Whew! One week of training and two weeks of intense office work and I am beginning to forget what the inside of my tent looks like.  For several weeks it seemed I spent more nights in that tent than in my own bed.  Not that I am complaining of course- hiking on the dunes of Sand Mountain, counting rare butterflies, collecting native seeds in alpine meadows, and my favorite: watching epic desert lightning storms, these are all of the perks that come with fieldwork.

Here is a snapshot of what the past 3 weeks away from the field have looked like:

1.        Truckee River Education Event (TREE) at the Nature Conservancy’s McCarren Ranch property.  This event has been occurring for several years and is intended to get low income, inner city, elementary school children not only learning about nature but interacting with it in a hands-on way.  We had the opportunity to develop a new activity for the students that would get them thinking and talking about invasive species and the importance of biodiversity and native species.  We decided given their ages a game would be the best way to engage the children.  A lot of planning and research went in to creating this game and in the end it was deemed a success.
2.        California Native Plant Society (CNPS) Releve/Rapid Assessment: For two and a half days we spent our time around professionals from private and state agencies learning standardized methods of vegetation classification.  The training was housed at U.C. Berkley’s Sagehen Field Station in Truckee, CA.  The beautiful lodge pole pine forest was a nice contrast from the harsh desert landscape we have spent so much of our summer surrounded by.  This training was an excellent chance to network with professional scientists from a variety of disciplines.  It was reassuring to hear that despite talk of a shrinking job market- there is job creation and stability in the private sector. 
3.        Assisting the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with the listing of a rare/endangered species:  This project has definitely been a labor of love.  Being the first listing for our office in recent history, the amount and types of data requested have changed several times.  Primarily we have been tasked with compiling spatial data in the context of natural and anthropogenic threats, in particular, development, mining, livestock grazing, and fire.   This project has required organization and an adaptive attitude.  It has been satisfying to pull together years of spatial data to tell the story of the threats posed to this species.  If all goes as planned we will ship our data out this afternoon and eventually have a federally protected species!