July marks the halfway point of my internship.  It also marks the beginning of a long spate of extremely hot weather.  I have learned that eastern Oregon is perhaps the worst climate to attempt to grow tomatoes in.  They barely survived a late-May frost and, after making a come-back, are now wilting under the 108 degree weather.  I also feel like I’m wilting under the weather.  Even the night time temperatures are not very cool.

We have had a lot of SOS activity lately, completing our sixth collection today.  All the seeds are starting to go all at once and we are trying to get them before it’s too late.  Even the bitterbrush that we were collecting this week had noticeably drier seeds today than yesterday. 

Perhaps our most fun collection was a barton berry we helped the Baker City botanist with.  Barton berry is endemic to Hells Canyon, on both the Idaho and Oregon side but there is a gap in its distribution alongside the river.  The BLM is hoping to collect seeds in order to plant barton berry into this gap.  We stayed overnight in Baker City and then were greeted with the amazing sight of Hells Canyon: thousands of feet of rock cliff faces rising up out of a reservoir.  The two days we spent collecting there felt a little bit like working in a outdoor enthusiast’s playground.  We spent a lot of time clambering up rocks to reach elusive patches of barton berry that had a tendency to sprout up on talus slopes.

We witnessed our first wildfire yesterday, passing by on our way to work up on a mountain.  Despite the amount of smoke in the air, it was surprising to see the fire as just a thin, low line working it’s way up a slope.  I had the realization that our fires probably cannot compare in intensity to Colorado or Arizona or anywhere with dry woodlands.  We have so few trees that the fire cannot reach very far off the ground.  I made the mistake of thinking it almost seemed tame until we returned the next day and saw the huge swath of land that it had managed to burn in less than 24 hours.  Lesson learned: never underestimate the power of wildfires, even seemingly small ones.

One of my favorite flowers

It has been a whirlwind making my way from back home in Illinois all the way out to California. The drive took 5 days but it was worth it! The sun keeps on shining out here except for the day we arrived which brought some unseasonal rain, but otherwise it has been clear and HOT! 105 +/- has been the norm for the last week and won’t end until next week it seems. But the heat is easy to beat when you are having fun at work! The team here at the Plant Materials Center in Lockeford is really fantastic! My first day they all were extremely friendly but put me to work on all kinds of projects! I never realized the kinds of farming activites that need to go on to produce seeds for all sorts of projects for the other government agencies like the BLM and the National Park Service. So far I’ve helped move irrigation pipe, set up a flood system to water native grasses, cleaned seeds and collected and stacked hay and straw bales and its only day two! Once I finish safety training I will learn how to use more of the machinery like driving the tractor and operating the seed cleaning machines. I’m really excited to be here and so far its great! Hard work but really good experience and good people to work with. Until next time!

Jesse

I just started my internship in the CLM program on 06/18/2013. I got a crash course in monitoring when our crew camped out for three days at Buck Flat Well to monitor HAF sites and trends. I’ve already learned so much from everyone and I learn new things everyday. I’m still very lost when it comes to naming different grasses, forbs, and shrubs, but with practice I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it in no time. Through this internship, I’ve learned that there is so much out there for people to learn about and study that most people take for granted. Before being a part of this monitoring crew I can remember thinking that all the grasslands and shrublands in Idaho were the same. Now I know that there are big differences in the species diversity just between two pastures. I’m very grateful for this internship and I know that my experiences will only get better with time.

Hitting the ground running

 Since returning from the stimulating training in Chicago, seed collecting has been in full throttle.  We have taken collections from 7 species and 3 of those 6 we have taken multiple collections.  One of the most challenging collections we made was of Tripterocalyx micranthus.  The fruits of these plants have wings and are found in clusters at the apex of the stems of the plant.  Unfortunately this is not where we found the fruits.  We were a day or two late and found these lovely little winged fruits scattered everywhere on the ground throughout the population area.  The proximity of the fruits to the plants did slow the collection process but it did not stop us from making a decent sized collection. 

Figuring out the proper collection technique for the species being collected has been one of the most interesting parts of the job and naming these techniques has been one of the most entertaining.  For example the technique used on Hesperostipa comata is called the New Mexican strip and see.  This species of grass has an inflorescence with multiple seeds and one awn per seed.  When these seeds are ready, the awn curls and bends at nearly a 90° angle while the awns on the seeds that aren’t ready remain straight.  Our technique is to grab the inflorescence with your hand and pull upwards, which generally strips the seeds that are ready off of the plant and leaving the unripe seeds on the plant – which is where the name is derived.  Some of the other techniques in use are the Texas tickle which we used to collect Tradescatia occidentalis or the claw we used on the Aristida purpurea. 

