Hello from the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore!  About 50 miles southeast of Chicago, the Lakeshore runs 25 miles along Lake Michigan.  I started my internship in July and right away started working with five seasonal staff on wetland restoration. 

 However, before I tell you what I’ve been up to, hearing a brief history of the park makes all our hard work more rewarding.   This park has one of the greatest diversity of plant species in America.  Because of this, the area has always attracted the best scientists, including the famous Henry Cowles.  During the late 1890’s, Henry Cowles studied vegetation succession on the Lake Michigan sand dunes and is still considered a main influence in our ecological studies today.  There is now a wetland named after Henry called Cowles Bog, in which we do a lot of our restoration work.  Yet, because this park is fairly new (It was authorized by Congress in 1966), it has a HUGE problem with invasive species crowding out these wonderful and diverse native plant populations.  Our job is to protect and prevent the invasive species from winning and keep the necessary native habitats sheltered from human destruction. 

Working on identifying plants in the bog

 Like I said before, I’ve been a part of the wetland restoration project, specifically focused on restoring Cowles bog.  Currently, this once diverse area is covered in cat-tail (the invasive version) and phragmites which shade out any beneficial sedges, grasses and forbs.  To began, we apply herbicide to the invasive plants.  Then by pushing the dead cat-tail down, we can suppress the seed bank until replanting the area.  The whole processes of getting these native plants into the ground requires time spent seed collecting, seed cleaning, propagation and finally transplanting them in our greenhouse and then planting them in our recently cleared sites.  It is quite labor intensive (walking through very mucky areas with heavy equipment and often hot weather in the summer) but our group tends to make jokes out of the situations and we laugh a lot.  And seeing the results after planting a cleared area, either with brush cutters or herbicide, is rewarding.  Immediate results are not always visible, however, and this was something I struggled with at the beginning.  Now I understand how important each little advance is and that restoration work takes time.  A lot of time!  This restoration plan for Cowles bog is scheduled to take anywhere from 10-15 years and even then it will still need to be monitored.  One of the biggest challenges for this park is the amount of invasive species that are encroaching along the park’s many boundaries and it has been rewarding to help restore the park’s original flora.

Pictured Rocks

 Overall it has been a great experience working for the National Park Service, not only because I get to live in a beautiful area with freshwater beaches! But also to learn about how this organization operates and the difficulties they face with the public and with funding to continue to preserve the magnificent population of plants and animals.  I get to live in a National Park house not far from work, and recently just got two roommates from the SCA program that are going to take the place of the seasonal employees who sadly just ended their part last week.  I’m excited for the new adventures and slightly different tasks that we will be concentrating on. 

The seasonals

Checking some water depths

 Good Luck Everyone!

Christy Goff, NPS, Indiana Dunes, IN

Deer exclosures do well keeping out such herbivores, but some plots allow for invasives, like Rosa multiflora, to thrive.

During most of July and a bit of August I have been collecting data on several deer exclosure sites here in the eastern deciduous forest of Cuyahoga Valley National Park.  A fellow resource management intern and I drive and then hike out to these 10 x 10 m plots, which are situated in one of four terrain types: upland and bottomland fields and forests.  Once there we focus on the vegetative aspects of each of the paired exclosures and their respective controls.

In order to verify the extent of the impact that the deer herds are having on the park, we must determine how the vegetation is being affected.  So, we take note of several things: the pin-drop method is used on three 5 m transects within each control and each exclosure plot to analyze species composition, and also if the individuals hit have been browsed; a vegetation pole is used to record the heights of vegetation at the ends of each transect; saplings are counted and recorded by species; canopy cover and percent composition of various vegetative aspects are estimated; a 10-factor prism is used to quantify tree density in and immediately around the plots, and also a few other dimensions are considered in this data-collecting process.  As much as I love all of the various fieldwork, the odd rainy day does come in handy for data entry.

Toxicodendron radicans - it will even attempt to be a tree!

