This past month, we finally got to the point where the majority of our time was spent in the field!!!

The first week of April, however, was a week full of trainings. Days one and two were spent at ArcPad training and day three was GeoBOB Mobile training. As someone who has spent countless hours entering GeoBOB data and trying to decipher handwriting, I am excited to be able to put this new technology to use so, hopefully, all data can be input in the field which would save so much time!

After our GPS trainings, we took a defensive driving course and, finally, on day five, we got to practice driving off road! We didn’t do much plant monitoring, but it was so nice to be outside after a week in the office!!!

The next week was a little more exciting! First off, we got to organize and put away our herbarium which had been returned after being scanned for a digital herbarium database.  Ok, I guess that wasn’t super thrilling, but it was nice to finally be able to look at our local herbarium sheets to visualize the species we would be seeing in the field.

Later in the week, we finally got to go back in the field!!! Our first task was to monitor a sage grouse lek and, since we had to make it there before sunrise, our day started bright and early at 3:45 AM. Sadly, we did not see any of the little guys lekking, but it was to be expected as it was the end of the lekking season. Don’t worry though, that wasn’t the end of our adventure that day! Next on the agenda was a spotted frog survey! This involved walking two miles of stream bank and capturing GPS coordinates of any egg masses or frogs that we came across.

A beautiful, slightly frozen, egg mass!!!

The day started out with few egg mass spottings but, as we made it further down the stream, we started coming across hot spots teeming with frogs and covered in egg masses!

What a beautiful day!

Friday was driving test and tire changing day!  Bill Lutjens taught us how to change the tire on our rig and then each of us had to change a tire by ourselves.  I learned that I am a weakling and F350 tires are super duper heavy, but I am so glad I have experience changing the tire now, so if we were to get a flat in the field I would be way more confident!

Lauren removed that tire like a pro!

Tire changing was followed by our driving test, which involved driving around on some steep sandy hills outside of town.   Bill uses this course because it looks really scary, but is actually quite safe.  After our driving adventures, Bill gave us the thumbs up and we are officially signed off on driving now!!!

This past week we were finally allowed out on our own, which worked out well since our mentor was out sick most of the week.  We were pretty much given free reign over what we wanted to do for the week, so we would choose a different spot with some sensitive species we could monitor each day and practice driving and navigating to the areas and surveying the sites.

We even found a site of flowering Lewisia sp.

Last week gave me a taste of what the rest of the summer will be like and I am super pumped and look forward to the months to come!

I was fortunate enough to attend the National Native Seed Conference in Santa Fe this month, which focused on the benefits and challenges of using native plant materials in restoration. As I always do after a conference, I feel invigorated by all the new information I learned and excited to figure out how to incorporate some of the great ideas into ongoing or upcoming projects. The conference highlighted the importance of approaching restoration projects with the goal of maximizing the use of native, locally adapted plants and avoiding exotic species that may negatively alter the community composition of the site.

Maintaining or increasing local and native biodiversity should be a key goal in restoration as ecosystem functionality, resilience, and adaptability are all heavily influenced by the plant community and its interactions. Utilizing local species increases your chances of long term planting success as these populations are adapted to the local environment, show a greater fitness over time, and promote healthy ecological relationships. The Plant Conservation Alliance (PCA), chaired by the BLM, has proposed a National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration that specifically addresses the need for using native and local planting materials in all restoration projects and aims to identify the seed and research needs to implement this directive as well as develop the tools that land managers would need to achieve native restorations effectively. This strategy is a great step forward for strong science based restoration that takes into account genetics and adaptation, climate change, ecology, and phenology. The need for a strategy like this cannot be understated as our world faces massive climate changes at a rate and scale that is unprecedented, and I was pleased to be able to participate in a planning workshop regarding it at the conference.

