Dark red onion

Desert five spot

We spent three days in the Deep Creek area in mid-March with a 10 person Urban Conservation Corps crew, slashing and seeding unauthorized OHV trails.  The area is a challenging one to work in becuase it’s open, relatively remote, and not regularly patrolled.  Right now, we are focusing on “defensible” sites, where we can do work that won’t be moved or bypassed.

We’ve had several great volunteer events this month.  In partnership with the Southern California Mountains Foundation, SBNF restoration staff hosted a work day for a local community college ecology class at our Lytle Creek nursery.  Yesterday was our first yearly Green Thumbs volunteer day at the Mountaintop greenhouse, an event we host montly beginning in March.

I spent three (personal) days last week in the Newberry Mountians Wilderness, and am headed to the Orocopia Mountains as we speak.  There’s a lot blooming out in the desert right now, such as the charasmatic desert five spot (Erelmanche rotundifoila) and dark red onion (Allium a great time to go botanizing!

Mountaintop Ranger District

San Bernardino National Forest

The Sierra Front District BLM botany team is now complete. Stevie, the final member of our team, and my roommate arrived last weekend. The six of us interns are now gearing up for a busy field season. Of course, in this first month we have all been busy completing various trainings. Much time has also been spent on processing herbarium specimens from previous years.

During the beginning of this past week, we all attended a grass identification course at the University of Nevada Reno. As part of the class, we dissected and examined under the microscope 49 different genera of Poaceae, as well as several genera in Juncaceae and Cyperaceae. I have done work with grass in the past but have never had such a comprehensive overview of the family. I’m sure the information I learned in this class will prove to be quite useful going forward.

Field activities over the past couple of weeks have revolved around post-fire restoration. As reported by Olivia and Maggie, we spent a good deal of time scouting for locations to plant Mountain Mahogany seedlings at the TRE fire site. We found a site with a bunch of charred Mahogany remnants and determined that it would be suitable for planting the seedlings. We were all excited for our first camping trip of the season and the trip did not disappoint. Just fewer than 300 seedlings were planted successfully and the crew was treated to some amazing views of the Sierra and Sweetwater ranges.

Today the six of us will depart for Boise for the Integrated Pest Management and Pesticide Application Training and Certification. This certification is valid across all government agencies and will likely be very valuable in future job hunting endeavors.

It has been three weeks since I left Colorado and moved to Carson City, Nevada. I hadn’t spent much time in Nevada or in the Tahoe area before. I wasn’t really sure what to expect when I first arrived here. As I drove westerly across Nevada on Highway 50 – the Loneliest Road in America – I kept thinking how I was going further into the desert and more into the unknown. The Great Basin Desert is unique and far from any desert that I’m familiar with. It is different than the red sandstone arches and pillars of southeastern Utah, the petrified forests and badlands of New Mexico, and the Saguaro deserts of southern Arizona. At first glance, one might think of the Great Basin Desert as a barren and desolate landscape, devoid of life and water. But, as I have pleasantly discovered, the farther you venture into the desert, the more life you find. Multiple species of sagebrush, salt brush, greasewood, grass, and herbaceous forbs are scattered across the landscape. In less than a month, I have gained a great respect for the Great Basin Desert and an appreciation for the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The time has flown by quickly. My days are packed full with learning and working. I have learned more about the Bureau of Land Management, the various land management practices and protocols, the pressing and archiving of herbarium specimens, as well as local geology and botany. This past week was busy. We spent the first portion of the week looking at grasses through microscopes and the second portion of the week planting seedlings.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we attended a Basic Grass Identification Class in Reno. Before attending this course, grass identification was a weakness of mine. In the past, I could readily classify grasses and grass-like plants to basic groups and families based on key characteristics (e.g., the two-ranked leaves of Poaceae [Grass Family], the usually triangular stem of Cyperaceae [Sedge Family]). But I had found it quite difficult to key grasses to genus and species. Grasses comprise a major component of the environment and can indicate the health and status of an ecosystem. Therefore, it is vital to understand how to identify grasses. The class involved identifying over 45 species of Poaceae and several species of Juncaceae and Cyperaceae. We learned how to identify grasses and grass-like plants based on floret structures (i.e., presence versus absence of awns, bearded versus non-bearded calluses, number of florets within a spikelet, etc.). We applied our knowledge to dichotomous keys and were able to determine the genera and, most of the time, species. The course has provided me with more confidence as a biologist and botany intern. I can use my knowledge to determine the presence or absence of certain native grass species, which could influence the collection or planting of native grass seeds.