Besides all of the research that I am helping to conduct, there have been some other items of interest involved with working at this particular park.  Cuyahoga Valley National Park is one of the more recently established National Parks.  Even though it has been part of the National Park System since 1974, until the year 2000 it was known as ‘Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area.’  I mention this due to the fact that there are people (visitors and the like) everywhere, and the park itself is right in between two heavily populated areas, Cleveland and Akron.  If truth be told, when I first arrived here after our workshop in July I did not consider this area to be parkland, but rather it felt and still feels more like its original name.  There is no established park entrance, and highways such as I-80, 271 and 303 run right through the center of this 33,000 acre (fragmented) park.  With so many people around, random interaction is soon to follow, and it does.  There have been more than a few amusing side conversations with passersby as we drive and hike out to the sites that we are assessing, whether we go by road, trail, or up a tiny ski slope nearby.

 One of the best things here in the park (besides my job!) is that since the park was created to incorporate a large stretch of the Cuyahoga River, inevitably it also contains a big section of the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath.  This provides such a scenic daily ride, as I often have been biking to ‘Homestead’ (aka Resource Management), which is the office where I work when I am not in the field.  I also enjoy watching the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad (CVSR) trains go by, as they run north to south, back and forth through the park Wednesday through Sunday, well into the fall.

 I feel so privileged to be here… hopefully everyone can wake up in the morning and be as excited to go to work in such a great place as I am!

 ~Maria C. Brown, Cuyahoga Valley National Park, Ohio

Greetings from “Chapel Thrill,” North Carolina!

It has been over four months since I started working at the North Carolina Botanical Garden, thousands of miles from where most of you are located. Despite being a lifelong resident of North Carolina, in the past few months, I have really gotten to know the state in a new way. With my co-intern, Jill, and our mentor, Andy, we have crisscrossed the interstates, rural roads, and rutted paths of North Carolina, sojourning in both the easternmost and westernmost parts of the state. Our primary occupation is seed collecting, for the BLM as well as for other agencies, but we have also assisted in quite a few rare-plant monitoring projects, collaborating with people from the Garden, the NC Natural Heritage Program, the Forest Service, etc. . .

A few months ago, I would have treated Pender County as just another piece of land to blast through on I-40 on the way to the beach. Now I also know it as home to Shaken Creek Nature Preserve, which hosts a shocking array of native plants. Sprinkled among the soft undulating masses of wiregrass are the garish chartreuse trumpets of the yellow pitcher plant (Sarracenia flava), the elegant pale star-shaped bracts of the white-topped beak sedge (Rhynchospora latifolia), and the ubiquitous pink of the meadow beauty (Rhexia alifanus). Deep red lilies and orange fringed orchids, roughly the hue of Cheetos, complete the palette. Despite repeated warnings from our mentor, we rarely have run-ins with snakes, and have yet to see a black bear. However, even constant vigilance with duct tape and Cutter did not save us from the torments of chiggers, ticks, and mosquitos throughout the summer.

The goats of Roan

North Carolina’s long east-west profile also encompasses some mountains (in size, nothing compared to what you westerners have, but I would like to think that they give the western mountains a run for their money in natural beauty). One of the most memorable trips we took was to Roan Mountain, where we helped monitor Geum radiatum, which clings to cliff faces on high peaks, and find populations of another Geum species. While we were up there, we encountered Jamie, alias the “goat guy.” His self-imposed responsibility is to live on the grassy bald at Carver’s Gap and maintain something akin to the prehistoric grazing regime, by means of a squadron of hungry goats and some gigantic but adorable guard dogs.

