As my last days on the Monongahela came closer I started to do a lot of reflection on my experiences and time as a CLM intern. Making the decision to come to West Virginia was a big step in both my personal and professional life. When I first moved to West Virginia in May, it was less than a week after I graduated college. This fast transition from submitting my final assignments to starting to take my first steps towards building a post-grad career was overwhelming, but I don’t think I would have it any other way. In those few days, I was excited to begin my journey in my professional career, but was not sure what to expect. After looking back on my time here, I am happy to say that I have had so many accomplishments on both a professional and personal level during my time as a CLM intern.

To start, the professional experience I gained while being a CLM has been so beneficial towards allowing me to understand what I am interested in and what I want to do in my future. One of my favorite things from this past internship was being able to see and learn about the Forest Service. Growing up I was aware of National Forests, BLM, Fish and Wildlife, and National Parks, but never actually knew what they did or how they were all different. Being partnered with the Forest Service for this internship I had the opportunity to work with different people within the Monongahela and their partners to gain an inside look at the ways that people with different specialties are able to come together to conserve public lands. One of my favorite examples includes the restoration work on the old mined lands throughout the Monongahela. I have talked about the restoration process in previous blog posts, so I wont repeat myself, but when it comes to large scale restoration projects there are so many different aspects that have to be thought about before, during, and after. This means there has to be a diverse group of people collaborating in order to accomplish the projects. The forest service, specifically on the Monongahela, does a really good job at bringing together many different people with diverse backgrounds and continue to increase this collaboration through partnerships, contracts, and collaborations with non-profits, contracted companies, and Universities. 

Another amazing thing I learned while doing this internship was not only does the Forest Service work to protect and restore the land, but they are also work hard to allow the public to enjoy and engage with this land. On example is the recreation team. While working with the recreation staff, I realized how much time goes into maintaining trails, campsites, and other public spaces to allow people to explore and embrace nature by hiking, camping, fishing, and hunting on the forest. Then there is the timber team that will harvest wood in certain parts of the forest. One example of this harvesting was on the red spruce restoration sites. When the old minded lands were originally restored the ground was densely compacted and planted with red pine and other trees that are not native to those ecosystems. So to start the restoration process the non-native trees needed to be removed or nocked down so the soil can be loosened and native trees like red spruce can be planted. One way of getting rid of them was by logging and selling these trees. It was a useful way to remove the trees to begin the process of restoring the land and also use the non-native trees in other ways. 

Not only did I learn a lot about the Forest Service, I also learned a lot about myself over the past six months. To start, living in West Virginia was a big change from the last two places that I have lived. I grew up in Phoenix Arizona, and went to college in Chicago, Illinois. Both of these places are urban and highly populated, where as Marlinton, West Virginia is almost the opposite with only a little over 1,000 people as the population. It was a big change and took me a little while to get used to the rural area, but it didn’t take me long to realize how great the community its and it quickly grew on me. Moving to new places are never easy, but having this experience to live in another state and completely different environment than I am used to showed me how adaptable I can be and how exciting new experiences and new places are. One of the things I liked the most about living in West Virginia has been the ability to be immersed in the outdoors. I was able to use my free time on the weekends to explore all around the Monongahela forest, but also other state parks in the area. Some of the cool places I was able to explore include Blackwater Falls, Watoga State Park, New River Gorge National Park and Preserve, Seneca State Forest, and other places around West Virginia. Being here for six months showed me just how much I enjoy activities like hiking and camping but also allowed me to learn some useful tips like doing research about a trail and taking the extra time to downloading the trail map is probably a good idea. 

