests. Overall, I am having a great experience and cannot wait for the seed collecting to begin.
I have always shied away from the sedge family (Cyperaceae), spotting them on almost every walk through woodlands, prairies, wetlands, or neighborhoods. It would usually just be a passing comment to my partner: “Look, another sedge, and another, and another,” without giving them the attention they deserve. Cyperaceae is one of the most successful and species-rich flowering plant families in the world, explaining their presence in nearly every type of habitat. If you are a fan of water chestnuts, you ought to know that you are actually eating a corm of a sedge (Eleocharis dulcis) – pretty neat! Carex, the largest genus in this family, serves as an important ecological component of wetlands and wet prairies, making them crucial for restoration purposes. As a result, they comprise over 50% of our target species list. This group is notoriously difficult to identify, but with some time, head-scratching, and magnification, it’s not all that bad. I extend a special thanks to the botanists at Midewin (Michelle, Jen, Eric, Grant, and Anna) who have willingly shared their knowledge and provided helpful resources to enhance my understanding of this group. Taking a closer look at this diverse and often overlooked family has opened my eyes to its significance and beauty in the landscape.
The eastern prairie white-fringed orchid (Platanthera leucophaea) was once abundant throughout its range. However, the conversion of its habitat, from wet to mesic prairies, into crop land or pasture, has led to a significant decline in this species, as well as in many others. During our monitoring efforts, we had the opportunity to hand-pollinate the flowers, aiming to improve the quality and quantity of seeds. Carefully gathering pollinia on toothpicks at one site, we transferred them to plants at another site. The only successful pollinators of the eastern prairie white-fringed orchid are nocturnal hawkmoths. Despite the presence of these pollinators, the populations of these orchids remain small and fragmented so human intervention is necessary. To enhance genetic diversity, pollen is transferred from one subpopulation to another. In extreme cases, it is even shipped across the Midwest to ensure the success of this species across its entire range.
I showed up to Tonasket, Washington with a car filled to the brim with memories (junk) collected (hoarded) over my 22 years of life on the East Coast, two faded bumper stickers, and an incessantly lit check engine light. Like my Massachusetts license plate, I felt a little out of place in this small, self-sufficient community.
My position with CLM and the Forest Service has found me working on the Western half of the Colville National Forest, a mountainous forest dominated by douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and pinegrass (Calamagrostis rubescens). While we wait for the forest’s forbs and grasses to mature enough for us to collect seeds, my co-intern and I have been conducting plant surveys alongside Tonasket’s botany team, searching for rare and invasive plants.
Views from Colville NF’s Buckhorn project area
At first I was intimidated by Erica, Tonasket’s head botanist’s, encyclopedic knowledge of the region’s plant species, but I appreciate deeply how much I have to learn from her. July Jenn already knows far more about plants than May Jenn did, and that is entirely thanks to Erica’s support and instruction. Some days the learning feels impossibly slow, like my team would probably run more smoothly without me there. But it’s the fact that despite my lack of experience, they’re still willing to bear with me and give me the opportunity to learn that I’m grateful for. Before, I was nervous that leaving academia meant the beginning of my brain’s deterioration, but it certainly won’t be rotting during the course of this internship.
So far, the team has successfully found several monkey flower (Erythranthe suksdorfii) a rare plant that the Forest Service has interest in cataloguing for further monitoring and protection. We’ve also gotten to visit known populations of columbia quillwort (Isoetes minima) and golden carpet (Chrysosplenium tetrandrum), rare plants that have previously been identified in Colville NF’s Buckhorn project area (the area in which we do the majority of our work). I feel incredibly lucky to have witnessed any of these plants in the wild, when I know some botany teams spend entire seasons searching for rare plants fruitlessly-no pun intended.
Every day is different in the field, and some are more challenging that others. My co-intern, David, and my first day conducting a survey independently of our mentor, Erica, sticks out as one of those days. Our task was to revisit a known population of Chrysosplenium tetrandrum, count the number of plants, and keep a running exhaustive species list of the project area. Simple enough. The very first hurdle of the day were my species identification skills (abysmal), the next was the path to our plant population sight (very overgrown). Navigating through unkempt undergrowth and over fallen trees alongside a healthy creek, while swatting mosquitos and avoiding prickly plants, I certainly got my socks wet a number of times, and sustained a healthy number of bruises. Discovering a Chrysosplenium population that had exploded since the last botanist site visit many years ago, however, was certainly worth the journey.