To sum up this internship thus far is to say it has been an experience and I mean that in a good way.  Learning new plant species and collecting seeds have been rewarding. We have also had the opportunity to go out in the field with others from the office which has given us an idea of what else is happening in our region.  Exploring the region on the weekends has also been thrilling.  I feel lucky for the opportunity to take part in this program.

Cheers internet people! Catch you next month.

Aristida purpurea

Tradescantia occidentalis

Tripterocalyx micranthus

First off I would just like to say that I enjoyed meeting everyone who was at the training workshop!  I had a lot of fun and I’m glad we had the opportunity to meet, hang out, and talk about our experiences!

Now onto the real entry:

Not a whole lot has happened since my last entry aside from the training workshop which everyone already wrote about.  We are finished with the main part of our field season so we’re in the data entry stage now.  It’s a big change from being out in the middle of the desert all week to staring at a computer screen in the air conditioning all week!  But I am not complaining, it was over 115 degrees in the Las Vegas valley last week!  Although it’s usually a little cooler at our field sites, it’s still obscenely hot out there!

We are starting to learn how to run some statistical analyses now.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I have less than very little stats experience (one class in high school and one in college – which turned out to be basically the same class, I didn’t learn very many new things in my college stats class), and the stuff I did learn is not very helpful for the kinds of analyses we have to do now.  Most of the things our mentor says goes way over my head, but I will eventually get the hang of it!  I think the hardest part for me to wrap my head around is that Excel doesn’t do much.  Apparently you go out and buy (or download for free) stats programs to do the more involved analyses and multivariate stuff.  And then you go out and buy (or Google for free) books that explain exactly how to code what you want those programs to do to your data.  My coding skills are zero….Wait no, Friday I was able to get the program (R) to pull up my data table from NotePad!  I will count that as 0.00001 skills since it’s better than nothing!  Hopefully by my next entry I will be a stats wizard and you will all be jealous of my amazing coding skills!

Well, things are heating up out here, just in time for seed collecting. Plant work with the Seeds of Success program has consumed most of my days as practically all of the species on my target list began seeding at the same time. Somehow this always happens. It also means that office work tends to end up on the back burner as the trusty intern frantically scours the field office monitoring seed ripeness and gathering seed. Unfortunately, it behooves one to remember that the office aspects of field life are equally important, and when neglected can come back to bite one in the bum.

Case in point: I had been planning to collect one particular little plant for some time, and was waiting for a mature seed with which to key it out to the exact species. But as the days went by, in the field and far away from the computerized USDA plants database, even once I decided on what the plant was, I never quite got around to verifying its geographic origin. I remembered this little detail about one collection too late, so my helper and I spent a few hours happily collecting…a non-native weed. Check before you collect! Lessons learned.

Apart from this minor dumb error, my summer in Cody has proceeded rather nicely. The golden eagle chick I’ve been watching is probably only a week or 2 from fledging, though it’s been hard to squeeze in some good monitoring time. I’ve been able to participate in an educational tour with bentonite mining companies discussing reclamation and sage grouse, as well as a tour of the Bridger Plant Materials Center and discussion of seeding trials being implemented in reclaimed bentonite mines using previous Seeds of Success collections. It’s always nice to intersperse a long, busy work season with chances to learn from the work of others and to be reminded of the important applications of the fruits of our labor.

CLM Workshop Seminar

The best time to go to the Chicago Botanic Garden would be in early summer. Fortunately! That was the time the CLM Workshop/Seminar was! CLM interns from all over the United States came together in Chicago to learn about their future/current job! My fellow intern Dan and myself had to take a flight out of Boise, ID to Chicago, IL with a layover in Phoenix, AZ. We got to the hotel around 12 to 1 o’clock in the morning. We were definitely tired, but prepared for the next day!