Turk's-cap lily in the NC mountains

One of the sites we visited that turned out to be an unlikely favorite of mine was basically in my backyard, in Durham County. Located in the middle of a highly developed industrial park (RTP), it was an old roadbed with a unique geology and basic soils that support a very interesting plant community. Though environmentally degraded, the uniqueness and diversity of this community showed through. Unfortunately, our visits mostly had a tone of desperation. The Garden, in partnership with the EPA, who owns the surrounding land, was collecting seeds and individual plants to save some of the genetic diversity of the site – it was slated for destruction to make way for a new expressway. What a feeling of disappointment when we heard the logging equipment had rolled through. In spite of such setbacks, the experience has been enjoyable on the whole, and I have expanded my knowledge not only of plants but, in many senses of the phrase, of how the world works. Thanks to everyone who helped make it possible!

-Quentin Read, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

The view from Roan Mtn.

I have been working in Dinosaur Nat’l Monument under the park botanist, Tamara Naumann.  Located in northwestern Colorado, Dinosaur Nat’l Monument is home to over 60 miles of the Green and Yampa Rivers, and boasts a seriously impressive landscape.  It is like no place I’ve ever seen before, and it’s standard to get the sensation of being on another planet.  The geology of the Monument, which I will not get into, could easily be an entire post by itself.  But, if you would like more info on the Monument’s unique geology, shoot me an email at jcr02@uark.edu.  The scope of my internship has been primarily focused on river ecosystem health and function.  The Yampa remains the last wild/undammed river in the Colorodo River system.  The Green River has been regulated upstream by the Flaming Gorge Dam since 1964.  Dams are known to disrupt the physical, chemical and biological connectivity of rivers.  The Green and the Yampa rivers collide in the heart of the Monument at a place called Echo Park. Because the two rivers were so similar during Pre-dam conditions, and are located in such close proximity to each other, a unique opportunity arises to study the impacts of large dams on big western rivers.

The Yampa Canyon

Gates of Lodore. Lodore Canyon, Green River

 For more info on the Yampa, check out http://www.yampariverawareness.org/

Interning for the Chicago Botanical Gardens has been and is continuing to be an amazing experience for me. I have been hiking ridge tops in order to survey a rare plant, the tufted twinpod (Physaria condensate), that lives within Fossil Butte National Monument.  Not much is known about this special plant so it is rewarding to be the one to collect this baseline data. This data will be compared with elk data that is also being collected, in order to see if rising elk populations are affecting these small plants.  Due to this internship I have decided that I want a career relating to fieldwork, whether it is baseline data collection or monitoring and follow-up.  Being in the field gathering data is a gratifying experience because it really feels like I am making a difference. With the data I collected this summer and fall, along with data that will continued to be collected in the following summers, an EIS might be needed to control the rising elk population and my data will be part of that decision.

My adventures include wandering the park all by my lonesome looking for the tufted twinpod, with a GPS, antenna, and 2x.5m long PVC rectangular pipe. I often find myself off in the middle of no ware with no idea which way I was supposed to be going and where I came from. It’s a good thing I have my GPS, though it always says I’m going north even when I’m defiantly not.  The hardest part of my job is actually located my plants and plots where my plants are not supposed to be. I have been stuck 3 times because I have to drive this really poor two-track roads in a little 2-wheel drive ford ranger. It doesn’t have very good clearance and it doesn’t like mud.

Due to the fact that I am mostly working by myself, I have gained great self discipline. It is very important to be focused and organized in order to get everything completed in a timely fashion, especially with the consent threat of snow these days. This internship has allowed me to incorporate the knowledge I gained from college into an actual job.  I have been able to achieve greater understanding of GIS (using ArcInfo) as well as becoming a pro at the Magellan GPS units.  I have been learning how to identify plants and other key elements in the surrounding areas.

Over all I have to say that has been great getting to know all the amazing people that work at Fossil Butte. Throughout the summer other interns have come and gone and it has been nice to make new friends and feel like I am a part of something bigger then myself. I also got to go on many different field trips like this one to big spring. Being able to spend my summer doing worthy work and hiking in the natural environment is a wonderful experience. Given the change I would do it all over again and who knows maybe I will.

Lea Shaw-Messina, Fossil Butte National Monument, Wyoming