Greetings from Cedarville, CA!

I have just completed my first month working with the BLM Surprise Field Office and it has been a very exciting month. Much of my first month has been spent getting adjusted to a new environment. Coming from Michigan means that I have to learn a whole new set of plant species and adjust to the terrain, which is very different than what I am used to. I also have to get used to living in a different state. We did end up getting lost in our resource area one day, but it was a great chance to test out my gps and map reading skills. I am glad to say we did make it to our destination after a slight delay. It has been a great experience and I love being able to compare the two areas and have found great things about both.

Most of the work that me and my co-intern have been doing has been post fire vegetation monitoring. We have been collecting lots of data to see how the area has responded after a huge wildfire burned through last year. We look at the species found on different plots as well as how stable the soil is in an area. Eventually, after all the data is collected, the goal is to compare our data to data of similar plots not affected by the fire. Hopefully, this will give us a good idea of how the resource area is doing as a whole. This has been a great tool to help in learning many of the species found in our resource area.

We have also started collecting seeds for the Seeds of Success program. We have done 5 collections so far. It has been a struggle to get our timing down. If we have been off with our timing we have had to come up with a back up plan while in the field. We have to decide whether it is worth our time to collect or not. If it is not worth our time, we have to decide if we should go back to the office empty handed or if there is a different plant population that we could collect. Also, on our first couple collections we learned that we have been under prepared. We needed to do more research in the office before we head out to collect. Hopefully, that will make future collections go more smoothly.

Overall, my first month has been fantastic and I can not wait to see what is in store in the coming months!

AZ