My second month here at the CO state office is coming to a close. Field season has officially started. Last week we went out near Rifle CO to monitor several plots of Astragalus debequaeus, Bebeque milkvetch. This plant is a rare endemic of Colorado, and is found on fine textured, seleniferous, saline soils of barren outcrops of dark clay intermixed with sandstone. A. debequaeus inhabits areas dominated by pinyon-Juniper woodlands, but is found in areas generally devoid of vegetation. I’m going to go into a lengthy description of our monitoring.

Last Monday we monitored one macroplot known as North Webster Mesa, one seedling plot, and five circular plots for presence and life stage. There are two more macroplots closer to Grand Junction that we hope to monitor later this week, weather allowing. The N. Webster Mesa plot was established in 2010 with a total of 613 plants recorded in 12 transects. This year we recorded 55 plants in those transects, none of which were reproductive. In 2014, 19 tags were placed within this plot by groups of seedlings or individual juveniles. This year only 2 tags had living plants and only one with the remnant of a plant. We set out to detect a 10% difference in mean population density between years with 90% certainty, while accepting a 10% chance of making a false-change error. So, this is a significant decrease. We have a few ideas as to why we are seeing this decrease. We think the last few years of drought have played a large roll in this decline. A. debequaeus at this site does inhabit a fairly unstable, highly erodible, steep slope devoid of much vegetation where several cm deep cracks in the soil are common. So, we have also hypothesized that seeds might be unable to establish in these cracks where they fall deeper than the first few cm from the soil surface. We’ve also considered the impact we might be having on the plot while monitoring. Given the erodible nature of the soil, it’s possible our walking through the plot may effect plant growth. This site is only visited once a year, is in a low to no traffic area, and researchers are always mindful of where they step while monitoring.  But it is a possibility that human traffic is contributing to the observed decline. It has been suggested that next year we GPS a few individuals outside but near this plot where we do not walk to observe, in order to compare life history data. Overall, individuals at this site are fewer and less robust than those at the other two macroplots that we’ll measure later this week. My boss believes that the microclimate at the other sites is more favorable due to slightly higher vegetation cover, which may hold moisture better.

Photograph: Peter Gordon. A. debequaeus in flower and fruit. Picture taken near Atwell Gulch, CO.

I did not take any pictures of the species, so this one is from a former intern at one of the other macroplot locations closer to Grand Junction.

The seedling plot was originally established in 2003 to shed light on seedling and juvenile mortality and life history. This site is also a dry-land canyon with steep slopes. This year had the fewest individuals recorded, although there has been variation in the past.

Total Numbers of Astragalus debequaeus in the Seedling Plot from 2003-2015

I don’t know how to make this bigger, sorry.

The circular plots are a few meters from the seedling plot and a few meters from one another. Given the terrain of this site, circular plots were more plausible than one large macroplot. Established in 2004, plant number and age class are recorded within these plots. Plant numbers have varied fairly significantly in each plot over the course of this study. We have also compared total plant number to average annual precipitation using a linear regression. There does not seem to be a strong correlation, but precipitation data is from the Rifle CO weather data location. Location-specific precipitation data would allow for a more accurate analysis, and we are considering purchasing soil moisture readers for instillation at these, or other, sites.

Another exciting part of this past month was the National Native Seed Conference I was able to attend in Santa Fe, NM. This was my alternative training opportunity since I attended the CLM training in Chicago last year. There were so many great talks at this conference, and too many to attend. I want to highlight one of my favorite presentations; one that I’m sure was a favorite of many people.  Spatial climate trends in western vegetation: Implications for restoration by Healy Hamilton discussed the current work by Dr. Hamilton and several others at NatureServe. They have been analyzing climate trends of the past decades in order to predict geographic and seasonal shifts of ecosystems across the west, identify seed sources of plants already adapted to climatic changes, identify populations already greatly affected by climate change, identify populations that are stable and may act as refugia, and identify where certain ecosystems are likely to be lost, remain stable, or expand. On top of all of this, they are also putting together a user-friendly webpage where this information can be accessed. Not only is this very interesting, critical, and highly useful research, the actual presentation was conducted really well. I’m looking forward to the completion of their work and the launch of the webpage.

