Exploring the Great Basin

Stationed out of Provo, UT we sat at the base of the Rocky Mountains and the beginning of the Great Basin Desert. A huge transition of two drastic environments. During the week for work we camped out in the desert, during the weekend I spent my time hiking in the mountains. Truely a great way to spend a summer. While out in the desert we spent our time looking for and collecting seeds of desert forbs like Ipomopsis sp. and Balsamorhiza sp. As the summer went on, we spent more of our time focussing on shrubs and sagebrush mainly since all the forbs were waining pretty quickly. The Provo group was made up of four CLM interns and we split up into two different “teams”. One taking a north rout, and one taking a south rout. I was a part of the north rout travaling along I-80 along western Utah and Northern Nevada ocasionaly travaling into Oregon and Idaho. Overall the 4 of us split up throughout the desert we managed to gather over 400 seed collections.

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