Everything is new to me here. The plants, the scenery, the gas prices. I can’t help but to think of the sights and sounds of east coast city life. The feeling of estrangement has been slow to fade–each day I encounter things that remind me how far I am from home. But I think it’s time for me to accept the unfamiliar, embrace the opportunity I’ve been given to work here, and hopefully to learn about myself alongside Okanogan County’s plant life.
butterfly and I enjoying the silky lupine (Lupinis sericeus)
The first week of interning was mainly an introduction to the Forest Service, trainings, learning local plant species and getting to know our team. We took trips to the field and collected plants to make our own sort of field guide to the grasslands. I also took one of the most interesting driving tests of my life. Our driving instructor (Brian Dickerson) wanted us to get some solid experience driving the trucks on dirt roads, so he took us on probably the most treacherous road in the area. I’m talking winding turns, loose gravel, lakes in the middle of the road, and steep boulders I didn’t even know the truck was capable of climbing. At the end of the day though, it did make me a more confident driver…I think. After drivers test, we got to help Brian check on some owl boxes in the area and look for frogs in the mud. Overall, 10/10.
View from the bunkhouse in Hill City, SD.Brian checking owl boxes.Homemade field guide.
Week two was where things got interesting. We started the process of aerial cover on our plots out at the Hay Canyon field site. This basically consists of moving large (heavy) “boardwalks” over each plot, identifying all species within a particular area of the plot, and then estimating the cover of each with another coworker. The first couple of days, it was pretty difficult for me to do all three of those things. I referred back to my field guide a lot and practically trial and errored my cover estimates until I could present a reasonable argument to my team member. We also started performing stem counts in the plots. For this procedure, a small PVC rectangle is placed in the lower left corner of the plot. Every single stem within this small rectangle must be identified to species and counted. Looking at the size of the rectangle, it does not seem so bad. However, some of the plots contain tricky species like Bouteloua gracilis, Bouteloua dactyloides, and Carex filifolia. Picking through each and every stem, verifying it is an actual stem, identifying it, and recording it can become a bit tedious at times, but I do feel quite accomplished when I am finished. Aerial cover and stem counts made up the majority of this last month, and I have gotten pretty good at identifying plant species.
Hay Canyon Field Site. (Those tiny specs are people).My best friend. Stem count quadrat.
Stem demography was next on the training list. We took measurements of development stage, stem length, and leaf length of marked grasses within each plot. This activity was rather cushy, compared to aerial cover and stem counts. One person sits and records all the numbers, while the other looks measures the stems of a small amount of grasses.
We also learned some new skills when it comes to measuring soil moisture, weather patterns, and maintaining the equipment. There are PVC tubes that go straight into the ground in the middle of each plot. Using a soil moisture probe, we can precisely measure changes in the soil throughout the growing season. We also use less advanced probes to measure the soil moisture at just two specific depths using a system called EC-5. The weather station monitors sunlight, wind, and precipitation at each of the field sites. We learned how to perform checks on all of the equipment. Lastly, our rainout shelters are an important part of the project. They simulate an extreme drought by blocking 50% of the precipitation a plot receives. Studying the differences in plant species and demography at these plots tells us a lot about how the grassland responds to drought. The shelter (see picture below) is at the mercy of the elements. The plastic shingles can become brittle in the sunlight, be severely damaged by the wind, and most recently, be absolutely annihilated by hail. After the last big storm, every single one of our rainout shelters at the badlands site was damaged and needed shingles to be replaced. Needless to say, we all learned a lot about maintaining these shelters.
Rainout shelter
After we finished aerial cover, stem counts, and stem demography for the Hay Canyon site, we got to move on to the Cedar Pass site, which is just south of Badlands National Park. The views from this site are beautiful, and the flora and fauna is just as interesting. However, the mosquitos, flies, and extreme heat were a bit much some days. It felt like no matter how much deet bug spray I put on, the insects still wanted to be all up in my business (and eyes, and nose, and ears). Like Tess said one day, “The flies are a great motivator to finish your stem counts quickly”. Last week, the heat got pretty unbearable in the badlands. There was little to no wind, no cloud cover, and radiating heat all day. I drank more water than I think I have my whole life and still ended up a little light headed. At least the view is good!
Cedar Pass Field Site view.