Overall, this experience has allowed me to grow so much as an individual both personally and professionally.Which reminds me of one of my favorite John Muir quotes “In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks”. Having this opportunity to be a CLM intern, I was able to be out in nature allowing me to learn what I expected to learn about the Forest Service and ways to conserve/manage public lands, but even more than I expected about myself. Being in nature and conserving our lands is something that I am really passionate about and showed me that botany, field work, restoration, and land management are things that I want to pursue in my future. I enjoyed West Virginia and being in Marlinton so much more than I could have ever imagined. I am sad to say goodbye. I never would have expected a small rural town in the middle of West Virginia to make me feel at home and be so difficult to leave. If there is one piece of advice I would give someone it would be to say yes to as many opportunities and experiences that you can, You never know where life will take you and what places you will enjoy the most. I never thought I would ever live somewhere like Marlinton, West Virginia, but it has been one of the best experience of my life. So thank you to everyone for their support and I cant wait to see where life takes me next. 

As the fall has become colder, and we get closer to winter, the field work continues to prevail while we collect and process seed. Being from Arizona, collecting seed outside in cold, windy, and sometimes rainy weather continues to push my boundaries and show me that I am capable of more than I thought. I have always been used to tolerating the heat but the cold is another story. So as we continue to go out into the field to collect seed all across the Monongahela Forest, I have quickly been learning the best ways to stay warm. 

On my last blog post, I stated that I was excited to learn all new ways to collect different species than I have before and now I am learning new ways to process and clean the seed! To start, the seed I have been processing the most is Mountain Ash. Mountain Ash seeds consist of clumps of small red berries that are pruned off of the branches. To process them I start by separating the stems and the berries by throwing away the stems and putting the berries in a medium size sieve. Once I have a decent amount of berries in the sieve, I smush them through the holes in the sieve to separate the seeds from the skin and pulp of the berries. After smashing many berries, I rinse the sieve into a bucket to gather the rest of the seeds and then strain out the water. Once the seeds are cleaned I lay them out on a paper bag for them to dry. The dry seed will then be placed in a bag and labeled. Not all seed processing is done this way because of the wide variety of ways plants have evolved to disperse their seeds. This is interesting to me because of all the different and unique ways that can be used to process seeds depending on the plant. I look forward to learning new and unique ways to process seed in the coming weeks! 

Not only is it interesting how all the seed collection and processing happens but also why it is important to collect seed from around the forest. Collecting seed on the forest is important for a couple different reasons. One reason is to use the seeds to plant on different forest restoration sites. This is achieved by collecting seeds from a variety of species, processing these seeds, and then sending the cleaned seed to a plant nursery. Once the nursery is done growing the seed, the plants will be sent back to the forest so they can be planted on the current restoration sites. The second reason we collect seed is to increase the genetic diversity of the plant species around the forest. The restoration sites on the forest consists of both plants that have been bough from nurseries in the surrounding states and from the nurseries that planted the seeds collected on the Monongahela forest. By planting native species from different places, the genetic diversity of the forest will increase. This greater diversity will hopefully allow the restoration sites have an increased chance of survival and success. 

I cannot believe October is ending already. The summer has come and gone faster than I could have ever imagined. However, fall on the Monongahela National Forest has been one of the best falls I have ever seen. The biodiversity of plants around the forest creates a unique and beautiful color change that creates an assorted color scape that changes every day. This fall is one I will never forget!  

With the changing of the seasons, my fieldwork has also changed along the way. The beginning of October came with the end of the summer field seasons for botany surveys. Many of the larger projects were finished in September, but I was able to help finish surveys for future trails on the southern half of the forest. This was an amazing opportunity to take in a lot of the early fall foliage and be able to help find more interesting and cool plants like ferns and fungi.  

These past couple of weeks I have also been helping finish some of the research that I talked about on previous blog posts. Back in June and July, Katie and I helped a graduate student, Breezy, from Kentucky University on some of her research that compared bat behavior between wetlands in restoration and old forest locations. While Breezy is back at school, Anna Branduzzi from the non-profit Green Forest Works and I helped take water samples of her wetland locations. It was nice to see yet another aspect of Breezy’s research and go back to some of the places and see how they are also changing during the fall.  