Thursday and Friday involved the planting of Mountain Mahogany seedlings. On May 22, 2012, flames from a fire in a residence’s backyard were released into the foothills of the southern Pine Mountains. The escaped embers resulted in the TRE Fire – a fire that burned for five consecutive days and burned more than 7,000 acres. A majority of the fire encompassed BLM land. Native perennial plant species were burned in the fire, including Single-leaf Piñon (Pinus monophylla), Western Juniper (Juniperus occidentalis), Desert Peach (Prunus andersonii), and Mountain Mahogany (Cercocarpus ledifolius). Our job this past week was to plant about 300 Mountain Mahogany seedlings in a portion of the burn area where the tree used to thrive. The seedlings were grown from seeds collected by previous Seeds of Success Interns. It took two days, an overnight camping trip, and six interns to complete the planting. The beautiful weather, positive attitudes, and laughter made the planting gratifying! The project contained no impasses and was relatively smooth. When I was in the midst of planting some of the seedlings, I looked around at my fellow comrades and smiled from delight and zeal. Not only were we having a good time, but we were also restoring a species to a recently disturbed area. We were making a difference in the world of ecology and our work was important. I was encouraged to see how the collection of seeds can be used to restore and ameliorate an ecosystem. This project is a great story for the Seeds of Success program and emphasizes the importance of collecting seeds for future restoration efforts.

TRE Fire, Pine Nut Mountains, NV – This north-facing slope is where we planted about 300 Mountain Mahogany seedlings.

CLM intern team planting Mountain Mahogany.

Aaron Rosenblum carrying a bag of Mountain Mahogany seedlings.

John White planting Mountain Mahogany.

Maggie Grey planting Mountain Mahogany.

Olivia Schilling planting Mountain Mahogany.

A view of the Sweetwater Range and the Sierras.

Burned Mountain Mahogany.

Steven Jesselson planting Mountain Mahogany.

A Mountain Mahogany seedling in the foreground and a burned Mountain Mahogany in the background.

My seasonal allergies are beginning. Sneezing, runny nose, and swollen, itchy eyes – it must be spring! The leaves on trees are budding, rosettes are appearing more and more, and flowers are beginning to bloom. I’m immensely looking forward to more days out in the field, surveying plant species and collecting seeds.

Hello everyone,

It has been an interesting few weeks here at the Cosumnes River Preserve, a wonderful 50,000 acre conservation partnership in California’s Central Valley. I began working here in the Federal Pathways Program in 2011 and thought my time here was ending when I graduated in January. As I was wrapping up my projects and prepping my resume, a co-worker and former CLM intern informed the staff that he was leaving to take a new position in his home state of Iowa. This as it turned out was very fortunate timing for me (though I will miss working with him, great person and great employee) as I was able to take over his position as the Project Manager of a giant garter snake restoration project that is scheduled to begin in late summer of 2015.

After graduation I had the month of February off and used that time to do some travelling. My wife and I went to Park City, Utah for a week, then did some backpacking in the beautiful Desolation Wilderness, and finished with a trip to the Big Island in Hawaii. Needless to say there was a brief struggle in returning to work, but I have jumped in head first and am moving forward with the Badger Creek Restoration Project here at the Preserve.

Though it has only been a few weeks, I am already getting some excellent (and not so excellent) introductions to the wonderful world of state and federal permitting. I have written a few NEPA documents in the past, mostly for small projects/actions here at the Preserve, but this new project is a significant step up in complexity. I am currently working on wrapping up a joint NEPA/CEQA document that will cover both the state and federal requirements necessary to obtain proper permits and complete the project. This should be finished in the next few days (the previous CLMer had already completed a good portion of the document) and we will begin the review process. I will have much more to discuss in the coming weeks regarding the process but I thought I might end with a brief description about what we are doing at Badger Creek (I just realized that this post may end up looking like a Tarantino movie by the time it is over, introduction last?).

The Badger creek restoration project involves two separate but connected parcels of preserve lands that will be restored to provide habitat for the federal and state listed threatened giant garter snake (Thamnophis gigas). The western parcel, known as Horseshoe Lake, is infested with yellow water primrose which will treated and/or mechanically removed to restore open-water foraging habitat. The eastern parcel, the Bjelland Unit, currently exists as ag land with a channelized portion of Badger Creek running along the southern property boundary. This parcel is going to be recontoured to create wetland and upland habitat which connects to the Horseshoe Lake Unit. The final product will be an additional 1.5 miles of restored habitat, and restored connectivity to the existing Badger Creek population of giant garter snakes. I am very excited to be working on this project and will check back in soon with an update.