Our team has some fun stories and quirks. One of our supervisors, Jackie, is super energetic and even has her own catchphrases. “Take it to eleven”, referencing the movie “This is Spinal Tap” is one of them. One of the other interns, Kyle, always has a crazy story to tell about childhood, college, or culinary masterpieces (i.e. something he calls “Creamy Beans”). Perhaps one of the most interesting quirks of the team is the banana peel game. This all started when one of their previous seasonals threw a banana peel at Jackie. This seasonal, Brian, and Jackie began a years long banana war, where they would either throw banana peels at each other or hide them in some way. Think: banana peels on cars, in the mail, at your desk, etc. One day, I had a banana at lunch, and Jackie asked for the peel. She placed part of the peel on the dash of our coworkers car, and the other part in the gas cap. Our coworker later found the peel and sent a very serious text about his theories on how the rainout shelters got so destroyed. He believes it was not the hail, but in fact a very devious banana. The holes in the rainout shelters are about the the right size, so it makes sense. Jackie thinks it was more likely a cutie clementine, but apparently they are more into credit card fraud then destruction of property.
So far, I really like working with my team and living the Black Hills. When I am not counting grass out in the middle of no-man’s-land, I am most often enjoying the camping, hiking, and fishing in the area with my boyfriend. The views are stellar, and fishing is pretty good too :).
In southern Alaska, Colorado’s aspens and canyons are replaced by yellow and red cedar, by spruce and vast ocean. Utah’s diverse plant life – small geniuses in the art of conserving water – exchange places with green ferns and mossy forest floor, well-acquainted with rain and hungry for speckled light that dances slantways through dense canopy. Here, in southern Alaska, bald eagles attach to telephone wires, and locals are accustomed to the great bird’s presence. Bears follow your scent and encourage you to maintain conversation between field partners, to keep your eyes alert and to pay attention. Boats are about as common as cars for transport, and the concept of vast and grand exceed their common definitions.
Working on the Tongass National Forest this past month has meant a lot of different things. My field partner and I spent many days scouting and vouchering at potential seed collection sites, and there we collected data on the various native plant species in the area – their phenology, their population density, when we can anticipate they will go to seed. We helped out on a stream restoration crew, jamming logs into stream banks to restore meanders and a diversity of water-flow and attempt to build back habitat for spawning salmon. On one Saturday, I helped local kids paint imprints of salmon on blank T-shirts. On other days, we spent time training in safety protocols and herbicide use. We visited timber-harvest sale areas and while they looked at the trees, we looked at the understory with an eye out for anything rare, or lacking in abundance.
Identifying grasses with the larger Tongass National Forest Botany crew.
Lunch with the stream restoration crew.
While doing so, I have learned several things:
Plants, being immobile, have one of the broadest ranges of living beings.
Muskegs are the definition of the abundance of the small.
Skunk cabbage can grow taller than me, and spread wider too.
While plants in the desert might be smart in the conservation of water, plants in the rainforest know how to use water to their full advantage.
Rare plants, when you find them, feel like the most precious thing in the world.
Everything, that is, everything… is slippery.
Youth-on-age; Tolmiea menziesii.
Red Columbine; Aquilegia canadensis.
Each of these lessons stem from impactful experiences, yet perhaps the most impactful moment for me on the job this month occurred when we were conducting rare plant surveys and monitoring projects. While attending a forest-wide botany training on Prince of Wales Island – a remote four-hour ferry ride from our home Ranger District in Ketchikan – one of these rare species we were surveying and monitoring for was Yellow lady’s slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum var. pubescens). Often only showing a small, lush leaf or two, the elegant and plump lady’s slipper hides among large ferns and nestles in muskegs. She revels in the company of grasses and is what we call a “roadside rare.” How strange that such a scarce plant tends to grow best along the marginal edge of gravel roads. There are only four documented clusters of this variety of Cypripedium parviflorum on the Tongass NF. We located all four. At each site, we had multiple sets of eyes scanning every inch of ground for stems – for they are not only rare, but difficult to find. The first three sites were relatively abundant and some were in full flower, but the specimen we found at the fourth site was in poor shape. Reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) reaching heights of four or five feet nearly covered the entire plant, and tree debris from a recent brushing procedure almost buried the few stems that were left.
Surveying for Yellow lady’s slipper (Cypripedium parviflorum var. pubescens).