Even though the field season has ended for some people, there is other field work that has just begun. Specifically, I have had the opportunity to begin seed collection in various locations around the forest. Over the past week I have enjoyed this seed collection and have been excited at all the new techniques I have learned. Seed collection is interesting to me because the method of collection is different for every plant. While in undergraduate, I had previous internships where I collected seed from many herbaceous plants that can be found in prairie ecosystems. Even with this experience I was able to learn new ways of collection because of the several types to plants we were collecting from. These plants consist of tress like Mountain Ash, Stripped Aspen, and several types of Hawthorns. While collecting from tress, I was a little nervous about if I was going to be able to reach the berries or seeds because I am short. However, I learned that there are many techniques to help reach the higher up seeds. One example includes the methods used to collect mountain ash. To collect the groupings of berries at the ends of the higher branches we used a long pruner to cut off the berries from the branch and collect them off the ground. This method can be seen in the picture below of my co-worker, Hannah, using the long pruners. As we continue to collect seed in the coming month, the already collected seed will be sent to partnering nurseries within the states surrounding West Virginia. These nurseries will then grow the plants for restoration use in the coming years. 

As I come into my last month of this internship, I have been doing so much reflection on just how much I have been able to accomplish and all the amazing people I have been able to meet along the way. I am so thankful for all the experiences this internship has already brought me and I cannot wait to see what this last month has to offer. I am excited to continue to collect seed and see everything that West Virginia and the Monongahela has to offer before going back home to Arizona and the desert.  

On my last post, I talked a lot about one type of restoration project that can be found on old, mined lands within the Monongahela National Forest and in Appalachia, but not all restoration projects that take place on the Monongahela are like the one I described last time. A lot of restoration consists of smaller scale projects like invasive species removal in locations all around the forest, campsites, and roads including scenic highways. Removal of invasive species can include projects like hand pulling of herbaceous species like garlic mustard, using loppers to cut down larger woody shrubs, or spraying foliage and/or cut stump herbicide to get rid of other species. This removal is important to do regularly because it keeps invasive species from spreading throughout the forest and taking resources away from important native species.

A third restoration technique to help support the growth of native species in Appalachia is fire ecology. This is an interesting land management tool that can be used to rejuvenate certain ecosystems and allow the growth of healthy forests. Some ways to make the forests healthy is through reducing leaf litter and downed limbs to increase the habitats to promote the growth of native plant diversity. Specifically, fire can be used in Appalachia to help maintain the oak and pine forests to increase the openness of the forest understory, creating sunlight to the forest floor, and promoting seed germination. It can also help reduce the completion of survival of competitive species by limiting the growth of these competitive tree species like red maple, tulip popular, and white pine which tend to out compete some of the other species when there is an absence of fire. It can promote the native grasses and wildflowers, thin crowded forests which can help prevent disease and insect pest outbreaks and it also increases the food abundance for native wildlife like bears, deer, and birds. It had been seen through surveys that with a lack of fire implementation there has been diminished oak and pine regeneration, and lack of herbaceous groundcover from their historic range of variability.

When it comes to the National forests in Appalachia, fire ecology is used specifically to increase the native diversity. The past couple of weeks I have had the opportunity to help with the pre and post burn tasks and learn a lot about fire ecology in practice. For these tasks I helped with pre- and post-burn surveys of the fire plots. Using a GIS software, the survey location within the burn units was randomly selected and was given to the forestry tech to record the pre-burn survey. This survey includes recording the canopy cover frequency, ground cover frequency, woody shrub density, and the trees in the area. This is an important step in the prescribed burn process so that there can be a baseline of the vegetation within the burn unit to compare the post-burn surveys to in the future. The post-burn surveys typically happen in the growing season within six months after the burn, a full year after the burn during the same season as the pre-burn surveys took place, and then another survey five years after the first burn. These post-burn surveys are important to compare the vegetation growth within the burn units over the course of five years.  