There were several people from various other countries in attendance too. Dr. Stuart W. Smith gave an interesting presentation on his work restoring peatlands in the Falkland Islands, Laura Victoria Perez-Martinez talked about the work of she and her colleagues at the Bogota Botanical Gardens in Bogota, Colombia where they have created the county’s first native seed bank for the conservation of the tropical high mountain ecosystem, and Kay Evelina Lewis-Jones, an ethnobotanist from the University of Kent, UK, held an open forum  to discuss the future of native seeds as we, the attendees, saw it. These are the only four talks which I attended, but there were many more I was unable to attend (since I can’t be in two places at once) that looked just as interesting and I’m sure were just as educational. Overall, the conference was a great experience where I learned a lot more about the various kinds of work and research going on in the native seed world, and I was able to meet several prominent people in the native seed world.

Month 2 has been fun and educational. I’m looking forward to the month ahead.

Colleen Sullivan

Finally, the weather is beginning to stay warm in Carson City, Nevada. While we are still not making it out into the field more than a couple of times a week due to lots of unanticipated office work (which has composed a little less than half of our time here thus far), the few days we have spent collecting plant specimens and surveying for endangered populations have been both productive and blissful. The bulk of our work has been focused on locating and identifying populations of native plants which would make ideal seed collection sites in the following months to come. Needless to say, this has allowed of us to improve our plant identification, voucher specimen preparation, GPS, and GIS skill sets dramatically!

Additionally, our field work has been supplemented with a couple of public outreach events due to the occurrence of Earth Day. On Thursday of last week we spent the day in Truckee at the TREE program. Throughout the duration of this event we help educate and cultivate interest in hundreds of 4th graders about the importance of invasive weed management and native plant conservation through a series of interactive nature walks and educational games. The Sunday after which we all woke up early and worked a 12 and half hour day at Reno’s Earth Day festival. This was a tiring but rewarding experiences as we had an extremely extended opportunity to interact with droves of people and hear their feedback about the importance of our work as BLM botany interns!!!
Until next month,
J

p.s. It rained twice this month!

Hello! I’ve been in my internship for a full month now, working on a couple different plant monitoring projects for the US Geological Survey. Arriving in Henderson, NV was a bit of a whirlwind, as we jumped right into the field only two days after arriving.

There are three main projects I’ll be working on this summer, two of which I’ve already begun work with.

The first is a common garden project, where seedlings from 6 different climate zones within the Mojave desert are planted in 3 (for now) locations. After this summer’s data is collected, hopefully we’ll be able to tell if haplotypes from different regions are able to survive in other regions, or if they’re sensitive enough to slight shifts in temperature/rainfall that they can’t survive in other regions. This is super important information to know for any restoration efforts, to make sure seeds planted have a chance at survival.

Above is our Utah garden, in the coolest/wettest climate zone. After we did our measurements (canopy dimensions, stem diameters, and pre-dawn water potentials), we zipped down to the second garden near Joshua Tree National Park.

Things were a little further along at Joshua Tree, which is a comparatively warmer site. While creosote is one of the species we have planted in the gardens currently, none were quite flowering yet–the picture above is from a bush just outside our fence.

Our third site is actually located on the Fort Irwin Military Training site. However, on our way there our first trip…

…the car broke down. So we couldn’t make it to the base in time for the mandatory range safety course, and the trip had to be cut a little short.

However! It did mean I got back in time to volunteer on a short trip to near the north rim of the Grand Canyon, to help count and measure pediocacti.

The cacti we were looking at are super interesting–they suck down underground for the winter, and push back up through the dirt in the spring to flower. They mechanism and triggers for this have not been extensively studied as far as I’m aware, but you could really see the way they shoved rocks and things out of their way in order to flower.

They’re also super adorable!

That covers almost all of my first week and weekend in the Mojave and nearby areas. It is definitely a different landscape than what I’m used to, being from the midwest, and a very interesting one to explore.

