We’ve returned from Central in one piece, and it was definitely an interesting stint. We were out in the field from September 11-22, which proved to be well into the Alaskan autumn. When we arrived, the birch leaves were aglow in all their ochre glory, and by the time we left, the trees were bare and the flurries were falling.

Central, as seen from the helicopter

It was a bit challenging (and admittedly sometimes frustrating) to ID Salix spp. that lacked catkins entirely, and sometimes with senescing leaves.

Mornings were often in the mid- to lower-20s (Fahrenheit), and midday rarely exceeded the mid-60s. It was a dream come true. And, to add to the whimsicality of it all, I saw my first aurora borealis!

But the wonder doesn’t stop there. The ranges surrounding Central — the White Mountains, the Crazy Mountains, the Victoria Mountains, etc– are interesting because that region of Alaska was never glaciated. Thus, the rolling topography there hasn’t been scoured by glacial retreat or carved into arrêtés and valleys. It isn’t the scenery one typically envisions when imagining Alaska, but its shrub-dwarf/lichen expanses are majestic in their own right.

Still, there remain many exciting things ahead in our final 90 hours as CLM interns. Today we checked the final box on our SOS-organizing checklist (at least from the herbarium end), and our vouchers are on their way to the Smithsonian (and to Fairbanks) as I type.

And, at the end of this month, there will be not one but TWO conferences at which to publicly botanize! The first is the Alaska Invasive Species Conference, for which Katie, our co-intern in Fairbanks, will be visiting! The second is the 2014 Alaska Botanical Forum, at which Charlotte and I will be presenting on our CLM adventures. Good stuff, no?

Hope all is well in the lower 48!

BB

With our SOS goals met and exceeded, field season is finally coming to a close. At the end of August, we traveled to the remote town of McGrath to make our final SOS collections via helicopter. Three days and forty-two collections later, we met our 70-collection quota for the season! Upon returning to Anchorage, the following week was spent digitizing and organizing data, and on Thursday we sent our seed off to the Plant Materials Center in Palmer for cleaning and processing. Since then, we’ve been mounting vouchers more or less constantly.

Floodplains just west of McGrath

Nomex and voucher-material-collecting

The panoramic vista from our collection site at Mystery Mountain

Polygonal tundra!

.

Last week, I joined a handful of folks from the BLM Anchorage office, The Kuskokwim Corporation (a Native corporation), and the Army Corps of Engineers on a trip to Red Devil Mine. Red Devil Mine is a retired cinnabar mining facility is currently being rehabilitated by the BLM. Thus far, engineers have rerouted Red Devil Creek so as to minimize contamination from old pilings. My task was to collect seed and to scout for potential next-season SOS collections so that local seed sources will be available when the project reaches the revegetation stage.

Cinnabar! Presumably the namesake of the village, too.

On Thursday, we leave for our final stint with the NRCS Soil/EcoSite Survey crews. This time we’re headed up to the village of Central, which lies about 100mi NE of Fairbanks, and with the Alaskan Autumn already in full swing, it promises to be a chilly stint indeed.

Immersing myself in Alaska’s autumn ochre while backpacking in Kachemak Bay State Park

All in all, it’s been a wonderfully productive field season. I’m sad to see the long days fade, but I’m excited for the season of winter sports and kitschy sweaters to commence!

Until our return from Central,
BB

The past month has been both fantastic and exhausting! Most of my July was spent in the backcountry: I first spent two weeks on the remote Sitkinak Island (SE of Kodiak Island) where I served as a biotech/botanist for an NRCS Soil/Eco Site Survey, then cashed in all of my accrued comp hours to go backpacking in the Bitterroots with one of my best friends.

As is the case for southern Kodiak Island, spruce and alder have yet to reach Sitkinak. This makes ecological site descriptions a bit more complicated than usual: because most of the preexisting descriptions involve alder and spruce or their eventual succession, the communities on Sitkinak don’t quite “fit” the typical community delineations. Though that’s ultimately a task for the senior NRCS ecologist to tackle, I thoroughly enjoyed discussing what it means to be a Reference Plant Community in this context, and the pros and cons of our current methodology for site description.

In the absence of alder and spruce, then, the island is dominated by forbs, graminoids, and occasional Salix sp. which is quite alright with the 500 or so cattle whose ancestors have inhabited the island since 1937.  The Alaska Meat Company currently holds the grazing rights for both East and West Sitkinak, and for you omnivores out there interested in conscientious meat consumption, it’s difficult to beat the degree of “free range” achieved on Sitkinak.