Assisting with both the pre- and post-burn surveys has been extremely interesting because it has given me the opportunity to look at another form of land management that is taking place in the Monongahela. Within the forest service, fire ecology has been a recently new technique to use for land management. The methods and research on prescribed burns continues to evolve and being able to help with the surveys allowed me to gain insight on how land management continues to improve over time with research and practice. I have been able to learn so much from working with the fire team and look forward to continuing to help them on their surveys and learn more about prescribed burns within the Monongahela!  

For this week’s blog post, I just want to start by saying I can’t believe that it has already been two months since the start of my CLM journey. These past two months have been so much fun, and I am so grateful to have been able to meet and work alongside my co-intern Katie. Unfortunately, Katie has left me this past weekend to go onto bigger and better things like getting a master’s degree at Montana State. However, I am so excited to see everything she will accomplish in the coming years, and I am forever grateful to have such a caring, kind-hearted, and hardworking friend. Thankfully, she has agreed to that we would keep in touch with all our future adventures, and I hope to visit her in Montana in the coming year!  

To catch up on our previous blog posts, some of the stuff Katie and I have been doing the past couple of weeks has been the repeating tasks like botany surveys, treating for invasive species along the scenic highway, and finishing up the salamander surveys for the summer season. However, the past couple of weeks we have also been assisting with the ecological restoration projects that are taking place on the Monongahela.

For these projects, we have been working very closely with the Reforestation Coordinator, Anna Branduzzi, from the Nonprofit organization Green Forest Work in preparing, monitoring, and restoring mined lands on the Monongahela. Working alongside Anna on this project gave us the opportunity to see all different parts of the ecological restoration process in Appalachia. A restoration project like this includes many steps to jumpstart the natural succession process through activities like preparing the site through clearing or ‘ripping’ the non-native vegetation on the old, mined lands, selecting native species to plant in the previously ‘ripped’ sites, working with conservation crews and volunteers to plant and seed native species, and then continual monitoring of older sites to make sure the vegetation and habitats continuing to survive in these locations.

During our time working with Anna, Katie and I assisted with the preparation of the sites through locating wetland ecosystems in the future restoration locations so they can be avoided in the ‘ripping’ process. Second, we helped plant and seed the native plants in this year’s restoration site. Lastly, we helped monitor some of the older restoration sites by locating the wetlands for future monitoring and possibly to bring an excavator to enhance these wetlands in the future. I really enjoyed participating in all these steps for restoring Appalachia and being able to see all the older restoration sites giving me a perspective on just how fast this restoration can help the secession process on the old, mined lands.

Another part of this restoration process that Katie and I have enjoyed helping with has been the research that is being accomplished in the Monongahela from the surrounding Universities. Some of this research includes the monitoring of ecosystems through looking at animal and plant populations. Recently Katie and I have assisted with a master’s student research project that looks at bat foraging on restored mined land in West Virginia. Her research consists of monitoring bat foraging through bat audio recordings, bug collections, and surveying wetlands on the restored mined lands and old growth forests. She will be able to use this data collected to see how the foraging might be different between the two different locations. It was exciting to be able to assist in this process of collecting data and to see the different ways these restored mined lands can be monitored and continue to improve habitat for native species in both the Monongahela National Forest and Appalachia.

Ecological restoration and the research being accomplished on the Monongahela, specifically old mined lands, is an important part of maintaining the biodiversity within Appalachia. I am excited to continue working alongside Anna, Green Forest Work, other non-profit organizations, and researchers from surrounding Universities to continue the amazing work being accomplished on the Monongahela National Forest.  

It has been only one month living in West Virginia and I can’t believe how much wildlife I have encountered. While working in the Monongahela National Forest, one thing that I have enjoyed the most has been the amount of diversity I have seen in the mammals, birds, amphibians, insects, and fungi. Growing up I have always been interested in all different types of wildlife, but being in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona, the diversity is really different than in the Mon Forest. While being here, I have been very excited to “geek out” about all the wildlife that I have never seen before.

