I’m two months into my CLM internship at the Eagle Lake Field Office, in Susanville, CA, and I have been reflecting on the ways in which water, while not always present, has shaped and shapes my new home. Moving to Susanville, a dry town on the edge of the Great Basin from New Orleans, a humid swamp, has been quite the change in water regimes. After recent heavy rain events New Orleans’ pumps system failed, resulting in local flooding. And now, with Tropical Storm Harvey headed towards Louisiana, New Orleans is gearing up for more flooding. But out here in my new town, I have seen it rain only a handful of times. However, when it does rain, lightning strikes and starts often ensue.

This was one of the prettiest springs we have seen on our field office.

Besides the potential for fire, in the high desert, standing water brings life. American avocets forage along the edges of mudflats, Canadian geese prepare their young for a long migration south in ephemeral ponds, and foot prints dot the edges almost every water sources we have visited. Plus, there are always a few “regulars” around streams and springs:denseflower boisduvalia (Epilobium densiflorum), field hosetail (Equisetum arvense), povertyweed (Iva axillaris), dock (Rumex sp.) and if you’re lucky, aspen, (Populus tremuloides). After a high snowpack and unseasonably high spring rain events, many of the flats, ephemeral wetlands, and stock ponds on our field office are full of water, an uncommon sight so I’m told. Even the playa where Burning Man is currently being held (not on our field office, but close) was filled with water relatively late into the summer. With the unusual snow melt, we were able to find a special status plant (Gratiola heterosepala) that has not been seen the area in a few years due to the California drought. During the past month, my fellow co-intern and I have had the opportunity to visit a few multiple stream monitoring sites across our field office. The first couple we visited were unusable after the high spring stream flow events bent the steel pipes where the gauges were housed. But this past week we visited a couple more that survived the f!

A week or so after the mudflats dried up, these sunflowers (Helianthos sp.) began popping up, bringing a pop of color to the landscape.

Even where you least expect it, water brings life- in this case, hotsprings (like the one above) draw quite the crowd.

Water has also shaped the nature of our seed collections this season. My co-intern and I have been having difficulty finding perennial bunch grasses with seed, which we believe is due to the high snow melt and heavy rains at the beginning of the summer. Many of the people at our office hypothesize that that unusual precipitation patterns resulted in the grasses putting more energy into above their ground growth. After the rains, the heat wave that followed resulted in a spontaneous abortion of seeds. But fortunately, we have been able to locate other populations that have been keeping us busy.

A photo from our wood’s rose (Rosa woodsii) collection.

Wild burros visiting one of the reservoirs on our field office.

I was super excited to find this parasitic rydberg’s broomrape (Orobanche corymbosa) in a recently flooded field.

Until next time,

Mike

Hello! My name is Mike Mahoney, and this is my first blog post as a CLM intern. Following training in mid-June, I trekked 2,100 miles cross country in my tiny hybrid and arrived at my home base for the next 5 months, Susanville, California. Just an hour and a half north of Reno, Susanville sits in a valley at the intersection three different eco-regions with the Great Basin to the east, the Sierra Nevada Mountains Range to the west, and the Cascades to the north. For the next 5 months I’ll be working out of the Bureau of Land Management’s Eagle Lake Field Office. The office mostly manages rangeland in the Great Basin to the north and south east of the city in both California and Nevada

From one of the trails in Susanville Ranch Park, you can get a great view of Susanville! Check out the snow capped Diamond Mountains, a part of the Sierra Nevada’s, in the background.

During my first two weeks in office, my co-intern and I spent a good deal of time getting ourselves acquainted with the field office and the lands managed. At first glance, there does not seem to be much out on these lands. A good deal of the management area is mountainous and rocky, covered in mid thigh height shrubs or grass, only to be broken up by the occasional riparian area or table land. Much to my surprise, there is a large demand for public land, even though it may look to just be sitting there unused. Our office manages the land for cattle grazing, wild horse populations, off terrain vehicle usage, other outdoor recreation purposes (ie. camping, hiking, etc.), and last but certainly not least, conservation and restoration of native flora and fauna. Additionally, in our office we have range experts, archeologists, wildlife biologists, and ecologists, all with different agendas and expectations for management strategies. It’s a dynamic and exciting process with real outcomes!

Burrowing owls are some of the sensitive animal species our field office manages! This owl was found at a site adjacent to some of our sage brush study plots.

Now, as a transplant to the west, I have a lot to learn about the natural history of the area and the cultures of the people that shape this landscape. Hopefully by the end of this internship, I will be better acquainted with not only the native plants, seed collection, and monitoring strategies, but that I also will gain new insight into this holistic management process.

We took a trip to naturally occurring sand dunes in our management area. Check out my co intern Jake’s post to see some of the Ponderosa Pines growing at the location!