It’s also hard to beat the views that Sitkinak affords. It would seem our NRCS crew somehow pleased the gods, because the skies remained blue for eleven of our fourteen days on usually-grey-and-misty Sitkinak.

Until next time, I’ll leave you folks with a few highlights of the island!

Looking out at Kodiak over an Eriophorum-Sphagnum dominated swale

Looking east toward the northern end of east Sitkinak

Looking east toward the southern end of east Sitkinak

Sitkinak’s primary river

The lagoon dividing the two islands

Solidago-graminoid plains

Diggin’ holes and findin’ plants!

Since departing Chicago, the Alaskan summer season is gaining momentum and, consequently, my work has guided me to a number of breathtakingly beautiful locations. The Friday I returned home, we (I, my co-intern, and a group of AK NHP staff) ascended Sheep Mountain in search of any interesting or uncommon calcophiles that might be growing along its steep, gypsum-talus slopes. As you can see, stunning scenery abounds on and around Sheep Mountain, and my co-intern even spotted an uncommon Oxytropis, O. huddelsonii.

Looking N at Sheep Mountain from “the parking lot”

Looking S from a bench on Sheep Mountain toward Mount Thor

Crazy cool rocks of Sheep Mountain

After finishing up some FORVIS walkthroughs at Campbell Creek Science Center here in Anchorage, the following week sent us to Fairbanks for two (grey, rainy) days of training, for ATVs and NRCS Botany protocols, respectively. We used the return drive as an opportunity to scout for potential SOS collection sites. After a very long day of travel and scouting, we set out to explore our final site of the day, and I suddenly found myself butt-deep in mud while trying to cross a stream. I’m not sure whether it was genuinely funny or a byproduct of delirium, but it’s been a long time since I’ve laughed that hard. Good ol’ field memories in the making. (Ah, the wonderful feeling of cool mud in your XtraTufs!) All in all, our scouting trip was moderately successful. Even when we were unsuccessful, though, it’s hard to grow discouraged with the Alaska range smiling down at you.

Site #1 – Donnelly Creek Recreation Area

Site #2 – Gunnysack Creek

This week, I’m alone at the NHP, mounting specimens and helping one of my mentors with some morphometrics research, while my co-intern is out in the Yukon Flats with NRCS. I’m a bit of an herbarium nerd, so I’m excited to spend some quality time here before shipping out to Sitkinak Island with NRCS next week.

Until next month, fellow CLMers!

Mt. Robson from the Shore of Kinney Lake

Eleven days; nine major highways; eight states and provinces; seven national parks; six national forests; and five state and provincial parks later, I arrived in Anchorage, Alaska from Shreveport, Louisiana.

We made it!

My trek traversed the southern plains, semi-arid prairies, the cold deserts, the western cordillera, the boreal cordillera, and the marine west coast forests. Along the way I met new Betula, Anemone, Lupinus, Erigeron, Trillium, and Equisetum species, as well as a plethora of nonvasculars.

My co-intern and I have been working in Anchorage for just over a week now, partnered with both BLM and the Alaska Natural Heritage Program, and most of our time thus far has been spent either in training or in the herbarium, familiarizing myself with common species and speciose genera. For me, it was initially a bit overwhelming to be confronted with a flora so radically different from that with which I’m familiar, but our mentors have provided excellent resources and enthusiastic support. We’re also scheduled to do field surveys sometime this week, and I imagine meeting the plants in “person” (i.e., three dimensions) will certainly help in learning their names.

Today was spent weighing, packinging, and labelling seed from last year’s Seeds of Success collections, and it was exciting to see the fruit (no pun intended) of last year’s interns’ labors. The Plant Materials Center, which houses Alaska’s S.O.S. program, is near Butte, AK in the Matanuska Valley. This was easily the most scenic lunch I’ve ever taken.

Our first field outing– shortly after the Chicago training session– will be with NRCS, and we’re headed to the Chandalar Shelf in the Brooks Range! My excitement exceeds that which the English language is sufficient to describe. I’m continually grateful for this opportunity to contribute meaningfully and to travel to such phenomenally beautiful locations.

More to come after our stint in the field!

Bonnie B.
Anchorage BLM Office & AK-NHP