Jessica Mikenas

Henderson, NV

Hello.  I am back working at the San Juan Islands National Monument for my second year.  Last year I spent most of my time doing botanical surveys following the AIM strategy (Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring).  This year I am very happy to be handling our Seeds of Success program.

Cerastium arvense at Kellet Bluff, San Juan Islands National Monument

Seeds of Success is almost completely new to the San Juan Islands.  Before last summer neither I nor the full time employees of our office had a clear understanding of the program.  That changed when I attended the Chicago Botanic Garden’s CLM intern workshop.  Hearing from Peggy Olwell and Meagan Haidet, I was inspired by what I learned about SOS and was more than keen to get a collection team started for our islands.  Luckily, my mentor shared my interest once I told her more about the program and she was able to get funding to start collecting.  (this was supposed to be a heartwarming ‘we interns can make a difference’ story but apparently I am not pulling it off).

Anyway, I started working for San Juan SOS two weeks ago and have been intensely busy since.  Week one was spent at the National Native Seed Conference in Santa Fe, where I met a number of incredible people, learned a hundred things about seed, and spent days generally not knowing what I was talking about.  Week two I have been meeting with partners, making lists, visiting sites, and teaching school children about monitoring.  All while still knowing minimally what I’m talking about.

The most rewarding part of the past week was talking to a group of 5th graders from our local school.  I am by no means a  skilled educator or kid wrangler, but it is amazing to see and help children think critically about the natural world around them.

Under the Celestial Skies! The Farrago of Sage Grouse and Static Noise!

A large group of biologists were to meet outside of Mansfield, Washington to take part in a special event on a Thursday night. The Department of Fish and Wildlife, with the BLM, were on a mission to capture, tag, and install a small monitor on many sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in the area. The goal was to work the entire evening and capture sage grouse from three different leks sites that were detected via aerial images. Capturing males in these leks sites and attaching these monitor backpacks would help give insight into their migration patterns within the area and provide intelligence on their activities.

Our boss asked Jenny and I if we were interested in helping out with this sage grouse project. We definitely said yes!!! Thursday night, we met with some wildlife biologists from the DFW and drove north to an area that was known for lek sites! We gathered by a solitary building in the middle of nowhere and were given the rundown of how we would accomplish the mission for tonight. We were separated into two groups and were given bags, boxes, nets, lights, and kitty litter. Our group was assigned to go to the Duffy Creek/ Badger Mountain area to look for male sage grouse.

We are getting ready to look for sage grouse!!

This was the best night to do this!! There was no wind, the temperature was perfect, and there were no clouds. The best part was the light show to the North. There were Aurora borealis (northern lights) to the magnetic north!! They formed in a green hue that eventually led to the development of green spikes shooting up through the atmosphere! There were many shooting stars that were streaking by, you could easily have made hundreds of wishes. The Milky Way Galaxy was so bright, it was hard to see the constellations due to the overabundance of stars in the area!! Pretty ideal conditions to look for the Greater Sage Grouse!

As we made our way out into the field, one of the wildlife biologist turned on a static white sound device. It made a couple booming laser sounds and continued with pure static noise to mask our steps. We moved in a group of five people. The spotter was the only person with the light that looked for the sage grouse. There were two netters on either side, who followed closely.  We (CLM interns) were the flank of the group that held the bags that carried the sage grouse once caught. We followed the aerial GPS imagery to the lek sites. When the wildlife biologist found a few sage grouse, she would strobe the light making the sage grouse confused. With the loud static noise with the flashing lights, the sage grouse would have no clue what would be going on, so they would just stand there. The netters and the spotter would get within ten feet of the sage grouse and try to capture it before it flies away.

The sage grouse have two kinds of poop. The black liquidy poop is called the cecal cast, which was formed through an extra digestive process to intake more nutrients. The white poop is called the roost scat, which usually formed in areas of roosting.