The leaves were visibly chewed through and drooping. The chances of this fourth plant surviving seemed slim. I found myself questioning what to do. How do we choose to manage our forests? How do we decide to put our resources toward doing everything we can to attempt bringing this small cluster of stems to thrive again or acknowledge that we might not help this one, and to divert our work elsewhere? Conservation and land management is a complex task. It means making decisions about living beings other than yourself, while also managing for and understanding the impacts of your own species. It means taking the time to find the rare in the abundant, so that the ones not often spoken for might be.
Yellow lady’s slipper; Cypripedium parviflorum var. pubescens.
While the extent of our work for seed collections has been mapping potential population areas and scouting around the Caribou-Targhee, my co-intern Alex and I have been lucky enough to help out on a number of different projects, as well as spending a lot of time getting to know the plant populations here in Southeast Idaho. While working with a variety of resources across the forest, we have learned about riparian restoration, soil surveying, field photography, burn restoration, environmental education, and horsemanship. Every day is filled with opportunities to meet new people on the forest and pick up new skills.
View from Snakey Canyon while learning about NRCS soil/vegetation surveys
One of my favorite projects we worked on had us in the field with the Palisades wildlife biologists doing goshawk surveys on various project areas in the forest. Goshawks are considered a sensitive species by the Forest Service, so any project that might alter the habitat needs to undergo monitoring to determine if there are any nesting individuals present in the area. After spending hours bushwhacking through the forest, surrounded by swarms of mosquitos, we were rewarded by seeing a male goshawk circling above us. When we returned to the area hours later, we once again spotted a male goshawk. Chris, the lead wildlife biologist, told us that this behavior likely indicates that there may have been a nest in the area. The next day, we went out to a different section of the forest to monitor a known nesting site of a female goshawk. Goshawks may build several nests in a given area and can return to the same nest year after year, so they had known of a few potential nesting sites that this hawk may have returned to, and earlier this season the wildlife crew had found the nest that she chose for the season. Joe, the wildlife biologist we worked with that day, told us how this hawk’s mate had been killed last summer at a local ski resort and that they weren’t sure if there would be any signs of reproductive activity at the nest because goshawks sometimes mate for life. After arriving to the nest site and settling down into the undergrowth to watch the nest, we noticed her eyeing us (I can say with certainty that I now understand the expression “watching like a hawk”). Goshawks are notoriously defensive of their nests, and I had heard from several coworkers that we should be on the lookout for divebombing birds- some even suggested sitting with a large stick on top of our heads to give the hawks something other than our scalps to aim for! Luckily, this female opted to keep a sharp eye on our group. After sitting in captivated silence for a while, we noticed motion underneath the female, and spotted the fuzzy white bodies of at least two chicks in the nest. Going out with the wildlife biologists was a really cool experience as it gave me a chance to understand a bit more about all the steps a project needs to go through before action can happen on the forest. Even though a management plan may be as simple as removing fuels from the forest floor, it can have serious unintended impacts on the sensitive species in the area and ultimately damage the ecology of the forest.
Female goshawk in her nest
Another highlight of my time on the CT was helping out with a botany walk that my mentor set up for a group called Great Old Broads for Wilderness. During this botany walk, I got the chance to show off what I have been learning for the past month and help teach a group about plant identification and some of the native species present in the Teton Valley. The ladies that attended the walk were very enthusiastic and asked a lot of great questions about the plants in the area and some of the disturbances they were seeing along our hike. We got to tell them about the work we are doing for our seed collections, and they were very curious about what the point of seed collection was, the process of finding and collecting seed for various plants, and what they could do to help our project. I have worked in environmental education and outreach in the past, so it was fun to get to work with the public and educate a group about the work we are doing, especially because this group was so excited about learning new plants and exploring the forest with us.
While the first month has been filled with a ton of great experiences, it hasn’t come without its challenges. The first weeks of waiting for the field season to kick into gear definitely left me feeling a bit useless around the office, especially with the various difficulties I had in my Forest Service onboarding process. We have also faced many technical issues with Fieldnotes, making it difficult to document the work that we do with surveying for our target species. This, combined with our late start to surveying work, made it feel like we weren’t doing enough work for our seed collection project. Hopefully, as we move later into the season, we will be more able to make progress towards our seed collection goals!
Much of what we saw on our early hikes up near Moose Pass, AK were the opening fiddle head ferns just barely rising out of the ground. According to our mentor, this spring is unlike most with all the cool temperatures and rain. It took until late June for plants to start flowering. Overall, Josh and I have counted 3 days that we’ve seen the sun shine where we live off Kenai Lake. This has been a blessing and a curse, as it has given us ample time to practice and prepare, but also shortens our window for our seed collections.
