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.

This past week, another intern with the Carson City Botany Team and myself, traveled west over the Sierra Mountains to attend the Basic Wetland Delineation certification course in Sacramento, California as our alternative training to the Chicago training in June. The class was taught by two instructors with the Wetland Training Institute based out of Wisconsin. The curriculum was centered around the 1987 US Army Corps of Engineers Wetland Delineation Manual. While there were several hours of lecture on various aspects of wetland delineation, we also spent three full afternoons practicing delineations in the field. We frequented vernal pools that were in full bloom, as well as a riverine site and a disturbed site.

For those unfamiliar with wetland delineation, the Corps Manual provides guidance for professionals on how to decide what is a wetland and where to map the boundary. There are three criteria used to evaluate a site: vegetation, hydrology, and soil. If these three parameters reflect wetland features, then an area can be designated as a wetland and falls under the jurisdiction of the Corps of Engineers (with expanding buffer habitats surrounding the wetland usually falling under state or other federal agency jurisdiction). The purpose of wetland delineation is to map the wetland and use the information for protection or development purposes.

While I do not have any pictures to post from the trip, I can mention some of the plants we saw in the vernal pools and the other sites. In the pools, we found woolly marbles (Psilocarphus brevissimus), tidy tips (Layia fremontii), frying pan poppy (Eschscholzia lobbii), goldfields (Lasthenia fremontii), and field cluster lily (Dichelostemma capitatum). I also saw a familiar friend from the Midwest while I was out surveying in one of the riverine areas: water smartweed (Persicaria amphibia). This plant is recognizable in the early vegetative stages by the black chevron on its leaves. I was elated to find such a familiar face amid all of the new friends I was meeting (I suppose I just accumulated major nerdy botanist points for this statement…hahaha!). The vernal pools of California are quite a sight when in bloom; the overwhelmingly bright yellow flowers are seen from afar, while the purple gems are hidden until one comes closer. I was blown away by how beautiful all of the pools were this past week.

Overall, I had a wonderful time learning about wetland delineation this week. Both instructors were incredibly knowledgeable and had worked together for so long they were comfortable teasing one another in class. They were full of great stories that illustrated the concepts they were trying to teach. I met several people within the environmental science field who came from all sorts of backgrounds and professional settings. Best of all, I learned several new plant names and reconnected with an old plant friend! Traveling over the mountains and through the vernal pools was quite the adventure this week and I am grateful for the opportunity to gain such valuable skills in wetland delineation!

Until next time,

Maggie Gray, Carson City BLM District Office, Nevada

The journey from my sunny San Diego suburb to my tiny Utah town took me much farther than the 637 miles by car and has shattered my preconceived notions about what a desert is and how one lives without the Pacific Ocean close at hand.

These boots were made for techin’, and that’s just what we’ll do.

For one thing, the journey took me from the endangered Coastal Sage Scrub ecosystem of Southern California to the underappreciated desert scrubland of the southwestern Colorado Plateau ecosystem. Though these landscapes superficially share some similarities, their differences are achingly palatable to my homesick eyes. ‘Wait, it snows here? And in mid-April?’ ‘Monsoons? That can’t be right…I thought that this was a desert.’ ‘But where’s the igneous rock? All I see is sedimentary. There’s no granite anywhere.’ ‘Lake Powell has a “beach”?’ Ah, the naiveté of a bewildered transplant!

The next stage of my journey has involved trying to wrap my mind around the magnitude of my surroundings. Everything about the landscape of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument (hereafter: GSENM, as we in the know refer to it) is simply and complexly grand. That’s always the first word that springs to mind when trying to describe the vast array of canyons, cliffs, ancient dunes, fossilized dinosaur tracks, shifting hills, slickrock faces, riparian oases, and fractured crust that compose the indomitable monument. Grand and virtually indescribable.

The view from my tent door.

How does one convey the variety of natural wonders to an unknowing audience? How does one capture the subtle hues of red on a rock when the ever shifting clouds overhead affect the shades on the ground from moment to moment? How, oh how dear reader, am I to brag about this on Facebook when words and pictures fall desperately short of the mark?

The last, and probably most important leg of my journey has been understanding that the answers to my questions are all: I can’t and I shouldn’t really even try. This place is meant to be experienced with all of one’s senses working together to create an honest portrait of what living beauty is. Perhaps the monument is like a reverse of Dorian Grey’s picture – as the world becomes more impoverished of species diversity, wild places, and harmony with nature, locations like Escalante will become lovelier because they will become only rarer in the future – they will be a snapshot of bygone histories that we should always cherish.