There were many failed attempts at capturing the sage grouse this evening. They were pretty spooked and probably had a clue of what was going on. I mean, if I was a sage grouse and a saw a massive flashing light from the sky and I heard a large “KKKAAAAAAAAAA” sound, I would fly immediately away from the UFO. I would not want to be abducted! We did catch a few sage grouse! We had to release one, because it did not reach expectations compared to other males the biologists wanted. (I named this sage grouse Snicker Jim.) One time the static sound turned off right when the biologists were about to capture a few. The hypnotic trance was broken and the sage grouse flew everywhere in a great panic. They flew right to the other side of the fence on private property.

Snicker Jim in all of his glory.

We took the sage grouse known as Ralph the Sage Grouse (Jenny named this one) to a meeting point with the other biologist for processing. Ralph was measured thoroughly and he got his own solar powered monitoring backpack to wear! Ralph was a little freaked out, but it looked like he was fine after a while. He did do some wheezing and puffing out of the chest. We released Ralph later to join his bird brethren at the lek site. This evening was truly amazing and it would be an experience I would never forget. Especially with all of the northern lights, meteorites, and sage grouse!!…..oh? You must be wondering why we brought kitty litter along with us? To transport the sage grouse, we would put them in a special box. They would relieve themselves a lot during the transportation process, so we would put kitty litter at the bottom of the box to negate the poop factor. 😉

Ralph being surveyed. No worries, he is actually starting to fall asleep.

The solar power monitoring backpack. The data from this device is sent to a satellite. The information is then sent to computers which create daily GIS points that could be seen on ArcMap and other GIS software programs.

Go Get the Buns!

After all the excitement with the sage grouse, we were given another opportunity to work with a rare animal species. Jenny and I were supposed to help the Department of Fish and Wildlife with Pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) collections! These were one of the rare animals on the BLM’s list to monitor, so we decided to help the DFW to become more familiar with this species of mammal! These rabbits were extraordinarily cute! They were very small and could fit in the palms of your hands. They really do not bite and they have no visible tail unlike their rabbit relatives. They could be found in sagebrush areas that have undulating topography. They like to nest under various sagebrush within small hills. These creatures were endangered and many of the local scientists were developing breeding programs to boost the population.

Baby pygmy rabbit relaxing under a sagebrush.

When we got to the area, we saw a massive ten acre enclosure surrounded by high fencing. It reminded me of Jurassic Park a little, but instead of dinosaurs, there were little rabbits hopping everywhere. There were many small hills in the area with food, water, rabbit hotels, and artificial tubing that served as a home. High population density areas were covered with black netting to prevent anything from the sky to enter. Next to the enclosure was the rabbit breeding area, where they would introduce younger rabbits to go breed. We were supposed to catch baby pygmy rabbits and collect DNA samples from them.

Ideal pygmy rabbit burrow!

We had three different ways of capturing these little bunnies. One way was to check the black tubes laying on the ground for possible residents. If there was one or two rabbits in the tubing, we would empty the tube into a pillow bag for DNA sample processing. The second way was to take a pillow case and put it on one end of an artificial home tube and put a tennis ball with a plumber wire in the other end. The ball/ wire would seem like a weasel to the rabbits, so they would run out of the hole into the pillow case. (This part really scared me, because you did not know when they would come, plus you would find snakes sometimes.) In order to do this, we would have to crawl underneath the black lattice netting to these homes. We would be crawling on ant hills, rabbit poop, sagebrush, and more rabbit poop to get to their artificial homes. The third technique was to set out traps for them by their holes. All of the above techniques worked!

Method 1: The Black Tube

Method 2: The Pillow Case and Tennis Ball Surprise

Method 3: Cage and Burlap!

(Note: The bunnies were not hurt during the trapping process. They were actually calm and sometimes were eating sagebrush when we found them.)