Each day I would wake up very early and eat a healthy breakfast of Applejacks and the fruit of the day. From the hotel, I would travel 20 minutes to the classroom located at the Chicago Botanic Gardens. I met many interns the first day and had a great time! The day was pretty humid, but everyone was in a good mood! One part of the day all the interns went to the bridge to have their picture taken for the CLM website. That was where I met the interns from the state of Oregon! I got to meet a lot of people who had similar interests and backgrounds. I also got to meet Steven who had the same level of enthusiasm towards bird watching!

The CLM Oregon Interns!

Throughout the whole week we were constantly busy in a good way! The lectures that were given were very insightful and the lunches were amazing! My favorite part of the seminar/workshop was going outside to learn monitoring techniques or identifying plants. Krissa and Wes, with the help of their staff, made sure everything ran smoothly. I did enjoy working with the compass/GPS field activity or learning various techniques of field monitoring. Another favorite activity was going to the prairie and keying out different plant families. Our group found a large number of plant families, but more importantly we worked with the taxonomy key to help us distinguish between similar species of plant.

After attending our daily workshop, I would go home to meet with my family and relax before returning to the hotel. One day we were warned that there were severe thunderstorms entering the region. Krissa told us how to prepare for a storm event, if it occurs.  When I went home for the day I watched the severe rain/wind storm enter the Chicago region. The serious parts of the storm occurred to the north and south of the Chicago region.

I said my good byes on the final day. That week had been wonderful! At first I had my doubts of attending, but I am glad I did go to the workshop. Not only did I learn almost everything there was to be an intern working for the Federal Government, but I made many friends and developed good networking connections. Also!!! I finally got to meet Krissa and Wes!! (Thank you so much for answering my emails and calls! ^_^)

I left for the airport on Saturday and met with Dan to catch our flight. We were in the terminal waiting for the plane to board. There were three flights leaving at the same time including our flight. The intercom had two to three people talking all at once for boarding. I sat there at the terminal waiting for the plane to board. Eventually, I noticed the terminal becoming desolate. I looked for my friend Dan and noticed he was not around. I went up to the people and asked about my plane ride. Apparently it already took off and I was stuck in Chicago!!! O_O;; No worries! I caught the first flight out of Chicago the next day and made it safely to Burns, Oregon! ^_^

(There was a lot more that happened at the seminar, but I gave the cliff notes version…)

ES & R Monitoring

My main job for the Burns/ Hines BLM was ES & R monitoring. Most of you are probably thinking, “What is ES & R monitoring?” This was a type of monitoring where we would go to areas that were consumed with fire the prior year and we would monitor the plant diversity of the landscape presently. Our main goal was to go to areas that have been seed treated by drill seeding or aerial seeding. We used a Point Line Pace 180 Sampling Method to determine the species diversity after the seeding. We were seeing if the seed/vegetation treatment worked. Many of the sites showed effective results from the drill seeding, while some sites looked like they were completely desolate.

We took a ground and landscape photo of the plot we were working with. We also took pictures of the cardinal directions around the plot to help future monitors find the area in the future. The process and guidelines were very specific, but the learning curve was not too bad. I learned a majority of the plants already and our boss constantly aided/ directed our way. I had to learn both the scientific name and the USDA plant symbol name.  My geology background also aided in monitoring the erosion aspect of each site, even if the majority of the sites were stable.

The first treated sites we looked at were on the Miller Homestead Fire. This was a major fire that occurred. Some sites did have a lot of Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass/ BRTE), but there were other sites where the annual grass was hardly present in the landscape. Cheatgrass is a major problem, because they help the fire spread rapidly. After a fire, the cheatgrass will out compete many of the native plants and develop a monoculture of annual grasses in the landscape. Anyways! We also would encounter many different types of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) throughout our monitoring. A majority of the sites we visited were drill seeded, so we got to see the same grasses and plants over and over again. Even though the plants were repetitive on each site, this would help us learn each of the species common in our area. We were specifically looking for Agropyrum cristatum (creasted wheatgrass/ AGCR), which was an introduced grass used to establish a site and out-compete some of the unwanted plants. There were many sites that were like a mosaic, where previous native plants were present and unaffected by the fire. Penstemon spp. were some of my favorite flowers to monitor, but they were hard to come across sometimes. We even got a visit from a rattlesnake (Mr. Rattles), but it was interested in standing still and cared less about our monitoring session. V_V

Mr. Rattles is not amused….