Hiking in the Zebra Slot Canyon

With 1/5th of my time in Escalante behind me, I have much to look forward to: a community of like-minded office mates; a brilliant, optimistic, plant-loving co-intern; endless opportunities for exploration on the monument and beyond; a whole new ecosystem and a huge array of native flora to learn and to love; knowledge that working for the Seeds of Success program will have real world conservation implications in the uncertain future; assisting in  early morning hummingbird studies; lending help in late night bat surveys; planting willows for bank stabilization; working for the BLM; collaborating with rangers, scientists, and citizens for a brighter future; and heaps more.

With all these thoughts buzzing around in my head, I can’t help but ponder: what is it that Bilbo used to sing about the Road? Something about where it was going…? Ah well, it will come to me eventually! Until it does, may your paths lead you to new wonders around you and new discoveries within you.

In the spirit of adventure,

Elise

Escalante Field Office, BLM

My first two weeks working for the Vale District BLM have been pretty atypical. The first three days of my internship were filled with some GIS based workshops; ArcPad and GeoBOB. During these workshops, I got to brush up on my GIS skills and learn the basics of GeoBOB, a biological database used by the Washington/Oregon BLM. I also got to meet my co-intern, Amanda, and two other CLM interns from the Wenatchee field office, Jenny and Justin. I apologize for not taking a picture of all of us using our GPS units to make point data of garbage cans in the parking lot (the closest we could get to recreating real field observations).

This week, my mentor, Susan Fritts, was away at a seed conference in Sante Fe, so Amanda and I didn’t get a chance to go out into the field for botany. We did, however, get to spend a day rearranging our herbarium (it was previously being digitized out of office), and practicing our skills keying dried specimen!

Our beautifully arranged herbarium!

We made the mistake of trying to key out a species of  Astragalus for practice. They are notoriously tricky to key out in this area because there are so many species here.

The rest of this week was spent in the field with other technicians in the office. On Wednesday, I went into the field with a range technician, Bob, to check on the quality of a nearby road. I learned a lot! Bob grew up in rangeland on a ranch. He was able to provide me with a lot of perspective on grazing and ranching, things I am not very familiar with since I grew up in the suburbs of Minnesota and went to college on the west side of the Cascades. I realized that not only in this area is there a lot of conflict in belief between conservation and land utilization (be it grazing, hunting, or mining), but even in this agency, particularly this office, there is quite a spectrum of beliefs. Bob and I continued to discuss the history of this rangeland while we lunched on the banks of the Owyhee River.

A typical view of the range around Vale.

The Owyhee River. Not a bad lunchroom!

On Thursday, Amanda and I went out with two wildlife technicians. Our day started at 4 am, when we left the office in the hopes of spotting a sage grouse lek. Unfortunately, after driving for an hour and standing in the cold for another two hours (a brisk 20 degrees, with wind), we didn’t see a single sage grouse. We drove to a different location to check another lek site, but still no sage grouse. By this time in April, the mating season is coming to an end, so it is not unusual that we didn’t spot any sage grouse, but I was still pretty bummed since I’ve never seen one before.

At 9 am, it was time to start our Columbia spotted frog (soon to be listed) and egg mass count at Dry Creek. Trying to find egg masses along the edges of the creek turned out to be pretty hard. With so much algae growing in the creek, almost everything looked like an egg mass.

An actual egg mass!

Once it started to warm up, we spotted more and more frogs (no pun intended). At some points it became difficult to count because there were so many frogs out in the sun!

A female Columbia spotted frog. In this species, adult females are often much larger than adult males. This lady was pretty little at only about 4 inches long from nose to tail.

Amanda and I finished our week by learning to change the wheels on our giant 4×4. Again, I apologize for the lack of pictures. If any photo documentation of this event existed, it likely would have involved two very sweaty CLM interns each with a grimace that rivals that of Grumpy Cat. After spending a lot of time practicing tire changing, we ended our day with a drive with the district’s range specialist, Bill, learning about Vale’s ecological and cultural history.

Over all, it was a pretty fun two weeks! After spending many hours in a truck, my biggest takeaway lesson is that people use the term “road” very generously here. A freshly graded gravel road is practically a highway!

I am looking forward to getting out in the field to learn more about the local flora, start surveying sensitive species, and collect seed!