We had to process all of the rabbits we caught. You had to hold them a special way while they were sexed, weighed, and cleaned with flea medicine. The scientists also collected a small tissue sample from the ear. We caught baby rabbits along with adults. They were separated into different bins that would be marked for release or breeding. Some of the adults we caught would be introduced near the enclosure in the wild. We would take a mating pair of rabbits per person and go to different locations in the wild where there were artificial homes prepared for them. We would release them with some food and head back to the truck at the end of the day! This experience was amazing and hopefully there would be many opportunities to help out in the future!!!

Jenny and myself holding pygmy rabbits before the data collection stage.

Where Are You, Golden Eagle??

Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) monitoring had been going smoothly even though we were monitoring during an inactive nesting period of the eagle’s life cycle. (This is when the eagles would not move much, making them hard to see.) We have encountered many nest sites and some of them had actual eagle pairs!! Golden Eagles have a territory of two miles around the nest site, so we would go to a historic site and look for nests along the cliff sides. If we do not find the nests within ten minutes we would scan other areas within the habitat for potential nesting sites. We would wait about an hour at each site before we moved on. Some nest sites have two adults and other sites would have an adult and sub-adult. If there was a sub adult with a breeding adult, that means conditions were dire and one of the previous mates died, so the adult had to take in a younger, inexperienced adult as a mate.

Golden eagle preparing a nest.

Most of these nests sites were found on granitic hills, basaltic coulees, and areas with very steep topography. We would look at the benches and tiers within the rock structures for nests. Some of these nests were just about impossible to find until you see a golden eagle flying to it. Their nests varied from massive cups the size of a person to a few sticks placed on the cliff side. When looking at a site with historical nests, we would find more than two nests lying around in the area. Sometimes the eagles make multiple nests before choosing one to settle in. In the Yakima Canyon, we would find many nests in this one location named Pomona. This area had ideal nesting locations with many chukar (Alectoris chukar), bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis), and rock doves (Columba livia) nearby. The Douglas Creek site had a very long history of breeding eagle pairs, and you could find many old and new nests on the cliffs. One of the nesting sites that surprised us was Bridgeport. We found the nest right away, but we did not find any eagles. There was a huge nest with two smaller nests. Due to the lighting, we could not get a good view, but we assumed the eagle could be in the large nest. When we came back to the site, we found a golden eagle, but she was sitting in one of the smaller nests that we just passed by, because we assumed they would be in larger nests. (That was a learning experience after that incident.) We will continue doing golden eagle surveys into May. Now, we will be heading north to Oroville to look for golden eagles near the Canada border! I am pretty excited about that!

Nesting pair in the Yakima Canyon cliff side.

Find the Golden Eagle Nest!!!

Three nests can be found in this picture!

Some nests are hard to find in basaltic canyons. There is one in this picture.

Have a great day, everyone!!!! Keep up the good work and adventures!

Justin Chappelle
Wenatchee, WA BLM

And Now… Your Moment of Zen

The last couple of weeks working out of the Carson City, NV BLM office have been exciting ones. Much effort from my fellow botany interns and I has concentrated around the rare plant Ivesia webberi, a species listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Across our district many range improvement projects are proposed that happen to occur within the range of Ivesia webberi. In order to be in compliance with NEPA and the ESA these project sites need to be surveyed to ensure that the proposed action will not harm existing populations of the rare plant. My fellow interns and I spent several days marching across the range ten feet apart searching for the rare plant and not finding it. From the standpoint of implementing these range improvement projects this was a good thing, however we as botanists were left wanting to see the plant thriving in significant numbers.
This past week we all got our wish. With the surveys complete, we returned to known populations to complete annual monitoring. In these isolated pockets Ivesia webberi occurred in abundance and was in full bloom! Once the permanently established plots were located we collected detailed data including canopy cover, nested frequency and measurements for each individual Ivesia plant.