Overall, the ES&R monitoring is not for the faint of heart! Hail, dust storms, heavy rains, severe heat, rattlesnakes, deer flies, bulls, Sarcobatus vermiculatus (greasewood/SAVE4), and dust devils were very common! BUT! For the Burns/ Hines BLM interns, just a walk in the park! 😉 We adapted to the harsh conditions and evolved our way of monitoring to deal with all of the tricks nature threw at us! This position has been extremely rewarding and I enjoyed every part of it…except the part where I would fall into some greasewood and get stuck… >_>

Storm chasing dust devils in the Alvord Desert. (Joking! We were just going to our next site!)

Aroga Moth

Another part of our internship was monitoring the Aroga Moth aka the sagebrush defoliator aka Aroga websteri! This moth is very mysterious and many people probably never heard of this moth before. They are a very small moth that is very active at night. The caterpillars of this moth cause the damage to the sagebrush. They would hatch out of their egg and go to the new growth on a sagebrush and burrow into the plant. The tips would show webbing and signs of defoliation. Usually, this type of insect varies from year to year in terms of outbreaks. Recently in our district, it has been more than 10 years of non-stop activity. This is starting to worry us. Sagebrush infected with these caterpillars would die in a couple of years creating fuel for potential fires.  There was not a lot of research on this insect and no one has really seen them/ or studied them. Also there is no way to really treat this kind of insect without spending a large sum of money.

This is the caterpillar for the Aroga Moth….Small little bugger.

Anyways! We had two monitoring days where a state entomologist and a pathologist would join part of the Burns/Hines BLM to collect information on this moth. Dan and I went on the first day. Of course it was raining buckets, but that did not stop us! >:) The BLM staff and scientists collected many samples of the aroga moth caterpillar. Surprisingly, there were a lot of caterpillars when there was supposed to be chrysalis. The delay in development could be caused by the recent frost we had the week before. We went by the Steens and the southern part of the district. On the Steen Mountains, we were in the clouds looking for signs of the moth. It was epic!!!

Misadventures

On my time off of work, I went to many rockhounding sites. I went to the Narrows to find petrified wood, agate, degraded opal, and jasper. This place had many amazing specimens, unfortunately they had a lot of deer flies, rattlesnakes, and greasewood shrubs. The other place I went to was Glass Buttes!! This place had all kinds of obsidian!!! I got fire obsidian, red obsidian, lace obsidian, black obsidian, silver sheen obsidian, rainbow obsidian, and other sheen obsidian. The roads are a little rough and one would have to watch out for bulls…the bulls like to strut their stuff, while the other cows don’t give a crumb. (Sigh…males…<_<) I went during a rain storm, which helped cleaned the dirt off the obsidian allowing me to see the sheens. I heard they had over 100 different kinds of obsidian on these buttes! O_O

One of the days our boss signed us up for many training seminars. Dan and I had to attend blood born pathogen, hazmat safety, and defensive driving. When Dan and I entered the auditorium, we noticed something was off… Everyone was wearing green pants, a navy long sleeve shirt, and had a wallet full of safety information. We were with 100 firefighters! At least I wore olive colored pants, so I was not too out of place. The training was alright. Our boss came to some of the sessions too! Many of the sessions were drier than the Alvord Desert in July, but we passed each of the tests! Now we can drive our truck to our monitoring sites!!! This was super turbo neo ultra hyper mega multi alpha meta extra uber AWESOME! Now we do not have to be escorted around! Plus, we got our ATV licenses allowing us to drive in the back country to our monitoring sites!

((On a side note….. having a Dairy Queen Blizzard©®™ after a hard week of work is great…just saying…>_>))

Green Gentian (Frasera spp.), Forb of the Week!

June 28, 2013

Las Cruces, NM

Two weeks ago I left my humid hometown to come work for the Bureau of Land Management in Las Cruces, NM.  Although I grew up outside of Chicago, I spent the last eight years of my life in the northeast, where I attended school in Connecticut and Rhode Island.  As their names imply, the northeast and southwest are polar opposites.  In the northeast, states are small and densely populated.  Forests prevail in the humid climate, and the long, sinuous coastline is never more than a few hours away.  But I left behind the land of poison ivy, Lyme disease, and fickle weather and entered the realm of tarantulas, rattlesnakes, and incessant heat.