Patrick

Greetings from Arcata, CA and the Humboldt County sand dunes! I have just wrapped up my first week as a foredune conservation/rangeland monitoring intern under Jennifer Wheeler at the Bureau of Land Management, and what a week it was. In seven days I had my first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge as my plane landed from Canada, my first drive up the famous California coastline, my first chance to botanize in a sand dune ecosystem (Yes, I made botany a verb), and my first time judging an elementary school science fair. It couldn’t have been more fun!

The BLM of Arcata is responsible for the conservation and management of more than 200,000 acres of land in Northern California, including the unique dune system that makes up the coastline of Humboldt County. I jumped right in to this sandbox after a bit of bureaucratic orientation and spent everyday at a new monitoring site, learning the flora and performing transect monitoring. Though European beachgrass (Ammophila arenaria) and Ice plant (Carpobrotus edulis) are a continuous menace to the native species, the level of restoration that the BLM, in concert with their partners, has managed to achieve is a bright beacon of hope in the sometimes dark world of ecosystem conservation. I was thrilled to see the amount of diversity (over thirty species in one transect!), curious to see the effect of the competition between the natives and the invasives, and enamored with the two special status endemic plants, the Humboldt County wallflower (Erysimum menziesii ssp. eurekense) and beach layia (Layia carnosa). These charismatic little guys are a conservation priority and their persistence in this damaged and ever changing system is in large part due to the ongoing restoration efforts of the BLM.

Jennifer Wheeler at the Samoa Dunes site

Humboldt County Wallflower (Erysimum menziesii ssp. eurekense)

While I could have happily spent the entire week on the beach, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be a judge for the local science fair. Over 130 students from fourth grade through high school participated, with the winners advancing to county and state fairs. The curiosity and ingenuity displayed by the students was a colourful and fun reminder of why we all got into science. Who hasn’t wondered which type of fruit will fly the furthest?! A sense of wonder, anticipation of the unexpected, the thrill of a discovery. These are the simple things that we must nurture to form our future scientists and they’re the things that the most fortunate of us retain through our entire career. I for one plan to approach my entire summer with this mentality!

This student understands that good science is accessible to the general public.

This student wants to inform the public and improve our health with her science.

This student who appreciates the cost of science!

Greetings from the land where there is still snow!  Fairbanks is still covered with the white stuff so botanizing and wildlife-ing will have to wait until the green emerges.  Temperatures had been on an upward trend but a week of -30 harshly reminded us what Mother Nature is capable of.

We are gearing up for a busy and exciting field season.  In addition to the projects I mentioned in my last post (raptor surveys, bat monitoring, invasive species reconnaissance) I will also be planning and teaching some Invasive Plant Species Identification classes—should be a good chance to practice my public speaking and presentation skills, not to mention wax poetic about botany.

As of late I have mostly been researching, researching, researching for our little brown bat project (Myotis lucifungus).  I am used to monitoring things that don’t move (or don’t move fast) i.e. plants so these batty guys are new to me.  I’ve been reading a lot about bats, wildlife monitoring study design, echolocation, occupancy modeling etc. and chatting with many bat experts.  Hopefully all this information will be put to good use this summer.

There are a few opportunities for field work before “break-up” and one of those is moose surveys.  This Friday I will be taking off to go to Bettles, AK for the week.  There we will be flying transects over Gates of the Arctic National Park looking for moose.  The survey uses what is called the Geospatial Population Estimator (GSPE) method.  Basically, GSPE uses spatial correlation in moose populations to increase precision and flexibility in survey methods.  A certain number of sample grids from a study area are selected and transects are flown over them.  The spatial correlation among these samples is calculated and this relationship is modeled as a function of distance.  This model can them be used to predict moose densities in un-sampled areas.

Usually, less intensive stratification flights are done before the actual survey to identify areas of high and low moose density.  More survey effort is then dedicated to the high moose density stratum.

Here is a dizzying depiction of contour transects flown in mountainous terrain.

In other news, snow in Fairbanks allowed for two delightful winter activities these past weeks.  First, a lovely ski trip to Tolovana Hot Springs with Anchorage friends including CLM counterpart Charlotte and former CLM counterpart Bonnie!  And secondly, the IDITAROD!  Moved to Fairbanks for only the second time in history due to lack of snow in Anchorage.  A few choice pictures of both below.

Katie

Fairbanks, AK

Views from the way up–Tolovana Hot Springs trail

Home sweet home

Views from the hot springs–not too shabby

Lance Mackey and the Ninjas

No one would give me a ride to Nome…