Last week I was able to attend Wetland Delineation training in Sacramento as an alternative to the CBG training in Chicago. Maggie Grey has already reported wonderfully on this experience, so I will just quickly echo her sentiments. The two instructors were excellent, having both formally worked with the Army Corps of Engineers, one of whom had helped write the wetland delineation manual itself. This course taught me valuable skills and I would recommended it to my fellow interns. Finally, I was able to snap a couple of photos of those awesome vernal pools which Maggie described:

Cheers,

Aaron

Greetings from Fairbanks, AK!  The weather has turned on a dime and most of our snow blanket has melted away.  The willows are starting to bud and newly bare lawns reveal surprises for homeowners—many household items lost long ago under layers of winter snow.  I am happy to report that I was able to bike in just a light sweater the other day, with no concerns about frostbite.

Harkening back, however, to when it was quite chilly… moose surveys over Gates of the Arctic National Park (GAAR).

Gates of the Arctic National Park is a mind boggling expanse of 8.5 million acres of wilderness—larger than the country of Belgium—that straddles the Brooks Range in the far north of Alaska.  The park is completely devoid of trails—a beautifully untrammeled natural area.  In a land where human development has touched nearly every corner of the nation, Gates of the Arctic is a rare glimpse into an intact ecosystem that has remained unchanged for thousands of years.  The park is a mosaic of winding rivers, dramatic valleys, glaciers, mountain peaks, spruce and tundra carpet of moss, lichen, the white blooms of Labrador tea, the beautiful purple and yellow of pasqueflowers, the variegated green leaves of bearberry and many, many others.  Caribou, moose, brown and black bears, lynx, dall sheep, ptarmagin, wolverines, wolves and foxes beat tracks into fresh snow under the glow of the aurora borealis or bend brush under the light of the midnight sun.  Driving up to the Gates is not an option and the thus the park remains pristine, attracting only the most experienced outdoorspeople.

I participated in this project as a BLM collaborator for a National Park Service survey.  The object was to get an estimate of GAAR’s moose population using a Geospatial Population Estimator (GSPE) method.  To accomplish this, six pilots (with six planes) and eight observers met in Bettles and took over the NPS bunkhouse, plastering the walls and floors with all manner of topographic maps.  I was part of the stratification plane crew.  This plane flies first, conducting less intense surveys to identify areas of high and low potential moose density.  It surveys every sample unit from the study area.  For us this meant that we spent an absolutely amazing several days flying over pretty much all of Gates of the Arctic.  After stratification has been done for a sample unit, a survey plane flies tighter transects over it, obtaining an exact count of moose present at the time.  These numbers are summarized for each sampled unit and used to estimate moose density in un-sampled units.  Then, of course, total GAAR moose population can be estimated.

Tucked into the Super Cub

Our stratifications took us up and down the Wild River, the North Fork of the Koyukuk River, the Alatna River and the Kobuk river; over the Alatna Hills near Bettles; and most spectacularly, in and out of the breathtaking Arrigetch Peaks.

Arrigetch being beautiful

From the air we kept our eyes peeled for moose tracks and moose themselves.  These number of these signs spotted in each sample unit allowed us to assign it a ‘high’ or ‘low’ designation.

Of course, we saw many other animal tracks as well—each with its own character as seen from the sky.  These animal tracks dissect the plains of snow into geometric shapes.  The trails created tell the stories of each critter’s life like lines from an autobiography.  Moose plunge through the snow dragging their feet and creating two distinct lines as seen from an airplane.  Caribou pick through the snow more delicately than moose—their tracks appear as single lines with frequent craters where the ungulates have stopped to paw the ground in search of tasty lichen morsels. Ptarmagin trace chaotic scribbles through space as they dash from bush to bush.  Wolverines shuffle low to the ground, dragging their bellies and creating small valleys in which their paw prints fall.  Wolves leave alarmingly large circular tracks as they prowl in search of a meal.

On one of the most exciting passes of the trip we experienced first-hand the efficacy of wolf hunting methods.  As we flew over a river corridor several lines of wolf tracks converged on a single point.  At that point lie a moose carcass, an awful lot of blood, and the hunters themselves enjoying a filling meal.  We circled a few times to observe the spectacle and the wolves, hearing the drone of our engine, attempted to flee the scene, encumbered by distended stomachs dragging in fresh snow.