To start, some of the larger wildlife I have seen are bears and grouse. While helping with a highway trash pick-up day, Katie and I saw two black bears cross the road. Unfortunately, it was so fast that I was not able to take a picture of them, but it was still exciting to see my first wild bear. It is also cool to have seen the black bear in West Virginia because it is the West Virginia state animal. Another interesting animal I saw was a Ruffed Grouse, Bonasa umbellus. The grouse is interesting because it is in the same family as the chicken and even looks kind of like a small chicken at first glance.

The amphibians that have caught my attention are the salamanders and newts. I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to help with salamander surveys. This has allowed me to see a handful of different species that range in size and color. Some species include the Northern Dusky, Desmognathus fuscus; the Northern Slimy Salamander, Plethodon glutinosus; and the Northern Red Salamander, Pseudotriton ruber. I have seen the Eastern Newt, Notophthalmus viridescens, a couple of times. These little guys are cool because they spend the first three years of their lives as the red eft stage (pictured below) roaming around on land and then the rest of their lives in water for their adult stage with a completely different coloration of a green dorsal and yellow stomach. They are also the only species of newt that we have in the Monongahela!

Some more wildlife that is hard to miss are the bugs. While being in the field there have been many bugs that I have encountered. I have also helped an AmeriCorps member on one of her projects by doing a “bug blitz.” For the “bug blitz,” we spent a couple hours searching a plot of the forest and tried to catch as many bugs as we could find to later ID them. After doing this multiple times, we can gauge the different bug populations in parts of the forest. This was a lot of fun, and I was able to see so many different spiders, leafhoppers, beetles, and flies that I didn’t realize were so interesting till I was able to get a closer look.

To save the best for last, the group that has caught my attention the most has been the fungi! I always thought fungi were cool, but after coming to the Mon Forrest, the diversity of fungi has blown my mind. I have never seen so many different shapes, sizes, and colors of fungi before. Thanks to the help of an identification app called Seek, I have been able to learn many different names of the common fungi I encounter while out in the field. Some of the common ones I have found and been able to ID are pictured below. However, I am still learning and there are still so many more that have caught my attention, but I have not been able to identify yet, including the last picture of the bright red-orange mushroom.

Overall, I have had an incredibly fun time seeing so much wildlife. Every day I work in the field I am excited to find more new species to add to my running list of things I have never seen before. I am extremely thankful to be working in the Monongahela National Forest, and I can’t wait to see what other wildlife I will see in the upcoming months.

Hi! My name is Megan Crapo, and I am so excited to start sharing about my time as a CLM intern working with the US Forest Service at the Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia. To start, I am from Phoenix, Arizona and went to college just outside of Chicago, Illinois. Coming to West Virginia has pushed me farther east than I could have ever imagined and these first three weeks have exceeded my expectations. I can’t wait to see how the rest of my time here will turn out!

These first three weeks have been filled with many adventures. Since my co-intern Katie and I are still waiting on our federal driver’s license and other trainings like pesticide application certification’s to be completed, we have been able to tag along on other USFS projects. This has allowed us to meet our other co-workers and learn about different projects and maintenance needed to help preserve the ~1,400 square miles of the Monongahela National Forest. Some of the projects we have helped with have been botany surveys to keep track of rare and threatened plants in the forest, salamander surveys to help with a local research project on the effects of large woody debris on salamander abundance and species richness (pictures 1&2), and helping with a local restoration project with CASRI by planting red spruce, red maple, and other native plants with the Appalachian Conservation Corp (pictures 3&4).

These first three weeks have shown me just how much work goes into maintaining national forests and I am excited to see what there is in store for the next five months! Soon Katie and I will be able to go out on our own to work on projects such as invasive species management, habitat monitoring, and more!