My friends in Rhode Island were astonished when I mentioned that my post-graduation plan included moving to New Mexico.  New Yorkers apparently associate New Mexico with only two things: (1)  the UFO spottings in Roswell, and (2) illicit drug activity as presented in Breaking Bad, a TV show set in Albuquerque. Luckily, I have not encountered either of these two stereotypes.  Instead, the southwestern stereotypes that I have experienced have been quite pleasant.  What’s not to love about our adorable adobe apartment nestled in the Organ Mountains, beautiful sunsets, and gooey, cheese-filled Mexican food?

Our adobe apartment at Dripping Springs Natural Area

View of the Organ Mountain on the Road Home from the Office

Sunset view from Drippings Springs Natural Area

Life in the office has been exciting as well.  This week, Evelyn Williams, a conservation genetics researcher from the Chicago Botanic Garden, visited us to collect clippings from Lepidospartum burgessii–a rare plant that no longer produces seeds.  Lepidospartum burgessii is an obligate gypsophile, meaning its range is limited by the narrow extent of gypsum-based soils.  One theory as to why the plant has failed to produce seeds is that it has lost genetic diversity through inbreeding, which has increased the plant’s homozygosity.  Evelyn and her fellow researchers will  transplant the Lepidospartum clippings in a common garden and crossbreed the individuals to determine whether increased gene flow prompts seed set in the species.

Lepidospartum burgessii

The gypsum sand dunes near the Guadalupe Mountains- the ideal habitat for Lepidospartum burgessii

My fellow intern, Kate, and our mentor, Mike, recording the location of a Lepidospartum burgessii individual

 I will end this blog post with some local terminology that I have picked up over the last couple weeks:

TAT: Type-A Texan

PNM: Pokey New Mexican

Dust Devil: A small whirlwind of dust common in arid regions, such as the Chihuahuan desert

“Christmas” : A preparation of Mexican food that has both green and red chile sauces

Sopapilla: A delicious, puffy pastry dessert drizzled in honey

-Elisabeth Ward

 

As of the end of this week, I will officially be half way through this internship. After 5 months I can easily say this has been the most challenging and rewarding job I have ever had. I have grown a lot, personally and professionally. This is the first real botany job I have held and the learning curve has been a bit steeper then I thought but I really feel like I have made a lot of progress and am able to contribute to the team. There isn’t much to add, we are camping a few times a week, working on fire rehab and range data collection. The days can be hot and long, the land can be harsh, but it is all really rewarding in the end. I can only hope I can grow as much in the next 5 months as I have in the previous ones. Fingers crossed.

This week, my crew and I set up our plots at our last two sites, White Mountain and Quaking Aspen, and their controls.  The dominant flowering forbs right now are mostly Eriogonum, Sedum and Castilleja.  Although it’s been quite dry at our sites, it’s lovely to see (and count, for our project) the colorful blooms blanketing some of our plots.

Sedum lanceolatum is blooming in many plots

A senescing inflorescence of Eriogonum ovalifolium

A spent fruit of the delicate and adorable Eriogonum caespitosum

Castilleja flava

Ipomopsis aggregata

One mishap this trip was flat tires!  Although we drive very slowly, some of the two tracks we travel on to reach our sites are quite rough, and we had the misfortune to get two flat tires at the same time.  Since we only carry one spare, Thor from the Rock Springs BLM office was kind enough to bring us another.  We have since replaced our tires with more sturdy and appropriate 10-ply tires.

Field tech Aaron keeps a lookout for our spare tire backup

We have had some gorgeous insects in our collections this trip!  Brilliant blue-green Osmia,  strikingly patterned Anthidium, Bombyliid flies, many beetles, and Vespid wasps have dominated our collections, which we are still working on pinning.  However, no Windy Bugs post would be complete without some arthropod photos….

A tiny crab spider (Thomisidae) on Achillea millefolium

Ants on a dead Jerusalem cricket (Stenopelmatidae)

An adorable Solfugid! Love them!

A bombyliid fly on Eremogone hookeri, a very common little mat plant

Large mammals continue to abound at our sites.  While camping in an aspen stand, we had curious mule deer checking us out every night.  Pronghorn with their fawns are a frequent sight, and wild horses were also a common sight.

A mother pronghorn with her twins

Horses eye us before sauntering away

It’s been a very productive week and I’m looking forward to revisiting all of our sites in July!  Soon I will post on insect pinning and our growing collection.

Me and field tech Aaron enjoy some breathtaking views

Sunset and the largest moon of the year over the Boar’s Tusk