Wolf kill of moose on the frozen river

All in all, the weather was gorgeous and the surveys were completed in no time at all.

Bonus Aurora! (Bettles)

The information we gathered will be used by NPS to make important management decisions.  One of the main aspects of this management is subsistence hunting.  Native Alaskans of three main cultures (Koyukon Athapaskan Indians, Kuuvanmiit Eskimos, and Nunamiut Eskimos) have inhabited Gates of the Arctic for nearly 13,000 years, subsisting on caribou, moose and other game animals.

Across the years other non-native rural Alaskans have established homesteads in the park and also depend on caribou and moose for food.  In Alaska, these types of situation are unique in that there are often no other food options for people living this far out in the wilderness—the nearest grocery store is many, many miles away.  With this in mind the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was passed in 1980 to preserve wilderness, protect subsistence hunting, and honor the intimate man-land relationship formed by years of peaceful coexistence. It set aside many acres of national parks and preserves for these purposes. Now, NPS biologists collect data in the hopes of making informed wildlife management decisions that balance these subsistence uses with myriad other considerations.

The other field outing I have participated in recently was snow surveys along the Dalton Highway.  The Dalton runs straight north, linking Fairbanks to Deadhorse, a small town (with a lot of oil) perched right on the Arctic Ocean.  Snow surveys entailed us snow shoeing to our sites, measuring depth of snow, taking snow cores with a metal tube, measuring height of settled snow cores, weighing snow cores, and using formulas to determine water content of snow.  Our hydrologists keep track of this snow data which allows them to predict how much snow melt will feed nearby rivers.  We measured snow in the Yukon River and Koyukuk River drainages.

Measuring snow depth

Trips up the Dalton are never a dull moment—in addition to the scheduled field work we investigated two oil tanker turn-over sights (yikes!), one Bettles “ice” road in poor shape, a frozen debris lobe (slow moving landslides that occur in permafrost and carry rocks, sediment, trees and ice downslope) threatening to wipe out a section of the highway, and masses of truckers stuck in Coldfoot due to road closure further north.

Tanker roll-over scar

Through Atigun Pass, Dalton Highway

Sukakpak Mountain, Dalton Highway

Fox visitor, Dalton Highway

Back in the office, I have been continuing to work on our little brown bat monitoring project and I am creating a first draft of an invasive species management strategic plan for our field office.

Happy spring everyone!

Katie

Fairbanks, AK

With a sigh of relief, Spring has arrived in Carson City. Along with the warmer and longer days (but still the occasional dusting of snow), arrive leaves, flowers, and seasonal allergies. And thus begin the Seeds of Success (SOS) collections, or at least the collection and pressing of flowering plants which will later be used for SOS identification confirmation. You see, the plants are typically at their most identifiable stage when flowering, so first we must scout the plant populations and collect specimens before the time comes to collect thousands, dare I say millions, of seeds.

As we step lightly through the desert, carrying our pick-hammers and plant presses, we look for flowering native plants with a population hardy enough to withstand a collection (>50 individuals). When sufficient in number, we dig up a plant, sandwich it between newspaper and cardboard, and then tighten the stack of plant sandwiches using straps and burly intern muscles.

Here, thoroughly flattened and surrounded by this dry, dry climate, the plants desiccate and become well preserved, easily storable reference sheets. This process is always (ALWAYS) accompanied by plenty of detailed notes and several photographs. Once compiled, we turn all of these into herbarium specimens for our BLM office, UNR and the Smithsonian.

Here are a few of my favorite things (plants)…

While out collecting specimens for SOS, we have also been surveying for the threatened species Ivesia webberi (Webber’s Ivesia or wire mousetail) in various allotments in the area. Though it’s not in bloom in the following photo, around this time it displays clusters of yellow flowers that will brighten your day.

Spring cheers from Carson City.