Fiddle Head Ferns, Matteuccia struthiopteris, along Ptarmigan Lake Trail
Up until this point, we have been floating around different departments to help with projects. One of them involved putting up fencing along the Russian River to prevent any damage or loss to the vegetation along the bank during sport fishing season, where ~150,000 people come to this small campground area to fish over the course of two months. Another project we worked on was treating European Bird Cherry, Prunus padus. In a team of about 4 people, we went in to off-trail National Forest land areas around Hope, AK to find invasive Bird Cherry trees and used Field Maps to create a polygon and record data. The actual treatment entailed hand sawing the smaller saplings and hanging them about 4 feet above the ground to prevent regrowth from the nodes. Herbicide was also applied by our mentor. Another project we participated in was goshawk surveying. This ongoing project focuses on goshawk nesting habitat because habitat degradation is understood to be one of the primary causes of reduced breeding goshawks, thus making it a sensitive and rare species. This process involves going out to previously recorded nest sites, playing a goshawk distress call to see if one shows up, and checking the area for hatchling feathers and fresh feces near the base of the old nests.
One of the areas we are covering for a plant phenology project on iNaturalist is the Trail of Blue Ice, where you’re able to see glaciers that hang from the gullies and ravines in the mountains that border the portage valley. Although there isn’t much flowering right now, we were able to observe small populations of Achillea millefolium, Lupinusnootkatensis, and Geummacrophyllum from our priority species list that are just beginning to bud. We also found Carex macrochaeta, which is common along some of the trails we have hiked. After verifying the species and discussing with our mentor, we agreed that it should be included in our priority species list, as it is a wetland indicator. Because this is the first year the Chugach has had seed collectors, it has been quite exciting to bust out the old plant presses and be a part of building the foundation for future CLM interns.
Lower lake on the Trail of Blue Ice, where a glacier can be seen in the mountains behind Carex macrochaeta, a wetland indicator species that will be added to our list
We have be able to document collection sites for about 7 species on our list. I expect to collect Lupinus nootkatensis seeds first, as they are starting to fruit. We have also practiced collecting data and pressing plants for voucher specimens, which has been another challenge to dry out the material in this humid environment. I cant wait for what July will bring!
Our attempt at drying pressed specimensNootka Lupin along Resurrection Pass Trail South
Enjoying the rare glimpse of sunshine and some homemade cheesecake off the shore of Kenai Lake
From Left to Right: Bald Eagle over the streets of Ketchikan, Dorsal Fin of an Orca, American Red Squirrel; Bottom Row: Dorsal Fin of a Humpback Whale, Roughskin Newt chillin
The first month of this journey has been everything I was hoping for and more! The Tongass NF is so vast and filled with dense wilderness, it’s much more accessible by float plane or boat than by car. So we’ve been traveling mostly by boat, which can present challenges with rough seas or stormy days. However, the weather has been surprisingly incredibly nice. The tales of torrential rain 7 days a week were greatly over exaggerated (please don’t let this jinx me).
As we wait for our targeted species to flower, develop fruits, and then go to seed, we have filled our time with trainings, scouting, rare species surveys, and micro timber sale surveys. We’ve also done a few personal use timber surveys, a program that I believe is unique to Alaska. Each Alaskan resident is given the opportunity to take 10,000 board feet of timber for their personal use (usually to build a house or stock up on firewood). So i’ve gone out to a few different islands with the timber crew to survey the trees they’ve chosen to make sure it’s 150 ft away from any streams or eagles nest, the forest floor is clear of any rare species, and outside of any cultural resource sites. It’s been an interesting experience, my preconceived bias was that these individuals would want the biggest and easiest trees to extract. However, the individuals were very environmentally conscious, and turned down trees that they felt would disturb the ecology of the forest. Its refreshing to see how connected the residents here are with the forest, something that is not as common in other parts of America.
Anyways, I’m super excited for the rest of this adventure. I’ve learned a ton and can’t wait to absorb even more!
Left to Right: Canoeing to Lake Shelokum’s shelter, A big gash in an old growth stump, some beautiful Lupine , Bottom Row: rare fern species on botany training week, Me driving the boat with my upside down member CBG hat, surveying for yellow lady slipper.
