I can’t believe how fast the time has gone; 5 months are almost up already.  Things have slowed down a bit; we had populations scouted out, but we realized the seeds will take too long to mature.  It is an in between period right now; the early blooming plant seeds are already dehisced and the later blooming plants won’t seed until after we’re gone.  There are only a few populations that we are waiting on, the rest of the time we’re filling with monitoring for rare plants.  We got to read some EAs (Environmental Assessments) in order to know about what areas we were surveying and why.  It was really interesting to learn more about EAs and how they’re used.

I also got to do some rangeland health monitoring this month, backpack herbicide spraying, and I floated down the Green River.  All 3 were great experiences but floating down the river was obviously my favorite!  We were supposed to be checking the campsites down the river to make sure that they were free of trash, debris, and see if they had toilets that they were clean; however, most of the sites had been checked the day before so we basically just got to float!  It was a gorgeous day for the trip too.  The rangeland health monitoring was helpful to me because it allowed me to see how sites were determined to be healthy or not.  Also, we got to see 2 moose that day (my first ever in the wild) so that was pretty exciting. And finally, backpack spraying was backpack spraying…nothing new there, but I was glad I was able to help out the weed guys.

So in the 4 months that we’ve been here our truck had 1 ply tires…which with the roads around here was not very fun.  We ended up having 6 flat tires, which finally encouraged our supervisor to put in a request for better tires.  So with 1 month left we got 6 ply tires! Yay!  Hopefully no more flats for the rest of our internship.

I think that’s pretty much it for the month of August, I’ll leave you with a picture of the moose and floating the river.

The moose we saw while doing rangeland health monitoring

Scouting out which way to go down the rapids

Since the CLM workshop in Chicago, Jess and I have been quite busy!  Unfortunately during Chicago we lost a few of the populations which we had previously scouted out; the Hesperostipa comata and the Grayia spinosa had already matured and lost their seeds.  We have collected from 10 different populations so far.  We were skeptical at first about our ability to collect 10,000 seeds per population, but we have not had an issue.  We did an estimate on the number of seeds we collected for Cleome lutea using the weight of 100-500 seeds and then using the total collection weight; we estimated that we collected around 75,000 seeds.  We also did the weight estimate with our population of Eriogonum alatum which we only spent about 30 minutes collecting and each fruit only has one seed.  Amazingly, after that amount of time we estimated that we had already collected 4,500 seeds!

At first we were uncertain about the best method, but we quickly learned as we collected Acnatherum hymenoides. We thought the best method was to cut off the infructescence. However, by doing this we had to do a lot of manual cleaning by hand before sending the seeds off to Bend, OR.  Other interns informed us that stripping the seeds right away worked a lot better and resulted in little to no chaff, so we made sure to do this as best as we could for our other collections.

While most of our time since Chicago has been spent locating populations and collecting seeds, we have been able to do a couple other things to diversify our experience.  We went out with our herbicide guy and learned about a few of the different invasive species in our area.  We marked the plants for him so he was able to treat that area.  We also were trained on the methods of how to assess PFC (proper functioning condition) on streams.  Finally, we spent a week working with SWCA, an environmental consulting group, monitoring plots of Sclerocactus wetlandicus and S. brevispinus.

It has been a full month with lots of learning and adventures 🙂

The second month has brought the transition from rare plant monitoring to seeds of success (SOS).  We’ve added Penstemon grahamii to our list of rare species we’ve monitored, but other than that we have spent the majority of our time locating populations for SOS and doing all the background work for collections.  So far we’ve scouted out 10 or 11 populations from which we’ve collected herbarium samples and filled out the data sheets on.  However, this week we spent our time at the CBG Workshop and we’re rethinking some of our collection sites, based on the information we learned here.

Even though we’ve been working for 2 months, getting to go to the CBG Workshop has been an amazing experience.  I’ve met a lot of the other interns and got to hear about their experience in different areas of the US and got to hear about some of the different foci of the internships, although most are SOS.  I thought my co-worker and I would be the minority here, having already started, and that most of the other interns would be just starting, but it turns out there are only a handful of people that are starting this week; most have worked 1 or 2 months already.  The most helpful thing from the workshop was learning about SOS.  We found out some of the best collection methods, how to make certain our collection will have over 10,000 seeds, how to use a Munsell soil chart, and the drying and shipping process.  After the workshop, I’m going to feel a lot more confident going back to Vernal and making collections.

Right before we left for the workshop we checked out all of our seed collection populations to start making collections.  However, most of our populations were not at natural dispersal stage, so when we get back this coming week we’re going to have a lot of catching up to do.  Aside from that we also have a lot of commitments in the month of June.  We plan on doing a week long survey with SWCA to monitor Sclerocactus wetlandicus, we’re going to teach kids about plants at a workshop, and we’re getting taken around the Pariette Wetlands one day to prepare for the workshop.  Hopefully we’ll be able to keep up with everything!

Here is a picture of some of the CLM interns at the Workshop as well as the Penstemon we surveyed for.

My internship is taking place with the BLM in Vernal, UT.  The main thing that my coworker (another CLM intern) and I will accomplish is rare plant monitoring and seed collections for seeds of success.  Coming from Michigan, the plants, wildlife, and climate are a whole new experience for me.  Our mentor is essentially doing 3 jobs, so we don’t get a lot of time to go out in the field and learn from him; instead we try and key out plants we find every day or bring back plants that stump us and ask our mentor.  The list of plants I can point out in the field is getting pretty long!  The shrubs still stump me…they all look so similar.  I definitely don’t have an eye for those yet.  My keying skills and my botanical vocabulary is improving though.

I’ve been here 5 weeks now, the majority of which have been spent locating populations of 3 different species, Sclerocactus wetlandicus, Schoenocrambe argillacea, and Schoenocrambe suffrutescens.  We’re also slowly trying to locate populations of other species for seed collections as we monitor the rare plants.  The other thing we’ve done was collection for genetics testing.  We spent 2 days collecting buds from “different” cactus species so that genetics testing could be done to see if they really are separate species.

While the work we’ve done so far hasn’t had much variety, we’ve managed to have quite a few adventures.  On Tuesday we literally ran into our first rattlesnake of the season.  We were walking through some sagebrush when we almost stepped on it; unfortunately we saw it before we heard it.  It was striking at us, but thankfully we walked away without getting bitten.  It wasn’t the best way to start our morning.  Then on Wednesday we got a flat tire in a really remote location and couldn’t get the winch on the truck to lower the spare….which led to us having to be rescued.

Those were 2 unfortunate experiences, but I’ve had some really good ones too!  While we were taking our lunch break on the side of a cliff (while surveying for clay reed mustard) we got to watch ranchers herd cattle.  We also got to watch a thunderstorm roll in and we found an elk antler, a coyote skull, and another antler.  Since everything is really starting to flower now, it’s a gorgeous time to be outside.  It is absolutely beautiful out here (aside from all the well pads) and I can’t get over how far you can see!